The Dark at the End 7

The sun was low over the bare, snow-covered cornfields and orchards by the time they reached Johnson.

"At least Burlington County hasn't been paved over yet," Eddie said.

He'd called shotgun - for old times' sake - and Jack drove. Weezy had been perfectly happy to have the backseat to herself and the Compendium.

Eddie was exaggerating - plenty of green left, especially with the Pine Barrens sprawling to the east - but Jack got the point. An awful lot of strip malls lining these once pristine country roads.

"Take it slow on Quakerton Road," Eddie said.

"You mean Q'qr Town?" Weezy said.

"What?"

Jack smiled. "Long story."

Too long to tell.

"Anyway," Eddie said, "I want to see what's changed."

So Jack did just that. Why not? They weren't in any big hurry. They'd see what was what at the Lodge and then find a place to spend the night. First thing tomorrow they'd get started on finding that sigil. If it was still to be found.

They crossed the bridge over Quaker Lake - or was that Q'qr Lake? - into Old Town and turned toward the two-story stucco box of the Lodge. Jack was surprised to see a pair of pickup trucks parked in front.

Weezy leaned forward over the back of the front seat and thrust her head between them.

"What's up? Remodeling, y'think?"

Not good, Jack thought as he parked next to the pickups. He didn't want company.

As the three of them walked through the snow toward the front door, Jack noticed how the place had gone to seed a little. Not quite rundown, but not as pristine as he remembered. The stucco showed small cracks here and there, the paint needed freshening, the grass was trimmed but the foundation plantings needed weeding.

As ever, the Order's sigil hung over the pillared front entrance.

Jack noticed something new that hadn't been apparent from a distance.

"Check out the second-floor windows."

Weezy looked up and frowned. "Only the first floor used to be barred. Now the second?"

Eddie said, "Why would they do that?"

Jack couldn't tell if he was being facetious or not.

"Because they were broken into?"

Weezy smiled. "Could be ... could be."

The trucks bothered Jack. Except for sporadic gatherings of the regional members, the Lodge typically remained vacant, often for weeks at a stretch. The only time in memory that anyone had lived there was when the white-suited Ernst Drexler and his assistant - whose name eluded Jack now - had moved in during a crisis involving the deaths of a number of the Order's local members ... deaths precipitated by something Jack and Weezy had dug from a mound in the Pines.

Jack had been counting on that emptiness, because they were going to need time - maybe lots of it - alone in the building if they were to find the sigil.

He knocked and turned to Weezy as they waited.

"Remember the first time we knocked on this door?"

She nodded. "We were looking for help for that lost guy we found in the Pines."

That was the day he first met Ernst Drexler. He'd been fourteen and Drexler an adult. The dynamics of their first meeting had been dramatically different from their last.

No answer, so he knocked again. Still no response so he turned to Eddie.

"What's the secret password?"

Eddie blinked. "What?"

"That opens the door. You're a member of the Order. We expect you to know these things. Right, Weez?"

"Absolutely." She grinned and nudged her brother. "'Open, Septimus,' or something like that, right?"

Eddie wasn't smiling as he shook his head. "What an idiot I was ... a few weeks ago that might have been funny. But now ... now I realize how little I knew about them."

"Well, at least your eyes were opened," Weezy said.

Jack nudged him. "And you still have your skin."

"But little else."

He felt bad for Eddie.

"Let's try the back."

As they walked around the side, Jack peeked through the bars on the first-floor windows and saw lights on. They turned the corner in time to see a man in dirt-smeared work clothes exiting the rear door lugging a jackhammer.

Jackhammer?

"Tearing the place down?" Jack said.

The guy seemed surprised to see them. "I'm pissed enough to do just that. You with AFSO?"

"AFSO?"

"Ancient Fraternal Septimus Order," Eddie muttered.

Oh, right.

"You mean the Order? I've done some work for them."

True enough - he'd been the groundskeeper here.

"You get paid?"

Jack nodded. "On time, to the dime. I get the feeling you've got a different story."

The guy gave Jack a narrow look. "What's it to you?"

"Maybe we can help."

The man shrugged and rested the jackhammer on the ground. "All right. This guy from the Order hired me to put together a crew and excavate a section of the basement."

"Excavate?"

"Yeah. Break through the floor and start digging."

"For China?"

"No, just until we found something."

"Like what?"

"He called it an 'artifact.'"

Weezy stepped closer, eyes narrowed. "What did he say it looked like?"

"Didn't. Said we'd know it when we saw it."

Jack said, "And what were you supposed to do when you found it?"

"Stop digging and call Kris."

Kris? Jack had heard Szeto's bully boys call him Kristof. And in the last hour of his life Szeto himself had mentioned a "special project."

The One comes to me now. In fact, he has engaged me for special project in your hometown. Isn't that interesting?

Yeah. Very interesting. This had to be it. But just to be sure ...

"Black hair, likes leather, perpetual five-o'clock shadow?"

The guy's eyebrows rose. "You got it. You know the SOB? Where's he hiding?"

Another guy in work clothes came out the back door with a number of shovels over his shoulder. He gave them a sullen look, then nudged the other worker.

"You comin', Tommy?"

"Yeah. On my way."

Had to keep this guy talking.

"Kris..." Jack said, looking thoughtful as the second guy walked away. "Not sure at the moment. Haven't seen him since sometime last week. But I might be able to find out. Sounds like you have a problem with him."

"Yeah. Like getting paid. He gave me an advance and I hired the crew and we got started. But the second payment is way late and he ain't returning my calls."

And he never will, Jack thought.

"So you're calling it quits?"

"Till we get paid, yeah. If I don't get paid, I can't pay my crew. And we're not working for free."

