Chapter 18 Diantha
Diantha
By the time Friday rolls around, I have seven new gray hairs and a burgeoning addiction to Almond Joys, which I’ve taken to stress-eating late at night while poring over my mom’s tomes.
Despite my best efforts to cool it, I’ve had more sex dreams in the last week than I’ve ever had in my entire life. And, of course, they all star the one person I shouldn’t be fantasizing about.
Orfeo.
I must be ovulating; I don’t even bother checking. There’s no other explanation for how real my dreams have felt.
I’ve completely abandoned my thesis on rituals and artifacts and given myself over to trying to understand what Asteria’s followers practice, how realm travel works, and anything I can dig up on the code of Hades.
The little information I’ve found was trapped between pages steeled together by dust and neglect, written in an inscrutable and faux-ancient English. Passages of text that say shit like: A VVOMAN SCORN’D brINGEY MORE DANGER THAN VVET TO VVOOD.
Hades could have summoned her for a handful of bone-chilling reasons—but then why didn’t she call upon Hecate and Asteria for help? My mother was devout in her offerings—candles and flowers and altars—if all the passages and notes she left in the margins of her tomes are to be believed.
I can’t locate any more pictures or interviews from after my mother’s disappearance. Whatever information she’d given officials is locked up in some filing cabinet, sealed in a case file labeled “Weird But Ultimately Whatever.”
I’ve tried to find my way back to the Dream Place, but my mind and body have been too exhausted, and the few hours I manage to sleep are deep and impenetrable.
Tuesday night, after a double shift at the café and a particularly dry Bowen lecture, I dig through the box of childhood odds and ends until I find my own birth certificate.
It’s all there, exactly as I remember it. Father line, empty. Birth date, as I’ve always celebrated it—December 24th. Christmas Eve.
Which has only begun to feel more random in the grand scheme of things. Was my mother already pregnant when she disappeared? Was I really born a month and some change before my mother was found that frigid night?
Did Hades hurt my mother? Did Asteria abandon her? My anger with the gods keeps me going, but the deeper I dig, the more questions I have.
One thing is for absolute certain: I was brought to Echidna, by fate or the stars or Asteria herself, to lift this curse.
And if I can kill Alfo in the process—well, that would be one less shithead walking this planet.
St. Haeverth Cathedral is deep in the rolling hills of Echidna’s campus, a solid fifteen-minute walk from the main educational and administrative buildings that abut town. Here, it feels like I’ve fallen through a time-space fissure and landed somewhere far more remote than Eastern PA.
Our class meets in the courtyard between the cathedral and the rectory, a quiet rose garden meant for meditative prayer.
Here, moonlight soaks a statue of Mary and a semi-circle of stone benches in perfect white light while the humid evening air makes every surface, even my skin, ice-cold to the touch.
I tighten my scarf around my neck and try not to seem like I’m ten seconds from combusting.
Janet seems to have dressed for the evening in a long flowing black cloak and a particularly geometric pair of off-white glasses. Thien and Laila ignore me, which I appreciate deeply, and Ray flashes me a toothless smile and a little two-finger salute.
Orfeo is nowhere in sight.
Wednesday, he came into the library, appearing before me like a fallen fucking angel. Hollow cheeks and golden eyes sunken; his curls disheveled and frizzy. But of course all of this just added to his rugged, ancient beauty. He looked like a warrior returning from the Trojan front.
Breathtaking. Stupidly breathtaking.
And when his feet stalled and his lips fell open, my stomach dropped and I was back in Hades House, thighs wrapped around his neck.
Then I tried to talk to him—to ask him about the code of Hades—and he ran.
Exactly what my ego needed.
Whatever, fine. Message received! Orfeo’s nothing more than a very beautiful parachute holding back this race car.
Finally, Bowen comes speed-walking out of the shadows, trench coat flapping around him and hair plastered to his forehead. His typical professorial look.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he calls, darting past us. “Come, come.” He waves us on to follow him. “Keep abreast, children.”
We all trade a look of mild concern before breaking into a simultaneous jog to keep up with him.
He leads us down the narrow stone path that snakes from one building to another, taking us past moss-covered statues of saints and a variety of rosebushes.
When I trip over a crack in the pavement, I hear Thien and Laila break into a nervous giggle behind me.
Overhead, a full moon acts as our only light source.
Bowen leads us to an arched wooden door.
