Tucked next to the side of the church was a cemetery. Dan saw a skull and bones, like a Jolly Roger, at the entrance.
A real skull. With real bones.
“Cool,” he breathed. “It’s like the Church of Pirates.”
They paid their money and walked in. There were a few others in the chapel, walking back and forth, studying the decorative garlands, the splendid white chandelier, and the sculptures against the walls.
It was all fairly magnificent – and then you noticed what everything was made of.
“It’s all bones,” Dan said in awe. “Human bones! Is this the coolest thing in the world, or the creepiest? Or both?” He glanced over at a skull sitting on a pile of finger bones. “Dude? Can you lend me a hand?”
The skull stared back, its lower jaw missing. “Cat got your tongue?” Dan asked.
Amy grinned. She was always glad to see the goofball in Dan reappear. She consulted the pamphlet. “There are the bones of at least forty thousand people here. Lots of them died of the plague. When they built the church above us, they turned this chapel into an ossuary – a place for bones. But there were so many that in 1870 they finally asked this guy to … uh, arrange them. So he did this.”
“What a cool ye olde spookmaster dude,” Dan approved.
They walked around in awe. What Amy had thought were carved stone garlands hanging from the balconies above were arm and leg bones. A skull stared at them blankly, a leg bone clamped between its jaws.
“The chandelier is made up of every human bone,” Amy whispered to Dan as they looked above their heads.
Despite the creep factor, there was something so beautiful about this place, Amy thought. The fluttery edges of the hip bones looked like enormous flowers. The lineup of finger bones was a delicate necklace. A carved, painted cherub blew into a golden horn while casually balancing half a skull on its knee.
Dan wandered over to an alcove. Behind a wire screen was a mound of bones stacked in perfect rows. Alternating rows of skulls sat on the arranged bones. Their hollow eyes stared out. Some almost seemed to have expressions. One leaned over, resting on the next one, and Amy found herself drawn into those black, black eyes.
Somehow the creepy feeling left her. Death surrounded her, but here she and Dan were standing, living and breathing, and all these bones were just evidence of many lives lived before hers.
Dan gripped the wire grating. He moved closer to the skulls, staring, staring. His lighthearted mood was suddenly gone. Amy felt a flutter of alarm. What was he seeing?
“We’re breathing in death,” he murmured. “Every day.” He half turned to Amy. “Everybody dies. Why do we run away so hard and so fast, when it’s always there?”
“We run away hard and fast because we don’t want to die,” Amy said.
Dan seemed mesmerized by the black holes in the skull. Amy was afraid of his expression.
Dan shook his head. “It all seems so … futile.”
“Futile?” Amy had never heard Dan use that word before. “You mean, pointless?”
“Yeah. I know the meaning of the word, Amy. I’m not quite as dumb as everybody thinks I am. I know, I’ve got the photographic memory, but you’ve got the brains, right?”
Dan’s tone was sarcastic. Not teasing, but flat and almost mean.
“Not right,” Amy said, shocked. Was that what Dan really thought? “Nobody thinks that.”
Dan turned his back on her to gaze at the bones. “Futile. Stupid and pointless.”
Amy took a breath. She felt the hurtful sting of Dan’s tone, but she had no urge to stamp off. There was something heading for Dan, something that cast a huge shadow, and her first instinct was to grab his arm and pull him away from the darkness she saw. But that would just make the darkness grow.
“It doesn’t seem that way to me,” she said. She kept her voice quiet. “It seems to me that we’re doing what all these people did. Just … trying to live in the best way we can. Protecting the people we love. We give it everything we have. Just like these people probably did.”
Dan didn’t say anything. It was like he hadn’t even heard her.
“And I don’t think you’re stupid,” she added fiercely.
She felt her cell phone buzz in her pocket. She checked the ID. Sinead.
“Are you in?” Sinead asked.
“We’re in. Nothing to see. Nothing but old bones.”
“Listen, I have another lead. We’re certain now that the text that Cheyenne got was not from a mobile device.”
“Meaning it was from a computer? In the church?”
“Exactly. And we figured out the altitude of the computer. It’s about six feet down from where you’re standing.”
Amy looked around. The church and chapel were up a slight rise and looked down on the cemetery. She walked a few feet away so that no one could overhear.
“So there must be a room below us,” she whispered.
“Exactly. Look around. And keep the line open, okay?”
“Okay, we’re moving.” Amy slipped on her earpiece and motioned to Dan. She saw with relief that he seemed to have shaken off his mood.
They walked around the perimeter of the church, under the fantastic ropes of bones. They cruised down the opposite side. A door had a sign in Czech, and they hesitated.
“It could say welcome, or it could say keep out,” Amy said.
“Maybe we should do a spell-Czech,” Dan said, opening the door.
The door led to a narrow flight of stairs made of large pieces of stone. They were worn in the middle from the thousands of feet that had traveled down and up over the centuries. Dan closed the door behind them, and immediately they were plunged into darkness. Amy got out her penlight and shined it on the stairs. They crept down. The place smelled ancient and damp. The roof was low above their heads. It dripped.
When they reached the bottom, she swung the penlight along a narrow passageway. Even here, bones hung in garlands and were arranged in displays. Skulls lined a shelf that ran the length of the passage.
“I can’t see anything on the video feed,” Sinead said. “What is it?”
“It must be the passage to the cemetery,” Amy said. “I can’t imagine keeping a computer down here.”
“Amy? Look at this.” Dan stood in front of a metal grate. Behind it was a small room. He pushed open the grate and walked in. It was like a mini-amphitheater, only with dead people as patrons. Skulls were arranged in piles around the room, stacked atop leg bones and hip bones. Flat, narrow ledges ran around the room, serving as seats. There was a clear, flat, raised space along the far wall. Over it was an arrangement of bones in the shape of a giant letter.
“Maybe the original guy who did the chapel – maybe he was a Vesper,” Amy whispered. Somehow, whispers seemed appropriate here.
Dan moved around the space. “Look at this candle.” He held out a candle with wax dripped down into the holder. “It’s been used recently – there’s no grime or dust in the wax.”
“But there’s no computer here,” Amy said. “Please don’t tell me we have to dig through the bones.”