Jack said, "I'll check around. If I see him, I'll tell him to give you a call."

The guy picked up his jackhammer. "Yeah, you do that. Meanwhile, I'm somewhere else."

"Well, good luck." Jack stepped toward the door. "I'm gonna take a look at what you've done."

"You can't go in there."

Jack kept moving. "Yeah, I can."

Tommy paused, then shrugged. "Whatever." He headed for his truck.

Weezy and Eddie followed Jack inside, through the mudroom that led to the small kitchen. Tommy had left lights on and, while the place wasn't exactly warm, the heat was on - most likely to keep the pipes from freezing.

The place had changed. The refrigerator looked relatively new but the stove seemed like an antique.

"Remember the tour Drexler gave us way back when?" Jack said.

Eddie shook his head. "Not us. Just you and Weez. The only time I was in here was that night you found Cody."

Jack wondered if Weezy had ever told him the real story of what had happened that night.

"This is as far as you got before you chickened out."

"I was scared of the Order then," he said, his voice low. "Wish I'd stayed scared."

They moved through a short hallway into the conference room where the chairs had been upended and placed on the long table in the center of the room. The sigil painted on the ceiling looked faded. Dying light through the barred windows picked up dust motes in the air.

"Where are the paintings?" Weezy said.

Portraits of past leaders of the Order had lined these walls; now only rectangular smudges remained.

Eddie looked around. "The place looks like it's been abandoned. Or put on the back burner."

Weezy said, "And that's strange, because it's the oldest Lodge in the Americas - or at least the site is."

Jack didn't care if they turned it into a whorehouse. Only the basement interested him.

He opened the cellar door and flipped the light switch. The space below lit up. Weezy stayed close behind him on the way down.

"Who's this Kris and is he looking for what I think he's looking for?"

"Kristof Szeto was one of the Order's enforcers."

"That guy you slammed with the truck door?" Eddie said.

"The same. Also the guy who put out the hits on Weezy last year. We had a run-in on Thursday and he told me he was working on a project in my hometown."

"'Run-in'?" Weezy said.

"Yeah."

"Would that 'run-in' be the reason he's not returning calls?"

"It would."

No reason to get into Drexler's involvement and administration of the coupe de grace.

"Will he ever again return calls?"

"Not without a seance."

"Oh, brother," Eddie muttered.

Weezy sighed. "Before he lost the ability to return calls, did he perhaps say what this 'project' involved?"

"No, but he told me who had put him up to it: the One."

Weezy stumbled against his back. "What?"

"Exactly."

"The One? But what - ?"

"That's all I know."

The basement had changed too. Last they'd seen it, the space had been piled high with antique furniture. Now it lay empty except for scattered chunks of broken concrete and three six-foot piles of freshly dug earth.

Weezy clutched Jack's arm as they approached the dirt.

"Look at this. It can only mean ... Jack, he's got to be looking for the altered sigil of the Seven."

"That's my guess too."

"But why?"

"Well, I'd be surprised if Rasalom didn't know we have the Compendium."

She frowned. "How could he?"

"Between what I heard from Thompson and Szeto and Drexler on Thursday night, they've been making connections between you and Eddie and me and my Tyleski identity. I'm sure Thompson mentioned somewhere along the way that Tyleski stole the Compendium from him and he wants it back. And I'm sure Drexler must have mentioned it to the R-man."

Weezy said, "And if he knows we have the Compendium, and knows the Compendium contains the Other Naming Ceremony..."

"... then the last thing he wants any of us knowing is his Other Name," Jack added, nodding. A thought struck. "Could that be why he put Dawn across the hall from you?"

"To spy on me?"

"Or to steal the book."

Weezy looked offended. "She wouldn't! Tell me true, Jack. Do you really think she'd do something like that?"

"I'm reaching the point where, except for a very select few, I'm wondering if anyone is incapable of anything." He caught her glare, so he added, "Oh, all right. I don't think she'd do that to you."

"Thank you. I like to think I'm a half decent judge of people."

"Well, then, does your judgment tell you why she was moved in there?"

"Eddie gave us a possible explanation."

Yeah, one that had made Jack very uncomfortable.

"I might have another," Eddie said. "Maybe the One had some way of influencing Dawn or tapping into what she knew."

Jack stopped and stared at him. Weezy did the same.

Eddie looked embarrassed. "Hey, just tossing it off. This guy is supposed to be more than human and I - "

"No-no," Jack said. "It's not as crazy as it sounds. She lived in his house for most of her pregnancy. Maybe..."

Weezy said, "Well, if he knew I was studying and cross-referencing the Compendium, and he learned from Drexler that you and I had been in the buried town - "

"Wait!" Eddie said, waving his hand. "What buried town?"

"Long story."

"According to you they're all long stories."

"I'll tell you later."

"Why didn't anyone tell me before?"

Jack and Weezy replied in unison: "Because you were a blabbermouth."

And then they both cracked up.

Eddie wasn't laughing. "Real funny. A riot."

Jack turned and stepped to the edge of the deep hole in the basement floor. When the underground corridor below had flooded back in the eighties, a lot of silt must have washed in from the lake, collapsing side walls, burying everything.

"Ras must have decided the safest course was to dig up the special sigil and either destroy it or find a safer place for it. He assigned Szeto the job, Szeto hired Tommy and his crew, but Szeto became ... incapacitated and couldn't follow through on paying the workers. So there's good news and bad news."

Weezy and Eddie joined him at the edge.

"What's the good news?" Weezy said.

"They didn't find it."

Eddie said, "I think I can guess the bad news."

"Right. We get some shovels and replace Tommy and company."