“Lemon sap, God,” he blasphemed with a sneer of derision. “That’s what the old folks call it, sure. ”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t care what you kids call it, I know what it is when I see it—and I’ve seen it do worse to people than poison them. If my father were still alive he’d…” She didn’t know how to finish. “He would’ve never stood for it,” she said weakly.
“Maynard’s dead, ma’am. And maybe he wouldn’t have liked to know it, I couldn’t say, but he’s the closest thing to a patron saint that some of us have got. ”
“It would have driven him mad,” she speculated curtly.
It was Rector’s turn to ask, “Why?”
“Because he believed in the law,” she said.
“Is that all you got? He was your own dad, and that’s all you know about him?”
She told him, “Shut your mouth, before I smack it. ”
“But he was fair. Don’t you get it? The boys and girls on the street who sell the septic sacks and run ’em, and the thieves, the whores, and the broke and the busted—all of ’em down here who know the hard way how life ain’t fair… they all believe in Maynard because he was. ”
Briar interrogated Rector on the finer points of Zeke’s escape. By the time a larger priest and a greater number of nuns showed up to bully Briar out of the stairwell, she’d learned plenty—none of it reassuring, and all of it leading to one terrifying fact.
Her son had gone inside the walled-up city.
Five
Ezekiel Wilkes shivered at the entrance to the old water runoff system. He stared into the hole as if it might eat him, or as if he wanted it to—because he was having second thoughts about this whole thing. But his third thoughts were insistent. He’d come this far. He only had a few yards to go, through a large tunnel and into a city that had been functionally dead since before he was born.
The lantern in his hand quivered with the chilled shakes of his elbow. In his pocket, a folded, wrinkled map was wadded into a nub. He only carried it as a matter of formality. He knew it by heart.
But there was one thing he didn’t know, and it bothered him greatly.
He didn’t know where his parents had once lived. Not exactly.
His mother had never mentioned an address, but he was sure they’d lived up on Denny Hill, which gave him a place to start looking. The hill itself wasn’t so big, and he knew roughly what the house looked like. At bedtime when he was younger, Zeke’s mother had described it to him as if it’d been a castle. If it still stood, it was lavender and cream, with two full stories and a turret. It had a porch that wrapped around the front of the house; and on that porch was a rocking chair painted to look like it was made of wood.
It was actually made of metal, and fitted with a mechanism that connected to the floor. When a crank was wound, the chair would rock itself for the benefit of anyone who was sitting in it at the time.
Zeke found it almost infuriating how little he knew about the man who’d made it work. But he thought he knew where to look for answers. All he had to do was hike through the tunnel and head up the hill to his immediate left, which ought to be Denny Hill.
He wished he had somebody to ask, but there wasn’t anybody.
There wasn’t anything, except a wafting stink from the heavy fumes of a mysterious gas that still leaked out from the earth inside the wall.
Now was as good a time as any to put on his mask.
He took a deep breath before sliding the harness over his face and securing it. When he exhaled, the interior fogged for a second and then cleared.
The tunnel looked even more distant and unearthly when he viewed it through the mask’s visor. It appeared elongated and strange, and the darkness seemed to wobble and twist when he turned his head. The straps of the mask rubbed itchily where they lay over and under his ears. He slipped a finger up underneath the leather and ran it back and forth.
He checked his lantern for the dozenth time and yes, it was full of oil. He checked his bag and yes, it had all the supplies he’d been able to swipe. He was as ready as he was ever going to be, which was only just ready enough.
Zeke turned up the lantern’s wick to give himself as much light as possible.
He crossed the threshold, forcing himself past the line between mere night and someplace darker. His lantern filled the interior of the brick-lined, man-made cave with a wash of gold.
He’d meant to leave earlier, in the morning after his mother had gone to the Waterworks. But it’d taken all day to get his supplies together, and Rector had been difficult about the details.
So now it was almost dark outside, and perfectly dark inside.
The lantern cast a bubbled halo that carried him forward, into the unknown. He navigated the crumbled spots where the ceiling had dropped itself in pieces and piles; and he dodged the hanging tendrils of moss that was thicker than seaweed; and he ducked beneath the spiderwebs that dangled, waving, from brick to brick.