Bones of Angels (2 page)

The Home of Mary Whittington

Long Island, New York, 1898

At first, Mary Highstreet Whittington was quite certain she was going mad. She felt this distressing fact confirmed whenever she would see military men standing in the corner of the downstairs parlor of her Victorian home on Long Island.

The Confederate soldier would leer at her as he leaned on his long, slender smoothbore musket. His body was somewhat transparent, but his disdain for the thirty-two-year-old mistress of the home was nevertheless evident.

The British colonel was a bit more formal — stiff upper lip and erect posture speaking of discipline and duty — also visited Mary regularly. A rose-shaped bloodstain blossomed on his khaki uniform, right above his left breast.

Other soldiers frequently called on the attractive young woman: Serbian, Russian, Italian, and many she couldn’t identify. They were all dressed in bloody, tattered uniforms. Their open wounds were appalling to behold. Some soldiers were missing limbs.

Mary would run to her bedroom and hide under the bedspread, trembling.

Her nightmares soon became regular. She dreamt she was standing on dusty battlefields, the smell of leather, steel, and gunpowder heavy in the smoky, acrid air. Canons fired, and horse-mounted cavalrymen rode past her with bloodcurdling cries. Infantrymen, dead and wounded, lay everywhere on the ground about her, vacant looks in their eyes.

Fields of madness. Complete and utter madness.

To soothe her jangled nerves, the family physician prescribed various tonics and elixirs, but to no effect. Since Mary’s parents had died from a fever while taking the Grand Tour in Europe, the doctor confided to her younger sister that he feared Mary might need to be institutionalized. She appeared to be suffering from paranoid delusions.

As time progressed, Mary felt certain that the disturbing visitations were real. Since the early 1800s, her Whittington ancestors had known that warfare was a constant in human history. As sage entrepreneurs, they had also known how to capitalize on this grim fact of human nature. Throughout the decades of the nineteenth century, they had done business with men such as Benjamin Henry, Lewis Jennings, Horace Smith, Daniel Wesson, Richard Gatling, Walter Hunt, William Mason, and many other inventors and dealers of firearms. Her family had quite literally fueled dozens of wars across Europe and America. Bloodshed was their stock-in-trade.

The Whittingtons amassed an incredible fortune, and Mary came to know in her soul the ugly truth: their fantastic wealth was little more than blood money.

For unimaginable carnage, she was now being punished by the spirits of the dead.

She wandered aimlessly through her two-story, forty-room home, but her nervous disposition was not allayed by its opulence and splendor. She mumbled to herself as she walked down hallways: “The Napoleonic Wars. The Bosnian Uprising. The Russo-Persian War. The Italian Wars of Independence. The American Civil War. Wars . . . and rumors of wars.”

On dozens of walls were displayed the instruments of battle that had shed the blood of millions, mostly young men who had never really tasted adult life: the Volcanic Pistol, the Winchester Repeating Rifle, The Smith & Wesson Revolver, the Volition Repeating Rifle, the Colt .45, and muskets and blunderbusses of every make and model.

At times, Mary held her head between her hands and shrieked.

The Tearoom of Madame Zelovich

Manhattan, New York, 1899

The spiritualist, seated at a small round table with a checkered tablecloth, stared into the forlorn eyes of Mary Whittington. Her long black hair fell in ringlets over her shoulders. Her deep-set, dark brown eyes were intense and seemed to see far beyond Mary’s physical features. Incense burned on a table situated next to a red bead curtain admitting to Zelovich’s bedroom in the back of the humble tearoom that bordered a Chinese laundry.

Madame Zelovich held both of Mary’s frail, white hands in her own and closed her eyes. She was silent for several minutes. Then she spoke.

“My dear Mary,” she said, opening eyes rimmed with black mascara, “you are most definitely not mad. The spirits you see are quite real.”

Mary sobbed quietly, copious tears running down her high cheeks. “But what can I do?” she asked. “I’m tormented. I would rather die.”

“You are not to blame for the sins of your family,” proclaimed the spiritualist.

“But the ghosts won’t leave me alone. What can I do?”

Zelovich sighed heavily, causing large breasts to rise beneath her white peasant frock. “A ghost is a being of energy that can move among the three-dimensional forms of our world. These soldiers who visit you are not at peace.”  She paused. “Some spirits are tied to various places. Others are tied to people. These men — they are angry at your family. It is written that the sins of the fathers are visited upon their children — unfairly, of course — but you can outwit these spirits.”

Confused, Mary lifted her head and wiped away her tears with a lace handkerchief. “How?”

“You must confuse them. They are easily disoriented since they spend much time in the shadowy realm between worlds. Their vision is imperfect, as is their understanding.”

“Confuse them?”

“Yes. You must move about constantly. Make it hard for them to find you. Or . . . ”  She paused again. “Or you can make them move about. Spirits have a vague sense of right and left, up and down. They are easily misdirected.”

