Page 68 of The Instruments of Darkness

Even after all this time, Ellar still marveled at its existence, although it had, until recently, been dormant—dead, he might have hoped, if not aloud. Its cycles were irregular: at least one whole generation of Michauds had been born, lived out their lives, and died without ever being called upon to witness its reemergence. But they had remained cognizant of its presence, as one might of a bear in hibernation on one’s land. To stand before Kit No. 174 was to be aware that this was no empty house, and once inside, the basement floor seemed always about to rise and fall with the inhalations and exhalations of its secret occupant.

Ellar carried a spade over his shoulder and a sack tucked into his belt. He unlocked the door, entered the house, and went straight to the basement. With his knowledge of the occupant, he would have preferred to have completed his task in daylight, but any activities concerning Kit No. 174 were better carried out under cover of night, particularly ones as delicate as this.

He took the stairs carefully. While they were well maintained, he had suffered a misstep halfway down only a few weeks earlier and wrenched his ankle. Had he broken it, he would have been forced to hobble all the way home with a branch for support, because no cell phone worked out here. It was a dead zone, in every sense.

Finally, he reached the bottom step and stared at the empty dirt floor. He should have been looking at a small set of human remains, but something had gone wrong. He ran the flashlight a second time, as though expecting limbs to reveal themselves in a corner, extruded from the earth like pale fungi sprouting in the gloom.

Ellar sat on the step to wait. Minutes went by. He tapped the blade rhythmically against the dirt, as though that might help, with no result. After fifteen minutes he stood. It was clear: he would not be getting anything of the child back, not tonight. The occupant was not done with it, and like a dog gnawing on a rotten bone, it could not be made to understand the necessity of surrendering its prize.

For the first time in many years, Ellar Michaud was worried.

CHAPTER XLII

What I knew about Sabine Drew came from the pair of missing persons cases on which she’d worked, those of Verona Walters and Edie Brook. Both had ended badly, if in different ways, the second of them so traumatically that it had transformed Drew into a recluse. But between those two investigations came a brief period during which she was one of the most conspicuous women in the state, and among the best-known mediums in the Northeast, assuming you accepted the reality of psychic phenomena. If you didn’t, then you were probably of the opinion that Drew had come lucky once, but struck out a second time when it mattered.

I wasn’t sure what I believed. I knew Ronnie Pascal, because Maine was a big state but a small society, and the law enforcement community was smaller still. Pascal had been perfectly straight with everyone about how the Augusta PD had come to unearth the remains of Verona Walters, although the more peculiar details—Sabine Drew’s awareness of what the girl had for breakfast on the morning she disappeared, or her abductor’s smell—he retained for private distribution, and the discussions that took place where only police were gathered. Pascal was retired, but his opinion that Drew was the real deal had not altered. Coming to terms with this had cost him, shifting his view of existence in a manner that he struggled to articulate. As far as I was aware, he remained an agnostic, but willing to accept that something more than oblivion might await him after death. Even what happened subsequently with Edie Brook hadn’t caused him to doubt her, but by then he was in the minority.

Sabine Drew was broadly unchanged. She had always come across as older than her years, but in seclusion the clock might almost have stopped for her. True, her hair showed more signs of gray, but her face was unlined and bore the ruddiness of a life lived largely in the open air. I put out a hand to her and she grasped it, but her grip immediately dropped away. She swayed, and some of the color faded from her cheeks. I thought she might be about to faint, but as I moved to help her, she waved me back, breaking contact.

“The wine must have gone to my head,” she said.

She sat, reached for the water glass on her table, and drank until it was empty. I waved a server over and asked for a refill, as well as a club soda for myself. I’d had enough beer, alcohol-free or otherwise, for the time being.

“They told you who I was, didn’t they?” she asked, once the soda and water had arrived.

“Dave, the owner, recognized you. You could have saved him the trouble by just giving your name to Paulie.”

“I wasn’t certain you’d come if I did,” she said, “although the fact that I took the trip down here in the first place means I must have been hopeful. I hadn’t necessarily thought the whole business through. I’ve fallen out of the habit of dealing with strangers. I don’t have much of a social life.”

I noticed that she was unwilling to look directly at me. It made conversation awkward.

“Do I have something on my face?” I asked.

“Not that I can see. Why do you ask?”

“You’re having trouble maintaining eye contact. If you’re not incurably shy, or trying to conceal some deception, then I must need a better mirror.”

She put down her glass, composed herself, and looked straight at me.

“Is that better?”

“Much,” I said.

“I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Likewise.”

“What I’ve heard doesn’t do you justice. Based on what I’d read, I assumed you to be a committed, if sometimes violent man, but you’re more than that, much more. You see them, don’t you?”

“Them?”

“The dead, some of them—and worse than the dead, even if the dead are bad enough. Forgive my bluntness, but I place a premium on honesty.”

I didn’t reply. This was not a subject I was prepared to indulge. Sitting with a professed medium, as with a priest, presupposed some discussion of the numinous, but there were limits. As it turned out, Drew wasn’t waiting for a response. This was less a conversation and closer to a reading.

“I heard that you died on the operating table after you were shot,” she continued. “I can believe it now. When you crossed back, you left part of yourself behind.” She frowned. “Or was it always missing? It’s hard to be sure. Whatever the truth may be, there’s a darkness inside you, like a spot on a lung, but impenetrable. And around you—” I could see her choosing her next words carefully “—traces of the dead, trailing like gossamer.”

I sipped my soda.

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