the page again, the excitement mounting in her voice.
“The Cimitero Acattolico in Rome—officially founded in 1716 but built adjacent to the Pyramid of Cestius, a tomb that dates back to somewhere between 18 and 12 B.C. Bodies were routinely buried there for over a thousand years, long before the grounds were consecrated,” she told me.
Her eyes met mine, and her voice took on a conspiratorial tone. “I must admit, brother, I did not visit Paris only to view art, I also walked the grounds of the Cimetière du Père Lachaise. Like the others, it was founded as a cemetery and officially consecrated in 1804, but the original site was that of a small chapel with burials dating back as early as 1682. The original thirteen graves were never blessed. The Church refused, not knowing who was buried there.”
“Saint John the Baptist in Clontarf,” I said softly. “The suicide graves we talked about as children, that ground is unconsecrated to this day.”
Matilda nodded. “Every cemetery amongst her maps has such graves; burial plots never blessed by the Church.”
“But why would this interest her?”
Matilda leaned back in her chair. “I remember the marks upon the maps distinctly. Each had a circle around the cemetery, and all but the location at Whitby had an X. I think she has visited each of these locations.”
“For what reason?”
“Either in search of something or to place something, that would be my guess.”
I thought about this for a moment. “How does this pertain to the information you found on O’Cuiv?”
Matilda let out a frustrated sigh. “That, I do not know, but I imagine it does; it feels like it does. All of this feels like the pieces of a puzzle fitting together, but the complete image is still unknown.”
My sister turned the pages of her sketchbook, flipping past the many drawings she had made of Nanna Ellen when we were children, not one looking like the last. The same woman but different. She stopped when she reached a new drawing, one of Patrick O’Cuiv, the scars on his arms highlighted in a harsh red. “Ellen, O’Cuiv, these maps,” she said. “It’s all connected somehow.”
She closed the sketchbook then, her eyes meeting mine. “There is one person who probably knows something of all this.”
I could only nod.
“You and I must speak to Thornley,” I heard myself say.
THE DIARY of THORNLEY STOKER
(RECORDED IN SHORTHAND AND TRANSCRIBED HEREWITH.)
10 August 1868, 8:00 p.m.—Emily finally found sleep, and for this mercy I was grateful. It took a substantial dose of laudanum in her evening’s wine to make her do so. I found myself staring at my beautiful wife’s face, so peaceful and content. Her skin glowed in the lamplight with the luster of fine china, her bosom rising and falling in a steady rhythm beneath the soft cotton sheets. I couldn’t help but watch.
Who could turn away?
This state of being was such a far cry from only two hours earlier; I cringed at the memory of it. Her shouting at me from across the library as she hurled volume after volume into the consuming flames of the fireplace, loudly proclaiming, “The Devil breathes within these pages! The voice of Satan himself!” I tried to tell her she was wrong, for the book she held in her hand was nothing more than a medical journal, but when she opened it and read from the pages with eyes as wide as saucers, I knew there was no reaching her. “Bartholomew pressed his lips against Amelia’s bosom and inhaled the stench of death as blood poured from her open mouth and ears!” Even as she read these words, her eyes flickering across some random page, I knew they were a fabrication of her own mind.
Again, this was a medical journal; I caught the page beneath her thumb, and the headline read OBSERVATIONS ON THE TREATMENT OF ZYMOTIC DISEASES BY THE ADMINISTRATION OF SULPHATE. Yet, she continued to read imaginary words in a voice so loud I covered my ears. “It was her life he desired most, the very essence of her soul, and he held her until it was fully his before dropping her body in a heap