But was it opening, or closing?
And where was it?
Ryan strained his ears, but couldn’t tell if it came from in front of or behind them.
“What should we do?” Ryan whispered.
“Shh,” Melody repeated. “Listen.”
Ryan stood absolutely still, trying not to breathe at all, ears straining, but heard nothing. Now, though, it wasn’t just the darkness that felt like it was closing in on him, but the walls themselves.
He shivered involuntarily as his whole body suddenly broke out in a cold sweat.
All he wanted to do was run.
Run, and find the closest stairs that would lead him up and out of this labyrinth, into the clear, cool night air.
Melody was moving again, and Ryan forced his panic down once more, following her down what now felt like an endless corridor.
Endless, and closing further in on him with every second that passed.
It went on for what seemed like hours, the darkness so absolute that Ryan began to see things he knew couldn’t be there at all.
Tiny lights winked at him, always vanishing as he turned to look at them.
He felt things close to him in the darkness, things he didn’t want to imagine, let alone see.
His panic was once more building toward the breaking point when Melody suddenly stopped again.
“Okay,” she whispered. “We’re here. There are some stairs just to the left, and the infirmary is at the top of them.”
Ryan wanted to push his way past her and run up the stairs, but held his growing terror of the darkness in check, letting her lead him to the foot of the stairs.
Then, just as he raised his foot to take that first step up, they heard another sound.
A footstep!
Then another!
Then more. And not just one person, either, but at least two.
And they were coming toward them, every step echoing louder.
Melody froze for an instant, then moved closer to Ryan until her lips were at his ear. “Follow me, and press against the wall.” She said it so softly he barely heard her. A second later he felt her pulling him past the stairs, deeper into the darkness. His heart thundering, he held his breath as if any movement, even of his lungs, might betray them. He pressed himself against the wall, Melody beside him, her hand clinging to his.
They waited.
The footsteps drew nearer until Ryan was certain that whoever was there was not only coming directly toward them, but was about to run right into them.
The steps grew louder, and now Ryan could almost feel the presence of whoever was hidden in the blackness.
He steeled himself, waiting.
And then, at the last possible instant, the steps paused.
Ryan held perfectly still. Had they been heard? Had some tiny noise betrayed them? He waited, certain that at any second a flashlight would come on, blinding him as certainly as the darkness blinded him, but exposing him as well.
Exposing him, and Melody, too.
They would be caught.
And there was nothing he could do.
Silently, Ryan began to pray.
And the steps began again.
But no longer coming toward them. No! Now the steps were going up, climbing the stairs they had been about to climb themselves!
His heart still pounding, Ryan slowly exhaled. A moment later a glow of light emerged from the stairwell. Like a June bug drawn to light, Ryan moved toward the base of the stairs. Melody, still gripping his hand in her own, stayed so close behind him that he could feel the warmth of her breath on the back of his neck.
Stopping just short of the doorway to the staircase, Ryan listened. The footsteps were still audible, but sounded muffled, and when he finally risked a quick look up the stairs, he understood why. The stairs were built around a well, and whoever was climbing them had already made at least one turn.
Ryan’s mind raced. Either they could go back the way they’d come, groping through the suffocating darkness, or they could sneak up the stairs, where there would be a way out that didn’t involve having to pick their way through the maze of subterranean tunnels.
And there was the chance of finding out who else had been down here tonight.
The thought of the darkness — and the terrible claustrophobia that had gripped him — was enough to make up his mind for him. As the footsteps above grew fainter, Ryan started up the stairs, with Melody silently following.
After two turns they came to the first floor landing. A door — unlocked — led into a broad hallway at the end of which was a pair of old-fashioned double doors with panic bars — the kind that could only be locked from outside. And even from where they were, Ryan could see the school’s huge interior courtyard through the glass of the double doors.
They were safe.
But above them, the footsteps had stopped, and now Ryan could hear muffled voices. The words themselves were inaudible, but one of the voices sounded worried, another impatient.
And Melody, her back to the wall so she was almost perfectly invisible from the well above, unless someone leaned over and looked straight down, had moved past him, and was sidling rapidly up toward the next turn. Ryan caught up with her just as she came to the intermediate landing, where she stopped. Pointing upward, she silently mouthed a single word: “Infirmary!”
Ryan peered upward to see the shape of a man, his shoulders draped in the cassock and stole of a priest, standing with his back to the railing around the stairwell.
Then, as they watched, the area above brightened as a light — apparently inside the infirmary — went on. The man turned, and for a terrible moment Ryan was sure he was going to look down. But instead, another shape appeared.
Another head, this one belonging to someone the man was carrying in his arms — someone who was unconscious. And though they got no more than a glimpse of the person the man was carrying, both Ryan and Melody knew instantly who it was.
Sofia.
Melody had been right.
Something was terribly wrong.
And there was nobody they could talk to about it.
CHAPTER 26
ARCHBISHOP JONATHAN RAND closed his office door behind the last member of the diocesan committee for the protection of children, returned to his desk, and slumped back into his chair. He had known that putting the Boston Archdiocese back together was going to be a long-term task, but he hadn’t anticipated just how difficult and uncooperative his committee members were going to be. It seemed as if all they wanted to do was fight him on every point with endless, circuitous debate that ultimately resolved nothing. Indeed, every item on today’s agenda had been tabled until next month amid claims that all of it needed additional research and further extrapolations. It was as if they hoped that simply by stalling, they could make the whole mess go away.
