Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (101 page)

The shelf was full of books on the occult, both titles she recognized and some far more obscure that appeared ancient, with cracked leather bindings. Between the books were a variety of macabre stone figures—gargoyles, goblins, harpies, bird heads with long knife-blade beaks, gorgons and some particularly hideous sheela-na-gigs—scarred faces leering out from amidst the dark bindings and mildewed pages.

“It’s here.” Pat cocked his head toward the wall, listening for the telltale click. He pressed here and there against the wood, pulling out various books, and the macabre ornaments.

It was the tiny gargoyle that glared out from the middle shelf, its eyes two rubies that glowed like spots of blood in the dim. Pat pressed against the monstrous wee face and there was an audible click and the shelf came away from the wall.

He took a deep breath. “Right then, let’s see what we have here.”

He stepped through the bookshelf opening and disappeared. A cold hand gripped her nerve endings, and she knew whatever was behind that wall was neither benign nor without ghosts.

She gritted her teeth and followed Pat through the wall.

It was a small, stone-lined chamber, damp and smelling of things that only grew in the dark. It was roughly twelve feet long and five feet wide.

She squinted against the dust, suppressing the urge to sneeze. The torch lit up the entire small, dungeon-like room, the dust so thick in the air that it seemed as if the entire space was filled with a brilliant golden snowfall. A series of cubbyholes were built into the wall, the heavy oak shelving rising all the way to the ceiling. Most of the cubbyholes held long, flat iron lockboxes, though some higher up had wooden boxes, roughly the shape and size of the boxes florists used to send long-stemmed roses. On the end of each box was a small plate engraved with fine print. She peered close, shining her torch on one box in particular.

‘Michael’
it read. She flicked the torch over to the next box,
‘Sean’.
The cold hand moved higher up her spine, and the chill spread into her very blood.

Pat slid one of the boxes off the shelf and noted that despite the general dustiness of the room the boxes were clean, as though they were polished on a regular basis.

He laid the box on the floor, clicking his own torch off.

“Shine yer light here,” he said, and opened the box. The lid slid back with a well-oiled silence.

“Oh dear Jaysus,” Pat breathed out. Pamela put a gloved hand to her mouth. The light picked out the delicate fibula, and she had one single second to think he must have been a long-legged boy this Sean, before the full and horrifying truth hit her.

Pat reached up and took box after box off the shelves, his silence grim. Lid after lid, opening in noiseless terror, held the same story. Small skeletons, all terribly clean and free of the soft flesh that had once clung to them. The name on every box that of a boy—boys that had been abandoned by society, and seemingly by God as well. Boys that no one would notice if they simply disappeared off the face of the planet one day. Boys like Lawrence.

Pamela pushed herself back out of the closet, the urge to scream beating like a frantic bird in her chest. She thought she was going to throw up if she didn’t get out of the house immediately.

She crawled to a small hassock, sweat starting to bead under her hair and slick her palms. From inside the stone room she heard the scrape of each box coming down until finally a long and dread silence filled the very motes of the air, and Pamela felt as though her breath was tainted with the blood this house contained.

What seemed a very long time later, Pat emerged with one of the white wooden boxes in his hands. His face was expressionless, his movements slightly jerky, the body’s reaction to shock. Pamela looked at him in the dim and dusty torchlight, dreading the words she knew must surely come.

“I think I know what happened to Robin’s sister,” he said in a voice drained of all emotion.

In reflex she crossed herself.

“Dear God, what do we do now?”

PAMELA WAS RELIEVED TO SEE that the house was still dark, other than the small light over the kitchen sink she had left burning. She crept gratefully through the back door, still shaking with nerves and cold.

She locked the door firmly behind her, standing silent for a moment to listen to the small house noises. The refrigerator hummed happily to itself, and the soft pad of Finbar’s feet sounded at the kitchen entryway. The dog blinked sleepily at her, loping across the expanse of shining floor for a pat.

