carried with him. But there was no time even for this: any pause, however brief, might be fatal. He stepped back, raised his foot, aimed at a point just below the lock, and gave the door a savage kick. It flew back, slamming against the interior wall with a crash. Pendergast stood in the doorway, breathing heavily. The room of Diogenes, his brother, lay beyond.
And yet there was nothing visible. The mellow light of the hallway did not penetrate the infinite gloom. The doorway was a rectangle of blackness.
Pendergast tossed aside the chisel and mallet. A moment’s thought brought a powerful flashlight into his hand. He snapped on the light and pointed the beam into the gloom, which seemed to suck the very light out of the air.
Pendergast tried to take a step forward but found he could not will his limbs to move. He stood there, on the threshold, for what seemed like an eternity. The house began to wobble, the walls evaporating as if made of air, and he realized he was once again losing the memory palace. He knew if he lost it now, he’d never return. Ever.
It was only by a final act of supreme will-the most focused, draining, and difficult moment he had ever faced- that Pendergast forced himself over the threshold.
He stopped again just beyond, prematurely exhausted, playing the flashlight around, forcing the beam to lick ever farther into the darkness. It was not the room he expected to find. Instead, he was at the top of a narrow stairway of undressed stone, winding down into the living rock, twisting deeply into the earth.
At this sight, something dark stirred within Pendergast’s mind: a rough beast that had slumbered, undisturbed, for over thirty years. For a moment, he felt himself falter and his will fail. The walls trembled like a candle flame in the wind.
He recovered. He had no choice now but to go forward. Taking a fresh grip on the flashlight, he began to descend the worn, slippery steps of stone: deeper, ever deeper, into a maw of shame, regret-and infinite horror.
Chapter 50
Pendergast descended the staircase, the smell of the sub-basement coming up to him: a cloying odor of damp, mold, iron rust, and death. The staircase ended in a dark tunnel. The mansion had one of the few belowground basements in New Orleans-created at great expense and labor by the monks who originally built the structure, and who had lined the walls with sheets of hammered lead and carefully fitted stone to make cellars for aging their wines and brandies.
The Pendergast family had converted it to another use entirely.
In his mind, Pendergast made his way down the tunnel, which opened onto a broad, low open space, the irregular floor part earth, part stone, with a groined ceiling. The walls were encrusted with niter, and dim marble crypts, elaborately carved in Victorian and Edwardian style, filled the expanse, separated from one another by narrow walkways of brick.
Suddenly he became aware of a presence in the room: a small shadow. Then he heard the shadow speak with a seven-year-old voice: “Are you sure you want to keep going?”
With another shock, Pendergast realized there was a second figure in the dim space: taller, more slender, with white-blond hair. He felt chilled to the bone-it was himself, nine years old. He heard his own smooth, childish voice speak: “You’re not afraid?”
“No. Of course not,” came the small, defiant return-the voice of his brother, Diogenes.
“Well, then.”
Pendergast watched as the two dim figures made their way through the necropolis, candles in hand, the taller one leading the way.
He felt a rising dread. He didn’t remember this at all-and yet he knew something fearful was about to happen.
The fair-haired figure began examining the carved fronts of the tombs, reading the Latin inscriptions in a high, clear voice. They had both taken to Latin with great enthusiasm. Diogenes, Pendergast remembered, had always been the better Latin student; his teacher thought him a genius.
“Here’s an odd one,” said the older boy. “Take a look, Diogenes.”
The smaller figure crept up and read:
ERASMUS LONGCHAMPS PENDERGAST
De mortus aut bene aut nihil
“Do you recognize the line?”
“Horace?” said the younger figure. “‘Of the dead’… hmmm… ‘speak well or say nothing.’”
After a silence, the older boy said, with a touch of condescension, “Bravo, little brother.”
“I wonder,” asked Diogenes, “what it was about his life he didn’t want talked about?”
Pendergast remembered his youthful rivalry with his brother over Latin… one in which he was eventually left far behind.
They moved on to an elaborate double crypt, a sarcophagus in the Roman style topped with a man and woman in marble, both laid out in death with hands crossed on their breasts.
“Louisa de Nemours Prendergast. Henri Prendergast. Nemo nisi mors,” read the older boy. “Let’s see… That must be ‘Till death do us part.’”
The smaller boy had already moved to another tombstone. Crouching, he read, “Multa ferunt anni venientes commoda secum, Multa recedentes adimiunt.” He looked up. “Well, Aloysius, what do you make of that?”
A silence followed, and then the response came, bravely but a little uncertain. “‘Many years come to make us comfortable, many receding years diminish us.’”
The translation was greeted with a sarcastic snicker. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Of course it does.”
“No, it doesn’t. ‘Many receding years diminish us’? That’s nonsense. I think it means something like ‘The years, as they come, bring many comforts. As they recede, they…’” He paused. “Adimiunt?”
“Just what I said: diminish,” said the older boy.
“‘As they recede, they diminish us,’” finished Diogenes. “In other words, when you’re young, the years bring good. But as you grow old, the years take it all away again.”
“That makes no more sense than mine,” said Aloysius, annoyance in his voice. He moved on toward the back of the necropolis, down another narrow row of crypts, reading more names and inscriptions. At the end of the cul-de- sac, he paused at a marble door set into the back wall, a rusted metal grate over it.
“Look at this tomb,” he said.
Diogenes came up close, peered at it with his candle. “Where’s the inscription?”
“There isn’t one. But it’s a crypt. It’s got to be a door.” Aloysius reached up, gave the grate a pull. Nothing. He pushed at it, pulled it, and then picked up a stray fragment of marble and began tapping around its edges. “Maybe it’s empty.”
“Maybe it’s meant for us,” the younger boy said, a ghoulish gleam appearing in his eyes.
“It’s hollow back there.” Aloysius redoubled his tapping and gave the grate another tug-and then suddenly, with a grinding sound, it opened. The two stood there, frightened.
“Oh, the stink!” said Diogenes, backing up and holding his nose.
And now Pendergast, deep within his mental construct, smelled it, too-an indescribable odor, foul, like a rotten, fungus-covered liver. He swallowed as the walls of the memory palace wavered, then came back into solidity.
Aloysius shone his candle into the freshly exposed space. It wasn’t a crypt at all, but rather a large storage
