Morning came grey and the birds didn't come with it. I woke with the taste of salt on my teeth and a cold weight across my back, the kind that settles into a man when he sleeps in a house that hasn't been warm for years. The rectory breathed around me like an old lung: floorboards, walls, the slow leak of wind through the sash. Caleb was already up. I found him at the front window, coat on, staring toward the cliff path. He didn't turn when I came in. "Still quiet," he said. "For now." He turned his head just enough to look at me. "Last night I kept hearing something. Like a door opening under the floor. Then nothing." "That doesn't surprise me." "It didn't surprise me either." He said it flat, but his shoulder twitched. "That's what bothers me." I didn't answer. He wanted me to tell him it was the wind. I couldn't. We ate in the kitchen, if two men standing over a cold table with dry bread could be called eating. The water in the jug tasted like it had been drawn through limestone and kelp. I drank it anyway. "Are we starting with the church?" he asked. "Yes." "Good." He pulled his coat tight. "I'd rather see what's inside while the sun's up." The sun was not up. The sky was the colour of old pewter, and it pressed down over the village like a lid. But I understood the sentiment. --- The west door of Saint Aldric's stood open, not wide, just enough for a man to pass if he turned sideways. The wood had swollen in its frame, and the iron hinges looked raw, as if the damp had eaten the oil out of them years ago. Inside, the air didn't move. It lay over us like wet cloth, and it smelled of salt, candle rot, and something else. Faint. Sweet. Softer than decay. Caleb pulled a cloth from his pocket and pressed it over his nose. "Christ," he said. His voice came out muffled. "Don't say that in here." "I'm not saying it at Him. I'm saying it at the building." The pews were wrong. Not broken—wrong. They leaned away from the aisle like rows of teeth pushed by the same slow current. Dust lay over them, but the center aisle was swept clean, or worn clean. I couldn't tell which. Caleb stepped toward the first row and picked up a hymnal. The cover squelched in his hand. He froze. "Father." I moved closer. He opened it, and his face went tight, then loose, the way a man fights a sudden urge to retch. The pages were swollen and stuck, and along the spine ran a thin white crust like frost. As the book came apart, strands of pale hair pulled between the pages, the way wet silk clings to paper. Caleb closed it and dropped it back onto the pew. He stepped away and wiped his palm hard against his coat. "That's not dust." He looked at his own hand. "That's not even human hair." "You don't know that." "I know I don't want to touch another one." He flexed his fingers, still grimacing. "Why would someone do that? Who puts hair inside a hymnal?" I didn't answer. I didn't know. --- We found the remains of the two exorcists near the altar. Not bodies. Not yet. A mechanical candle, the kind the Order issued to men who needed light without flame, lay on its side below the rail. The brass housing had split down the middle, and the wax inside had not burned. It had burst. Around it, the stone was darkened, not with soot but with something that had dried too slowly. Caleb crouched. "It didn't fall." "No." "Look at the seam." He pointed, not touching it. "It split from the inside. Pressure, not impact." I grunted. The boy could still think clearly when he was afraid. That was useful. Beside the candle lay a length of rope, fine and braided. It had been cut, but not by a blade. The end was too smooth, almost polished, as if the fibers had come apart by themselves. Caleb picked it up, then let it fall. "I don't like this." "I gathered." From the altar, a drag mark ran down the center aisle. It was wider than a man's hand, smooth at the bottom, pressing through the dust and salt like something had been hauled toward the door. It stopped halfway, then just ended. Caleb stared at it. "They didn't walk out." "No." "So what took them?" I didn't answer him. I walked to the altar and set my hand on the stone. The cloth was wet. The cross above the tabernacle hung straight, which was the only straight thing left in the building. Everything else leaned toward the sea. I pressed my boot down and felt it. A vibration came up through the floor, too slow for an engine, too steady for the tide. It moved in the stone, not through it. It was as if the ground below the church was breathing. Then I heard it. Low. Sustained. A note that did not rise or fall. It came from below, through the walls, through the floor, and it did not sound like air moving. It sounded like a throat testing whether it could still sing. Caleb stood up too fast. His hand went to his coat. "Don't." He looked at me. "Father, that's not the wind." "I know." "We should go down." "Not yet." "Why?" I looked at the drag mark, then at the cross, then back at him. "Because it knows we're here." I said. "Let it wait." He opened his mouth, then closed it. The note faded, and the silence that followed was worse than sound. --- We walked to the Rydell house with the church behind us like a black tooth in the grey sky. Caleb was quiet for the first part of the walk. Then he said, "That song. It wasn't coming from the floor, was it?" "It was coming from under it." "That's what I was afraid of." He kicked a stone into the wet grass. "I hate this place." "Good." He looked at me. "Good?" "Means you're still sane." He made a sound that was almost a laugh. It died quickly. The village closed around us. Doors were shut. Windows were dark. A child stood in a doorway until a hand pulled her back. The door closed without a sound, and I heard a bolt slide. "This is worse than Blackwood," Caleb muttered. "Blackwood wanted to be saved. This place has already given up." He didn't answer. --- The Rydell mansion stood at the