A thin smile crossed Mary’s gentle features. She knew exactly what she would do.

Whittington Manor

Long Island, New York, 1903

Begun in 1901, construction of the new 233-room, four-story mansion on Long Island never ceased. Day and night, carpenters and contractors labored to build the sprawling complex that would forever be known as Whittington Manor.

The carpenters and masons, not to mention the architect himself, were themselves confused at the work they had been commissioned to create. Winding staircases led to plaster walls with no openings. Several dozen doors throughout the manor opened onto brick walls. Many doors were situated in the outer walls of the structure and opened onto the expansive gardens below — opened onto thin air!

Hallways off the main corridors resembled a maze more than a recognizable floor plan. They wound through the spacious manor, turning at odd, oblique angles. Many either dead-ended or turned back upon themselves and led right back to their starting points.

Some rooms and basements were only accessible through revolving panels and camouflaged doors.

The manor was a monument to complexity, a shrine intended to confuse and misdirect the countless spirits who wished to seek out the heir to the bloody Whittington fortune.

Spacious galleries were located throughout the manor. These were filled with priceless antiques and artifacts, as well as religious art and sculpture from the Old Masters of Europe: the paintings of Giotto, Fra Lippo Lippi, Bruegel, Raphael; the sculpture of Donatello and Brunelleshi. In every wing, depictions of Christ, the Blessed Virgin, saints, and angels stared from gilded frames or stood on marble or bronze pedestals.

In the many libraries of the manor were rare Bibles, sacred texts, and illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages. It wouldn’t hurt, reasoned Mary, to have religious icons and artifacts to intimidate the restless spirits that sought her presence.

In time, Mary was no longer bothered by apparitions — just an occasional nightmare or strange sound in the home. The architect assured her that with such unorthodox blueprints being executed, the house could be expected to settle and creak more than usual.

Mary Whittington was content. Ongoing construction included lush foliage and landscaping around the manor, with winding gardens, statues, fountains, tall hedges, raised flower beds, and wooden and iron trellises laced with English Ivy.

Smaller buildings extended from the rear of the main house at right angles. With guest quarters, verandas, storage rooms, and areas with no apparent use, these additions were constructed in the Gothic style, contrasting with the manor’s Victorian architecture. Greenhouses could be seen at the far end of the long, brick-paved walkways that guided Mary and an occasional relative on strolls through the manicured grounds.

The sumptuous, multi-tiered gardens, cared for by a veritable army of workmen, covered many acres of beautiful land. Mary never got lost in the complex landscaping. Sometimes, however, her visitors did.

Construction on the manor and its gardens was never-ending. The spirits had to be kept guessing. Most importantly, no image or replica of a gun was allowed in the manor, not even a famous painting depicting some heroic battle.

If the souls of deceased soldiers were still lurking on Whittington property, they no longer bothered Mary.   

St. John’s Cathedral Campus

Manhattan, New York

Archbishop Joseph Connolly, Anglican high priest of the Church of England, was sorely in need of a single malt scotch. The headache that pounded against his temples had become an all-too-often occurrence.  

The waxen-skinned priest reflected on the events of the day as he walked past St. John’s Cathedral towards a collection of buildings clustered nearby. His joints ached with the recent change in the weather. The Archbishop’s residence beckoned with the promise of a glass, maybe two, of twenty-five-year-old Macallan scotch.

It was his only vice.

He loved the daily ritual of it. The sound of a single ice cube dropped into his favorite crystal snifter. The heavy aroma of earth and peat. The tingling warmth that radiated into the limbs of his aging body.

When he finally reached the front door of the residence, Connolly had almost succeeded in convincing himself that tomorrow would be a better day.

Quietly whistling a fugue from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Ave Maria to calm his frayed nerves, he opened the door and stepped into the foyer. A pantheon of saints eyed him warily from within gilded frames.

Abruptly, his whistling ceased.

A sound emanated from somewhere above him.

“Hello?” he called out, advancing two steps up the staircase. His knees ached badly.

The greeting went unanswered.

Connolly crept up the staircase. He reached the second floor landing as the grandfather clock on the first floor struck eight o’clock.

He sat down behind the desk in his study and poured a glass of the Macallan scotch, a gift from an old friend. It warmed his throat as he swallowed. A folio of brittle parchment occupied the center of his desk. With arthritic fingers, Connolly delicately turned a page and began to read. His lips silently mouthed the words.

Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.

A faint noise broke his concentration. He rose and stepped into the hallway. It was dimly lit and empty. At the end of the corridor, a large window overlooked the gardens below. Outside, a Yashino cherry tree stood in dark silhouette. A wayward branch reached out from the tree like a gnarled finger. It scratched on the windowpane, stirred by the night breeze.

“Ah,” he said to himself. “The vague imaginings of an old man.” 

