The hound did, and as he moved, I caught the smell he’d picked up earlier, enough that I realized what it was, and that prepared me, as he turned toward a corpse. A corpse ringed by melted candles.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

The man lay in the fetal position in a circle of candles, all melted to puddles on the dirt floor. My first thought was ritual. A sacrifice of some kind. But then I saw the matches lying by his hand. Brenin gingerly stepped over the wax puddles and looked down.

It was a matchbox, rather than a book of matches. I would expect that, given how old the body appeared to be. Leathery skin stretched over a skull topped with dark blond hair, the rest of him seeming no more than a bag of bones encased in clothing.

Then I got a closer look at that matchbox. A perfectly preserved wooden one, with a painted logo for an adventure supply store with a website address.

Brenin moved closer to the body and lowered his head to examine it, starting at the top. It was exactly as I’d thought from farther back—skin stretched tight over bone. But here I could see lesions, like pockmarks, dotting the cheeks.

Definitely male, a young man with stubble and hair a little longer than Ricky’s, drawn into a topknot. A modern hairstyle. Modern clothing, too, from a multi-pocketed khaki jacket to hiking boots to a T-shirt announcing that he’d survived whitewater rafting in the Devil’s Gorge. He didn’t survive this, though. Whatever this was.

When Brenin backed up, I spotted two items, half hidden under the young man’s corpse. A cell phone and an open notebook. Brenin used his nails to tug out the notebook. The ink had smeared too much to read, but words covered the pages, as if the guy had been scribbling notes right up until…well, whatever happened.

Another step back. Off to the side lay a backpack with a crowbar and flashlight. I remembered the hole above, the boards looking as if they’d been pried off.

Urban-explorer dude came into this room. Specifically into this room, tearing through the boards to get to it. Then he wrote that on the wall—

He didn’t write it. Ioan had been quiet, and his mental voice startled me.

The blood isn’t his, he continued.

Blood? Oh, it’s written in…

Yes. We can smell it, and Brenin can tell it’s not the same as that from the body. It’s also older. Significantly older. And from multiple sources.

Multiple…? Oh.

The writing was what this guy had come to see. He’d somehow known this room was down here and broken in to get a look at it.

And then surrounded himself with candles?

Beware the darkness.

He’d brought the candles. He’d come prepared.

He did, a voice said. Yet he didn’t listen. Wouldn’t listen.