“We are entering the chapel.” He gives us a stern look. “Act like you’ve been in the Lord’s house before.”
Then, he pulls a skeleton key from his pocket and unlocks the door with a resounding click.
Inside, the air smells like moisture and incense.
The only light is the ghoulish flickering of the red tabernacle light and sanctum candles, lit at the feet of more statues: men with bloody hands, little girls with awe-filled eyes.
In the near total darkness, my secret sense—the one that lets me control my energy when I’m decoupled—flares.
My fingers tingle. My heart begins to beat faster. It feels like the moments leading up to when I decouple, but without the sick-excited stomach feeling.
I guess what I’m sensing is…
Energy. There’s a lot of energy here.
I follow my classmates, single file, through another door to the left of the altar. Bowen opens this one with no ceremony and waves us into the tiny, pitch-black space.
Anxiety drips off all of us like sweat.
Suddenly, a light flares from Bowen’s waist, a solid beam of blue-white light illuminating our feet.
“Feel free to use your phones as flashlights. We will be entering the catacombs shortly. But first…” He clears his throat and bows his head.
“To the souls we meet upon this path, may you guide and protect us…”
I look around at my classmates. They look terrified. And I can’t tell if Bowen is joking, because my fingers have gone from buzzing to full-on trembling.
“Fide nemini. Amen,” Bowen concludes.
Then, he descends the steps.
All around us the air sags with trapped fear. Oppressive and heavy. The steps creak under our weight, and when we reach the bottom, the sound of our shoes on the wet stone floor echoes.
“Bright light,” Bowen warns. And then there’s a whooooosh as two gas lamps on either side of us roar to life.
In the weak, orange light, my classmates look like painted masks, faces cast in harsh shadows and frozen in their half-rendered fear.
“Quickly,” Bowen whispers. We point our phones’ lights ahead and follow him through the narrow, winding tunnel.
The only noise that accompanies us is the steady drip, drip, drip of moisture from the ceiling.
The tunnel expands and contracts. Sometimes we have to duck down in order to fit; other times it widens enough that Janet and Ray can stand on either side of me.
Eventually we reach another iron gate, which interrupts our path and will require us all to hunch significantly to pass through.
Janet points her light up toward the keystone overtop of the gate, which is imprinted with a phrase in Latin.
“In nomine sancti,” she reads. “Desine.”
Bowen chuckles. “In the name of the holy, stop.” He slips past me and around Janet to unlock the gate. “Won’t be heeding that, will we?”
We step in one at a time. Beyond the gate, the air feels heavier and the buzzing and tingling in my hands is now accompanied by a pressure in my chest.
“How far underground are we?” I ask.
“Far,” a deep, familiar voice replies. “At least three stories.”
I whip around.
“Orfeo.” It comes out startled, almost happy. “What are you…?”
He shrugs a shoulder. “Had to bypass the whole church entry situation.”
The gate clicks shut. Bowen lifts his flashlight, illuminating the three of us for a moment. “Boo,” he deadpans.
“Professor.” Orfeo nods.
“Nice of you to join us, heathen.”
Orfeo flashes Bowen a smile and a good-natured eye roll. It suddenly dawns on me that duh, these two have probably crossed paths in the month since that private event at Hades House.
Duh, Bowen definitely knows Orfeo’s a vampire.
“You’re not running away from me,” I whisper through the darkness. I keep my flashlight pointed ahead, but in the bounce-back of the beam, I can see that he’s keeping his gaze fixed forward, hands shoved in his pockets.
“I…owe you an apology for that.”
I swallow against the sudden gallop of emotion in my throat. “Later. We can talk later.”
Bowen flips some secret switch, illuminating two more gas lamps. It takes a moment for our eyes to adjust, but when they do, the gasps begin.
Here, the walls are no longer made of stone. The dirty off-white honeycomb pattern doesn’t really register as anything other than odd. Then, it hits me too.
The walls are made of bones.
More specifically, a mind-blowing quantity of skulls and femurs stacked one after another, after another, after another. Worn and dirty skulls interrupt the lattice-like pattern the bones make. Hollow eyes stare back at us.
The skulls are arranged to make various patterns between the bones. A crucifix. A heart. A pentagram. There’s no discernible beginning or end, and when I scan my light along the walls, I find that these tableaus stretch on infinitely, disappearing down the passageway as it winds into the darkness.