EPILOGUE
THIS IS A HONEYCOMB WORLD, each hollow linked to the next, each life inextricably intertwined with the lives of others. The loss of even one reverberates through the whole, altering the balance, changing the nature of existence in tiny, imperceptible ways.
I find myself returning again and again to a woman named Tante Marie Aguillard, her impossibly tiny child's voice coming to me from out of her immense form. I see her lying on a mountain of pillows in a warm, dark room in western Louisiana, the smell of the Atchafalaya drifting through the house; a shining, black shadow among shifting forms, heedless of the boundaries between the natural and the man-made as one world melts into another. She takes my hand and talks to me of my lost wife and child. They call to her, and tell her of the man who took their lives.
She has no need of light; her blindness is less an impediment than an aid to a deeper, more meaningful perception. Sight would be a distraction for her strange, wandering consciousness, for her intense, fearless compassion. She feels for them all: the lost, the vanished, the dispossessed, the frightened, suffering souls who have been violently wrenched from this life and can find no rest in their world within worlds. She reaches out to them, comforting them in their final moments so that they will not die alone, so that they will not be afraid as they pass from light into dark.
And when the Traveling Man, the dark angel, comes for her, she reaches out in turn to me, and I am with her as she dies.
Tante Marie knew the nature of this world. She roamed through it, saw it for what it was, and understood her place in it, her responsibility to those who dwelt within it and beyond. Now, slowly, I too have begun to understand, to recognize a duty to the rest, to those whom I have never known as much as to those whom I have loved. The nature of humanity, its essence, is to feel another's pain as one's own, and to act to take that pain away. There is a nobility in compassion, a beauty in empathy, a grace in forgiveness. I am a flawed man, with a violent past that will not be denied, but I will not allow innocent people to suffer when it is within my power to help them.
I will not turn my back on them.
I will not walk away.
And if, in doing these things, I can make some amends, some recompense, for the things that I have done and for all that I have failed to do, then that will be my consolation.
For reparation is the shadow cast by salvation.
I have faith in some better world beyond this one. I know that my wife and child dwell within it, for I have seen them. I know that they are safe now from the dark angels and that wherever may dwell Faulkner and Pudd and the countless others who wanted to turn life to death, they are far, far from Susan and Jennifer, and they can never touch them again.
There is rain tonight in Boston, and the glass of the window is anatomized with intricate veins traced across its surface. I wake, my knuckle still sore from the treated bite, and turn gently to feel her move close beside me. Her hand touches my neck and I know somehow that, while I have been asleep, she has been watching me in the darkness, waiting for the moment to arrive.
But I am tired, and as my eyes close again,
I am standing at the edge of the forest, and the air is filled with the howling of the hybrids. Behind me, the trees reach out to one another, and when they touch, they make a sound like children whispering. And as I listen, something moves in the shadows before me.
“Bird?”
Her hand is warm upon me, yet my skin is cold. I want to stay with her, but
I am drawn away again, for the darkness is calling me and a shape still moves through the trees. Slowly, the boy emerges, the black tape masking the lens of his glasses, his skin white. I try to walk to him but I cannot raise my feet. Behind him, other figures drift but they are walking away from us, disappearing into the forest, and soon he will join them. The wooden board has been discarded but the burn marks from the rope remain visible at his neck. He says nothing but stands watching me for a long, long time, one hand gripping the bark of the yellow birch beside him, until, at last, he too begins to recede,
“Bird,” she whispers.
fading away, moving deeper and deeper,
“I'm pregnant.”
down, down into the depths of this honeycomb world.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The following books proved invaluable in the course of writing this novel:
Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War by James Risen and Judy L. Thomas (Basic Books, 1998); Eagle Lake by James C. Ouellette (Harpswell Press, 1980); The Red Hourglass: Lives of the Predators by Gordon Grice (Allen Lane, 1998); The Book of the Spider by Paul Hillyard (Hutchinson, 1994); The Bone Lady by Mary H. Manheim (Louisiana State University Press, 1999); Maine Lighthouses by Courtney Thompson (CatNap Publications, 1996); Apocalypses by Eugen Weber (Hutchinson, 1999); The Apocalypse and the Shape of Things to Come, edited by Francis Carey (British Museum Press, 1999); and The Devil's Party by Colin Wilson (Virgin, 2000). In addition, Simpson's Forensic Medicine by Bernard Knight (Arnold, 1997) and Introduction to Forensic Sciences, second edition, edited by William G. Eckert (CRC Press, 1997), rarely left my desk.
Much of the material relating to religious movements in Maine came from Elizabeth Ring's introduction to her Directory of Churches & Religious Organizations in Maine, 1940 (Maine Historical Records Survey Project); “Till Shiloh Come” by Jason Stone (Down East magazine, March 1991); and “The Promised Land” by Earl M. Benson (Down East magazine, September 1953).
As each novel progresses, the depths of my ignorance become more and more apparent. I have relied on the knowledge and kindness of a great many people in researching this book, among them James Ferland and the staff of the Maine Medical Examiner's Office, Augusta; Officer Joe Giacomantonio, Scarborough Police Department; Captain Russell J. Gauvin, City of Portland Police Department; Sergeant Dennis R. Appleton, CID III, Maine State Police; Sergeant Hugh J. Turner, Maine State Police; L. Dean Paisley, my excellent guide to Eagle Lake; Rita Staudig, historian of the St. John Valley; Phineas Sprague Jr. of Portland Yacht Services; Bob and Babs Malkin, and Jim Block, who helped me with Jewish New York; Big Apple Greeters; Phil Procter, theater manager of the Wang Center in Boston; Beth Olsen at the Boston Ballet; the staff of the Center for Maine History in Portland, Maine; Chuck Antony; and many others. To all of them I owe a drink, and probably an apology for all of the mistakes that I've made.
Finally, I wish to thank my agent, Darley Anderson, and his assistants, Elizabeth and Carrie; my foreign rights agent Kerith Biggs; my editor at Hodder & Stoughton, Sue Fletcher; my editor at Atria Books, Emily Bestler, for her constant kindness and support; her associate editor, Sarah Branham; and Judith Curr and Louise Burke, my publishers at Atria Books and Pocket Books.
Titles by John Connolly
Series
Charlie Parker
1. Every Dead Thing (1998)
2. Dark Hollow (2000)
3. The Killing Kind (2001)
4. The White Road (2002)
5. The Black Angel (2005)
6. The Unquiet (2007)
Novels
Bad Men (2003)
The Book of Lost Things (2006)