identify-all stacked to a height of about six feet. The bare bulb
directly over the trap was not lit, and the only light came from off to
the left, in the southeast corner, toward the front of the house.
I eased into the vast attic in a crouch, though I could have stood
erect. The steeply pitched Norman roof provided plenty of clearance
between my head and the rafters. Although I wasn’t concerned about
walking face-first into a roof beam, I still believed there was a risk
of being clubbed on the skull or shot between the eyes or stabbed in
the heart by a crazed cleric, and I was intent on keeping as low a
profile as possible. If I could have slithered on my belly like a
snake, I wouldn’t have been all the way up in a crouch.
The humid air smelled like time itself distilled and bottled: dust, the
staleness of old cardboard, a lingering woody fragrance from the
rough-sawn rafters, mildew spooring, and the faint stink of some small
dead creature, perhaps a bird or mouse, festering in a lightless
corner.
To the left of the trapdoor were two entrances into the maze, one
approximately five feet wide, and the other no wider than three feet.
Assuming that the roomier passage provided the most direct route across
the cluttered attic and, therefore, was the one that the priest
regularly used to go to and from his captive-if indeed there was a
captive-I slipped quietly into the narrower aisle. I preferred to take
Father Tom by surprise rather than encounter him accidentally at some
turning in this labyrinth.
To both sides of me were boxes, some tied with twine, others festooned
with peeling lengths of shipping tape that brushed like insectile
feelers against my face. I moved slowly, feeling my way with one hand,
because the shadows were confounding, and I dared not bump into
anything and set off a clatter.
I reached a T intersection but didn’t immediately step into it. I
stood at the brink, listening for a moment, holding my breath, but
heard nothing.
Cautiously I leaned out of the first passageway, looking right and left
along this new corridor in the maze, which was also only three feet
wide. To the left, the lamplight in the southeast corner was slightly
brighter than before. To the right lay deep sable gloom that wouldn’t
yield its secrets even to my night-loving eyes, and I had the
impression that a hostile inhabitant of this darkness was within arm’s
length, watching and set to spring.
Assuring myself that all trolls lived under bridges, that wicked gnomes
lived in caves, that gremlins established housekeeping only in
machinery, and that goblins-being demons-wouldn’t dare to take up
residence in a rectory, I stepped into the new passageway and turned
left, putting my back to the impenetrable dark.
At once a squeal arose, so chilling that I swung around and thrust the
pistol toward the blackness, certain that trolls, wicked gnomes,
gremlins, goblins, ghosts, zombies, and several psychotic mutant altar
boys were descending on me. Fortunately I didn’t squeeze the trigger,
because this transient madness passed, and I realized that the cry had
arisen from the same direction as before: from the lighted area in the
southeast corner.
This third wail, which had covered the noise that I’d made when turning
to confront the imaginary horde, was from the same source as the first
two, but here in the attic, it sounded different from how it had
sounded when I’d been down in the second-floor hallway. For one thing,
it didn’t seem as much like the voice of a suffering child as it had
earlier. More disconcerting: The weirdness factor was a lot higher,
way off the top of the chart, as if several bars of theremin music had
issued from a human throat.
I considered retracing my path to the ladder, but I was in too deep to
turn back now. There was still a chance, however slim, that I was
hearing a child in jeopardy.
Besides, if I retreated, my dog would know that I had haired out. He
was one of my three closest friends in a world where only friends and