Night Film(132)



“She hadn’t seen me yet, so I crouched down, crawled across the floor on my hands and knees, trying to be as silent as I could. I reached the back corner and hid inside there.”

He turned to his right, gesturing toward a huge double-door wooden wardrobe in the far corner.

“I heard every step she took, coming closer and closer toward my hiding place. As if she was the devil coming. There was a long stretch of silence. I heard her reach for the handle on the door. Very slowly it creaked open. And I knew that was it. That I’d come face-to-face with my own death.”

He fell silent and shivered, hunching his shoulders.

Trying to ignore the repulsion flooding through me, I turned, again checking on Sam. Thankfully, she and the horse were now the best of friends. She was explaining something of great importance to him, whispering in his ear.

“Why’d she come after you?” asked Hopper suddenly.

Villarde said nothing, only guiltily lowered his head.

“You worked with the townspeople from Crowthorpe Falls?” asked Nora gently, taking a step toward Villarde. “You helped them access The Peak property?”

“I did,” Villarde said, smiling wanly, grateful for her kindness.

“How did it work, exactly?” I asked. “You made a deal with them?”

“I did,” he whispered meekly.

“With who?”

He shook his head. “I never knew. There were so many of them. I—I’d just moved to Crow. I met Stanislas for the first time, quite by accident, at the General Store. His wife had sent him into town to buy her gardening gloves. He asked me what I thought of the selection. ‘Which of these gloves are fit for a fairy queen?’ It was the first thing he said to me. We had an instant attraction. When men desire each other, they crash together like wrecking balls, quenching their need right then and there, as if the world were about to end. We began to meet around town, and within the month he invited me to his estate. He gave me my own suite in the top tower, mahogany with red damask curtains, the most beautiful room I’d ever seen. Several weeks later, I was back in town, having lunch at a diner, when a bearded man in overalls slid into the seat right across from me, a toothpick in his mouth. He asked if I had any interest in a mutually beneficial arrangement. I didn’t have any money at the time. I felt that if I built up some goodwill with the locals it would help me setting up my ministry.”

“But you’re not technically a priest,” I muttered.

“I attended two years of seminary. But yes, I dropped out.”

“Yet you wear the outfit. Isn’t that sacrilegious?”

He only smiled weakly, slowly rubbing his palms together.

“Why’d you drop out?” asked Nora.

“I didn’t have what it takes to make it in the Catholic Church.”

“Funny, I’ve noticed scum flourishes with surprising ease through the top dioceses,” I said.

Villarde didn’t answer, and I turned to check on Sam. She was dancing the plastic horse along the surface of the table.

“So, what was this mutually beneficial arrangement?” Hopper asked.

“I’d help them get onto the property,” said Villarde. “It was simple. All I had to do was cut open a bit of the wire military fencing on the southern perimeter of the property, which would allow access to The Peak by canoe via a narrow rivulet which emptied into one of the lakes on the property. I was also asked to open up the tunnels.”

“The tunnels?” I asked.

“A labyrinth of underground passageways exists beneath the entire Peak property. They’ve been there since the mansion’s construction, so servants could move easily throughout the grounds, avoiding bad weather. Stanislas didn’t know they existed when he purchased the estate. The British couple who lived at The Peak before Stanislas had sealed them off, and the realtor had no clue of their existence. I was asked by this bearded stranger to unseal them. It was fairly easy to do, took me no more than a few nights’ work. They were crudely barricaded with random bits of wood and nails, snippets of poetry and odd verse scribbled backward on the brick, almost as if the person who’d done the job had been totally insane. The other thing I was asked to do was open the front gate. Every Wednesday night at midnight, I’d walk down the tunnel that led to the property’s gatehouse—about two miles—and unlock the gate. Then I’d simply go back to bed. The tunnels are vast, laid out like a spider’s web. There is a central point where one can see the many different tunnels diverging to other secret parts of the property. I didn’t know what they all were. I always stuck to the tunnel leading to the gatehouse. It was the only one I dared go down. And that was it. Certainly, what I did to Cordova was a betrayal. But honestly I really didn’t see the harm. The property was immense. Why not let these poor locals, who had nothing, use the grounds for their pagan rituals if it made them happy?”

“Did you participate in the rituals?” asked Hopper.

Villarde seemed insulted. “Of course not.”

“But Cordova did,” I suggested bluntly.

Villarde closed his eyes for a moment, as if in pain.

“The night he discovered the tunnels, he caught a lone woman running through them on her way to the site they used. Stanislas followed her, the idea being he’d confront them all. Instead, he somehow became involved.” He smiled feebly. “ ‘For every man there exists bait he cannot resist swallowing.’ ”

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