She sighed with relief; her absence seemed to have gone unnoticed.

She put the kettle on before changing out of her damp clothes into her warmest pyjamas—an outfit that consisted of an old thermal undershirt of Casey’s, red flannel bottoms and an ancient rugby jersey that half swallowed her. She checked on Casey and found him still sleeping, breath wheezing in and out of his mouth. His forehead was clammy and considerably cooler than it had been earlier in the evening.

Downstairs she replenished the fire in the sitting room, building it from slumbering coals to a high, hot blaze that began to thaw her face and fingers. With great effort, she pulled the vast Victorian armchair close to the fire and then curled up in it with a cup of hot, sugary tea. The Irish cure for shock and pretty much every other ailment known to mankind.

She took a large mouthful of tea, holding it against her tongue for a second before swallowing, allowing the delicate scent to warm her nose. Finbar came and settled himself by the chair with a sleepy
wumpf
. She took a deep breath and felt some of the horrible tension of the evening begin to give way to shaky gratitude that she was no longer inside the walls of that horrible house.

“Where have ye been?” asked an accusatory voice that seemed to issue forth from the tall cabinet behind her.

She started, slopping tea onto the worn jumper. “Jesus, Lawrence,” she said sharply, “you scared me.”

Lawrence, wrapped in her Star of David quilt, came around the chair and plunked himself onto the floor beside the fire. His eyes were still glassy with fever, though they looked more accusatory at present than anything else.

“When did you wake up?” she asked, deciding it was of little use to dodge the child’s question.

“Just as ye were leavin’.” He coughed, and she winced at the heavy sound of his fluid-filled lungs. “Saw ye go up the drive an’ get in a car. Looked a bit like a blue Cortina.” Here he added a significant sniff.

“Did Casey wake up at all?” she asked, feeling slightly sick. She’d no wish to explain her way out of this particular corner; Casey wouldn’t take kindly to the reasons nor the outcome of this night.

“Just the once, but I told him ye’d stepped out for a walk an’ he went right back to bed.”

“Thank you for that,” she said, wondering why he’d kept it secret while being completely grateful that he had.

“Didn’t want to upset him when I’d no idea where ye’d gone,” he said, in response to her unspoken question. “Where did ye go?” He tried to glare accusingly, an effort somewhat marred by another fit of coughing.

“Before I answer any questions,” she said sternly, “I’m going to get you a hot drink and tuck you up in bed.”

“I’m fine here by the fire,” he said weakly. “Ye’ll not make me drink the garlic stuff again, will ye?”

“No, you can have a cup of regular tea.”

This statement was greeted with a small upturn of his lips. “With sugar an’ cream?”

“Yes. But only if you get in bed first.”

She helped him back to his bedroom, his skin hot to the touch, body shaking with fever chill.

“Your shirt is soaked,” she said. “Take it off, I’ll get you a dry one. You can’t go back to bed that way.”

He clutched his shirt to his thin chest, a look of panic passing over his face. “I’ll change when ye go to get my tea.”

She turned from the bureau, handing him fresh pyjamas. “Alright, Mr. Modesty. I’ll be back in a minute.”

She dashed up the stairs to get a pair of Casey’s heavy wool socks. It was part of an old remedy that her father had used on her when she’d had a particularly bad cold. The other part required raw garlic being rubbed on the soles of the afflicted’s feet.

She retrieved the socks, Casey’s snores echoing around the room like the sound of a congested swarm of bees. She dashed back downstairs to the kitchen for some garlic. Garlic, socks and the jar of eucalyptus oil in hand, she nudged Lawrence’s door open with one hip.

She froze, riveted to the spot by shock.

The boy’s back was to her. The bedside lamp was on and Lawrence stood in the pool of light, struggling his way into the fresh pyjamas. Despite regular and copious feeding, he was still so thin that the knobs of his spine stood out sharply against his fair skin. Pyjama bottoms clung precariously to his thin hips, riding low enough to expose the top of one milky buttock. It was the sight of this that had arrested her, for there were deep weals in the fair skin, the scarring thick and shiny as twisted wire.

