I sat down again, shaken. “When I feel ready, I’ll go over the nightmare again. Maybe a few details will come to the surface, but I’m pretty sure there’s much more to remember.”
Raphaella put her arm around me and laid her head on my shoulder. Her hair smelled of flowers and soap-fresh, like spring. There was a time I would have rejected the conversation we were having. What’s around us, I would have argued-the lake, the sky, those kids on the playground over there-is real. Dreams aren’t. Now I knew different.
“I guess I’ll just have to wait,” I said, “for the third dream.”
“You think you’ll have another?”
“I know I will.”
Three
I
MRS. STOPPINI HAD TEA for three laid out on the kitchen table when Raphaella and I appeared at the back door of the Corbizzi mansion. Stiff and stern, she ushered us inside.
“Good morning, Mr. Havelock,” she intoned, then turned to Raphaella. “And you must be Miss Skye. I am very pleased to make your acquaintance.” She held out a bony hand.
“Hi,” Raphaella replied, throwing me a glance that said “I see what you mean.”
“You’ll take tea,” asserted Mrs. Stoppini, showing us to the table with a turn of her wrist.
We chit-chatted about the weather-the kind of aimless small talk that drove me nuts-then our hostess got down to business. She had begun to impress on Raphaella the need for discretion and confidentiality when I cut in and excused myself.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll leave you two to discuss details. I need to see about something in the shop.”
I went out the door before anyone could object.
In the workshop I turned on the lights and fan, then slipped into my apron. The assembled mantel lay on the workbench, bristling with clamps, pale under the lights. I freed it and carried it to the wall, where I stood it beside the blistered and scorched remains of the original. Stepping back a few paces, I ran my eye over every detail, comparing them. Satisfied, I lifted the new one to a dust-free bench and cleaned it with rags lightly sprinkled with solvent, careful to remove every speck of sawdust. Then I took it to the spray booth and spent twenty minutes or so mixing stains to match the old mantel’s red mahogany finish as closely as possible. After trading the apron for a set of coveralls, a hat, gloves, a mask, and goggles, I turned on the sprayer and began to apply the finish.
I returned to the house to find that the two women-whom I wouldn’t have been surprised to see facing off like a couple legionaries-were still at the table, their cups empty, their plates sprinkled with crumbs, chatting almost informally about MOO. Raphaella tossed me a “get me out of here!” look.
“That’s that done,” I said, closing the door behind me.
Raphaella got to her feet. “Thanks for the tea, Mrs. Stoppini. I suppose Garnet and I should be getting to work.”
ALTHOUGH SHE HAD HIDDEN it well during our tea, Raphaella was nervous about the library, and as we walked down the corridor to the east wing, her tension grew. When I rolled the doors aside and stepped into the room, which was bright with morning light, she stopped.
“I see what you meant,” she murmured. “Something happened here all right.”
“Professor Corbizzi died.”
“Something more. Much more. Something bad.”
“Like the churchyard on the 3rd Concession?”
On the way home from a delivery to the city one night more than a year before, I had run smack into the worst snowstorm to hit the county in ten years. Barely escaping a huge pileup of cars, buses, and tractor-trailers near Barrie, I had steered off the big highway and taken the 3rd Concession. My luck held for a while, but the darkness and thick, whirling snow reduced visibility to zero and I skidded off the road, smashing into something I couldn’t even see. Luckily-I thought at the time-the pioneer church called African Methodist, unused for years, was close by. I slogged through blinding snow and howling wind to take shelter inside. I passed a long, cold, and scary night, haunted by dreams and disembodied voices.
About three months later, Raphaella and I passed the church on our way to the mobile home park where I was about to take up a part-time job as caretaker. We stopped to look around. In the quiet sunlit churchyard Raphaella had immediately sensed something evil.
“The feeling’s just as powerful, but different,” Raphaella replied now. “I’m not being clear, am I?”
“You don’t have to be. I’ve felt it since the beginning. I hoped it would disappear once the damage from the fire was repaired and the smoke odour removed.”
Raphaella walked slowly along the south wall, avoiding the alcove, the way I had done on my first exploration of the library. Her fingertips brushed the books as she passed.
“What a collection,” she said, awed by the sheer number of hardcover volumes. “Show me the secret cupboard.”
I fetched the keys from the desk and went through the unlocking ritual.
“It’s like an Alexandre Dumas novel, isn’t it?” she whispered.
“I’ve never read a Dumas novel. And why are you whispering?”
She stood behind me as I rolled up the screen, revealing the interior of the hidden cupboard.
“Hmm.”
Making a dramatic little show, I lifted the items from the shelves to the table one at a time, then stood back. “Open the big one last.”
Raphaella quickly inspected the typed sheets, the big leather-bound volume, the wooden box with the inlaid crucifix design. “Did you record this inscription?” she asked, scrutinizing the medal.
“Not yet.”
She put down the medal and removed the velvet cloth from the cross. “Look at this!” she whispered in awe, standing it on the table. The light pouring through the library windows sparkled in the gemwork and set the carved gold aglow, making it seem alive. The cross stood tall and solid, a work of art that seemed anything but holy.
Raphaella picked it up and tilted it this way and that. “It’s kind of sinister, isn’t it?” she mused. “It’s supposed to inspire reverence, but it’s a little… menacing. And this is the part you told me about,” she added, peering into the blown-glass globe.
I went over to the desk and brought back the magnifying glass. She took it from me and squinted through it.
“The glass is wavy and it has tiny bubbles in it. This thing inside, I can’t tell what it is. It’s shaped like a big washer, with a little projection out each side. Strange.”
“I wish that was the only odd thing around here.”
II
THAT AFTERNOON, with the secret objects locked away and the weight of the room’s disapproval on our shoulders, Raphaella and I discussed the most efficient way to inventory the library. She had established a base at the trestle table nearest the window, setting up her laptop and pulling from her bottomless backpack a couple of notebooks, some pencils, a pencil sharpener, a ruler, and a cellphone with a camera, as well as Internet and email capability and a digital music player. Then she quickly created a database on the computer, ready and waiting for us to fill it with information.