The lines of his long, angular face deepened as he smiled to himself. Wisps of thin gray hair on top of his head gave him the appearance of a battered scarecrow.

He retraced his steps down the hall. It was filled with medieval religious art. A boyish angel smiled at him from a Caravaggio painting, Amor Victorious.  

Seated again at his desk, he continued reading from the folio.

And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, "Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?" 

He once again heard the sound of the tree, plaintively scratching the windowpane, as if it were seeking admittance.

Connolly simply smiled. He supposed he was a silly old man afraid of shadows.

But Connolly also knew that even silly old men, if they still had their wits about them, contained a lifetime of wisdom in the aging synapses of their brains.

And Connolly was most definitely still in possession of his wits. Indeed, he intended to beat his diagnosis of liver cancer. He had been through a grueling day of chemotherapy, but he hadn’t lost hope.

Gazing at the wall across the study, his kindly eyes focused on an old painting — an El Greco reproduction — of Christ on the cross. The grossly elongated figure of Christ reminded Connolly of his own body. The Archbishop’s frame was thin and gaunt, crucified by cancer and what seemed like barbaric, medieval treatments — toxic chemicals flowing through his bloodstream to kill the tumor.

But God would protect him, as would His angels. Connolly quietly recited by heart the last few lines of Psalm 103:  “Bless Yahweh, all his angels, heroes mighty to enforce his word, attentive to his word of command.”

Bronze statues stood in two corners of the study opposite the desk: Saints Michael and Gabriel.

Archangels.

“Servants to enforce his will,” Connolly said softly.

Connolly took another sip of scotch. Yes, all would be well.

Whittington Manor

Long Island, New York, 2011

Charles Whittington opened the iron doors of the sensory deprivation chamber he kept in one of the many labs he had outfitted in the basements and subbasements of the manor he had inherited from his great grandmother, Mary.

He had been lying peacefully in the warm saline and water solution for almost two hours. The hallucinations had finally subsided, and he realized that he was hungry and thirsty. Totally nude, he climbed out of the chamber, toweled off, and put on a white terrycloth robe. He then went to the kitchenette at the end of the basement corridor.

Reaching for various ingredients, he poured orange juice, gin, vitamin C, ginseng, and a raw egg into a blender and pushed frappe.

“Done,” he said, pouring the mixture into a tall glass. “Ambrosia fit for Dionysus.”

He drank the concoction in two swift gulps and reached into the cabinet over the sink.

Whittington manor was the perfect place to conduct his experiments. He had a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton, but he had shunned teaching altogether. Even now, at sixty-four, he reveled in performing his own research. He was worth . . . well, it was quite a lot of money, though he never really calculated his assets. That sort of mundane task was for accountants and pencil-pushers.

He had inherited the Whittington fortune, including the family’s manor, from his father, who had himself inherited it many years earlier from his mother, the eccentric Mary Highstreet Whittington. The manor, though an architectural puzzle in the extreme, suited Charles’ personality and pursuits perfectly. He was absorbed in many areas of research, both scientific and paranormal in nature: lucid dreams, auras, out-of-body experiences, telekinesis, remote viewing, and a host of experiments related to quantum theory. He loved the seclusion afforded by the rambling Victorian mansion.

He was especially interested in wave-particle duality, an outgrowth of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which stated that reality depended on the mindset of the observer. Light was a particle, light was energy. One simply couldn’t pin down the exact nature of reality.

Fortified from what he called his Ginseng Sling, Charles walked gingerly up a spiral staircase to the second floor. He entered the third door in a row of six. Three of the doors opened onto brick walls. Inside was a small chapel that his great grandmother had built, yet another measure to help protect herself from ghosts. Charles himself had never seen any of these military specters — not that he didn’t believe in their existence. Quite to the contrary.

Charles sat quietly, looking at the altar and the crucifix hanging above it. He was not a member of any organized religion, although he harbored very firm spiritual beliefs. He liked to come to the chapel to let his mind wander.

Today, he thought of his grandson, David Denton. Some called him Quiz.

“Smart as a whip, that boy,” Charles said to himself. “And a very special young man. Oh yes, very special indeed.”

On many occasions, he had heard Quiz speaking to himself, although Charles suspected that David was, in reality, speaking to someone else. Charles knew all too well what that was like.

Charles rose, mumbling Hamlet’s famous line: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Charles climbed to the third floor, intending to take a power nap in his bedroom. Like Thomas Edison, he often lay down for an hour or two, awaking refreshed, ready to resume his esoteric work.

On the third floor, he passed a corridor that admitted to no room and led absolutely nowhere. A voice at the end of the corridor summoned him.

Charles paused, turned, and walked down the dark hallway. There was no one in the hall, but he was nevertheless attentive as the voice spoke to him.

“Goodness me,” he said in response. “That could be very troublesome. Very troublesome indeed. I will try my best. I give you my word.”

Within ten minutes, Charles was fast asleep in the large four-poster bed in his room.