She stepped back, taking care to be silent. How on earth had the boy come by such injuries? She was no fool, and realized that the life he’d led exposed him to a variety of perversions, things that she’d no wish to even know about. What had struck the chill back into her marrow though was that a few of the scars looked to be quite recent. They still had the pink, puckered look of recently healed flesh.

She coughed quietly and called out, “Are you decent?”

“Aye,” came the muffled reply.

She stepped into the room to find him snuggled under the quilts, face red with exertion. His eyebrows went up at the sight of the garlic.

“Ye promised me real tea,” he said in an accusing tone.

“And you’ll get it, once I’ve got you settled here. Now give me a foot.”

One pale foot poked out reluctantly from under the pile of blankets. She rubbed the split clove in measured strokes against the oval heel and elegant arch. Though narrow, his feet were very long, giving him the gait of an awkward puppy at times.

“Ye’ll not tell him, will ye?”

She looked up, startled. “Tell who, what?”

“Tell Casey about the scars ye saw on me.”

She met his eyes, and knew the glassy sheen wasn’t all fever.

“I know ye saw, I heard ye come in an’ go back out.”

“Are you going to tell me how you got them?”

He looked down at the quilt where one long-fingered hand was splayed against a crimson star, the points neatly dividing between his bones. “Promise me ye won’t tell him,” he repeated stubbornly.

She sighed. “You know I can’t make a promise like that.”

“Then I can’t promise not to tell him ye snuck off with Pat tonight. I know the two of ye are up to somethin’ yer keepin’ from him. An’ if yer keepin’ it from him, it must be somethin’ that would make him fearful mad if he were to find out.”

“You rotten little blackmailer,” she said indignantly. She pulled the sock on over his pungent foot and tucked it back under the blanket.

“Do we have a deal then? I keep yer secret, if you keep mine.”

She started to shake her head, but a look of pure desperation in the blue eyes stopped her.

“I’ll tell ye how I got the marks if ye don’t tell him. Otherwise I’ll not say a word.” The sharp chin, still with the baby-fine skin of a pre-adolescent, jutted out at her defiantly.

“Alright,” she said, feeling that she was making a devil’s bargain out of which no good could come.

“Well, ye’ve heard me speak of Morris Jones before?”

She nodded, for although Lawrence hadn’t spoken directly to her about the man, Casey had filled her in well enough that the mere name stirred a black rage in her.

Lawrence took a shaky breath. “He’s usually not picky about who he’s beddin’ long as they’re male an’ young, but for some reason he seems to like me especially, if ye can call it that.”

She felt sick at the thought of exactly what ‘like me especially’ meant in this context.

“Go on,” she said, feeling incapable of stringing more than the two words together.

“An’ he can only really get excited when he’s hurting me. I’m very fair-skinned, ye see, an’ so the marks are that much worse. An’ I seem to bleed a good bit when cut. The less I like it, the more excited he gets. If—if I scream or beg for mercy, he really loves it.”

The boy’s long throat swallowed over some invisible obstruction, and she knew for the second time in her life that she was capable of murder.

“Why, Lawrence? What’s he got over you, that he can force you to do this?”

He hung his head, the crystalline eyes gone a deep blue, like a lake with a storm building below its surface. “He said he’d hurt the both of yez, if I don’t do as he wants. He knew things, too,” he went on, words coming faster and faster, spilling one on top of the other as though he were afraid that if he stopped he’d never be able to finish what he had to say. “Knows where ye work an’ the hours ye keep, knows all about Casey an’ the center. An’ he even talked about Jamie an’ how money didn’t make a man impervious to bullets.”

“You’re not supposed to protect us, Lawrence; we’re supposed to protect you. You have to trust that we can do that for you. Casey and I have lived with threat before, and we’re still around to tell the tale. So has Jamie, come to that.”