end of the rise, facing the sea like a man watching for a ship that never comes. It was large, but not grand. The stone was dark with damp, and the windows were all shut, though a single thread of smoke rose from one chimney. An old maidservant opened the door. She looked at my collar, then at Caleb, then at the road behind us, as if she expected something to follow us in. "Father," she said. It wasn't a greeting. "We're here to see Lord Rydell." She didn't ask for our names. She only stepped back and let the door swing wide. The hall was dim and cold. The air smelled of old bread and wet wool, and under it, faint, the same salt sweetness from the church. Lord Rydell was in the parlor. He sat by a dead fire, a blanket over his knees. He was not old, but he had been made old. His skin was grey, and his hands lay on the arms of the chair like things he had forgotten belonged to him. "Father," he said, in the same flat tone as the maidservant. "You've come from Saint Aldric's." "We have." "Then you've heard it." The words weren't a question. "Some of it," I said. He nodded slowly. "I hear it every night. Even with the windows shut. Even with cotton in my ears." He looked past me, toward the sea. "I used to think it was pretty." Caleb shifted behind me, but didn't speak. "Tell us about Ellora," I said. Lord Rydell flinched at the name, then composed himself. "She loved the water." His voice went softer. "Every evening, she stood on the cliff and sang to it. She said it sang back. I thought it was a game." "When did that change?" "When the choir started." He looked at me. "At least, that's what she called it. She said they were waiting for her. That they needed one more voice." "Did she say who they were?" "No. She only said they sang to her from under the church. That they knew her name." His hands gripped the chair arms. "The last time I saw her, she was standing at the window. I asked what she was doing. She said, 'Practicing, Papa. They only let the best sing with them.'" He stopped. The fire, dead as it was, seemed to drink the heat from the room. "The window was open when I found her gone," he said. "Her shoes were by the door. Her coat on the hook. She left in her nightdress. She never even took her socks." Caleb shifted again. I could hear him breathing through his mouth. "Could we see her room?" I asked. Lord Rydell looked at me. His eyes were wet, but his voice stayed level. "Yes. But I won't go up again." --- The old maidservant led us up the stairs. Her name was Dent, she said, or maybe she said her name was not Dent; she said it so low I couldn't catch it. She was small and grey, and she climbed like someone used to carrying heavy things. "She was a good child," Dent said, as we reached the landing. "Quiet. Never a trouble. But after the singing began, she changed." "Changed how?" I asked. "She forgot to eat. Forgot to sleep. She'd stand at the window and hum. One night I found her leaning out so far I pulled her back by the skirt." The old woman stopped, one hand on the wall. "She looked at me and said, 'They're closer now. Can't you hear them, Dent?'" Dent's lower lip trembled once, then stopped. "I told her I couldn't hear anything. She smiled and said, 'That's all right. They only want me.'" Caleb made a small sound in his throat. Not quite a word. The old woman opened the door. The room was too clean. Not kept—left. The bed was made. The floor was bare. A row of small dolls sat beneath the window, all facing the glass, their backs to the door. Caleb stopped in the doorway. "Why are they all facing the sea?" Dent didn't answer. We stepped in. The air was cold and wet, and the window was closed, but the curtains moved. A draught came from somewhere, though no window was open, and it smelled like low tide and cold stone. I touched the sill. The wood was soft, darker than it should be. Not from rain. The glass was dry. The wetness was in the wood itself, as if water had been drawn upward through the house. Caleb knelt near the baseboard. "Father." I looked. A dark stain ran along the floor, too smooth for damp, too even for rot. It caught the grey light and held it. The same black-gold that had settled in Zeke's bottle, but thinner, spread like a vein beneath the paint. Caleb didn't touch it. "The floor," he whispered. "It's warm." I put two fingers to the wood. He was right. The stain was warmer than the rest of the room, though there was no fire below. "Don't say it here," I said. He stood and wiped his hand on his coat, the same gesture he'd made in the church. It was becoming a kind of prayer. We left the room. Dent closed the door behind us. I looked back once. The smallest doll, the one nearest the glass, had not moved. But the glass had misted, faintly, from the outside in. --- We walked back to the rectory in the last grey light. The fog came in as the sun went down, thick and salt-heavy, and the village disappeared piece by piece until only the road was left. The sea lay below, flat and black, as if the water had been pressed into the earth and forgotten. Caleb lit the candles. I stood at the window, watching the dark gather along the cliff. "She said they only want the best singers," Caleb said quietly. "That's what she said." "Do you believe her?" I turned from the window. The candlelight made his face look younger, and older, both at once. "I believe she believed it." I said. He was quiet for a long time. Then he said, "I keep hearing that note. Even now. In the back of my head." "Then you're listening too much." "How do I stop?" I didn't answer. I wasn't sure there was a way. A sound rose from outside. Not a note this time. A chord, low and wet, like many voices waking at once. It came from the church, or below it, or from the sea itself. The candles shivered. Caleb's hand found the doorframe. "Not yet," I said again. But I didn't know how much longer that would hold.

Chapter 25: Mourning Service