A special place.
Christa-Marie wanted him to come here for a reason.
Byrne knew he had to take the chance.
Once they crested the hill the ground leveled off, but the fronts of the buildings were still somewhat obscured by pines, evergreens, and barren maples. The walkways were crosshatched in rotting branches, matted with fallen needles. The arched entrance was flanked by two massive rows of Palladian windows. The roof boasted a main cupola, with two smaller watchtowers.
As he parked the van Byrne heard the call of larks, announcing an impending storm. The wind began to rise. It seemed to encircle the stone buildings like a frigid embrace, holding inside its many horrors.
Byrne got out of the vehicle, opened Christa-Marie's door. She gave him her delicate hand. They walked up the crumbling steps.
The two immense oak doors were secured by large rusted hinges.
Over the years the doors had been marked with epithets, pleas, confessions, denials. To the right of the entry was an inscription carved in the weathered stone.
Christa-Marie turned, an animated look on her face.
'Take a picture of me,' she said. She smoothed her hair, adjusted the silk scarf at her neck. She looked beautiful in the pale morning light.
Taking a photograph was the last thing Byrne had expected to do. He took out his cellphone, opened it, framed Christa-Marie in the doorway, and snapped.
A moment later he pocketed his phone, put a shoulder to one of the huge doors, pushed it open. A cold breeze rushed through the atrium, bringing with it years of mildew and decay.
Together they stepped over the threshold, into Christa-Marie Schцnburg's past, into the infernal confines of Convent Hill.
Chapter 72
The dead walk here. The dead and the insane and the forgotten. If you come with me, and hear what I hear, there is much more than the whistle of the wind.
There is the young man who came here in 1920. He had been wounded at St. Mihiel Salient. He bleeds from both wrists. 'I am going home,' he says to me. 'First to Pont-a-Mousson, then home.'
He never left.
There is the solicitor from Youngstown, Ohio. Twice he has tried to take his life. His neck is deeply scarred. He cannot speak above a whisper. His voice is a dry wind in the night desert.
There are the two sisters who tried to eat each other's flesh, found in the basement of their Olney row house, locked in an embrace, wrapped in barbed wire, blood dripping from their lips.
They gather around me, their voices lifted in a chorus of madness.
I walk with my lover.
I walk with the dead.
Chapter 73
They strolled arm in arm through the hallways, their heels echoing on the old tiles. A powdery light sifted through the windows.
Overhead was a vaulted ceiling, at least thirty feet high, and on it Byrne saw three layers of paint, each a dismal attempt at cheerfulness. Lemon yellow, baby blue, sea-foam green.
Christa-Marie pointed to a room off the main entry. 'This is where they take you on arrival,' she said. 'Don't let the flowers fool you.'
Byrne peeked inside. The remains of a pair of rusted chains, bolted to the wall, lay on the ground like dead snakes. There were no flowers.
They continued on, deeper into the heart of Convent Hill, passing dozens of rooms, rooms pooled with stagnant water, rooms tiled floor to ceiling, grout stained with decades of mold and long-dried blood, drains clogged with sewage and discarded clothing.
One room held six chairs still in a semicircle, the cane seats missing, one chair curiously facing away from the others. One room had a three-tiered bunk bed bolted to the floor over a decayed Oriental rug. Byrne could see where attempts had been made to tear away the rug. Both ends were shredded. Three brown fingernails remained.
One room, at the back of the main hallway, had rusted steel buckets lined against the wall, each filled with hardened feces, white and chalky with time. One bucket had the word happy painted on it.
They took the winding staircase to the second floor.
In one meeting room was a slanted stage. Above the stage, on the fascia, was a large medallion made of crisscrossed black string, perhaps an occupational-therapy project of some sort.
They continued through the wing. Byrne noted that many of the individual rooms had observation windows, some as small and simple as a pair of holes drilled into the door. Nothing, it seemed, went unobserved at Convent Hill.
'This was Maristella's room,' Christa-Marie said. The room was no larger than six by six feet. Against the wall, a long-faded pink enamel, were three threadbare stretchers. 'She was my friend. A little crazy, I think.'
The massive gymnasium had a large mural, measuring more than fifty feet long. The background was the rolling hills surrounding the facility. Scattered throughout were small scenes, all drawn by different hands — hellish depictions of rape, murder, and torture.
When they turned the corner into the east wing, Byrne stopped in his tracks. Someone was standing at the end of the wide hallway. Byrne could not see much. The person was small, compact, unmoving.
It took Byrne a few moments to realize, in the dim light, that it was only a cutout of a person. As they drew closer, he could see that it was a plywood pattern of a child, a boy perhaps ten or twelve years old. The figure wore a yellow shirt and dark brown pants. Behind the figure, on the wall, was painted a blue stripe, perhaps meant to mimic the ocean. As they passed the figure, Byrne saw pockmarks in the plywood, along with a few holes. Behind the figure were corresponding holes. At some point the figure had been riddled with bullets. Someone had drawn blood on the shirt.
They stopped at the end of the hall. Above them the roof had rotted away. A few drops of water found them.
'You know at the first note,' Christa-Marie said.
'What do you mean?'
'Whether a child has the potential to be a virtuoso.' She looked at her hands, her long, elegant fingers. 'They draw you in. The children.
At Prentiss they asked me a hundred times to teach. I kept refusing. I finally gave in. Two boys stood out.'
Byrne took her hand. 'Who are these boys?'
Christa-Marie did not answer right away. 'They were there, you know,' she eventually said.
'Where?'
'At the concert,' she said. 'After.'
There was a sound, an echoing sound from somewhere in the darkness. Christa-Marie seemed not to notice.
'That night, Christa-Marie. Take me back to that night.'
Christa-Marie looked at him. In her eyes he saw the same look he had seen twenty years earlier, a look of fear and loneliness.
'I wore black,' she said.
