We were face to face, or would have been if I hadn’t been the only one of us with a face.

Across the whole of it, patterns of elaborately integrated bones blossomed, withered, were replaced by new forms and patterns, but in a tickless, clickless quicksilver hush.

This silent exhibition was intended to display its absolute and otherworldly control of its physiology, and to leave me terrified and abashed at my comparative weakness. As when I had watched it at the window, I sensed an overweening vanity in its display of itself, an arrogance that was eerily human, a pompousness and boastfulness that exceeded mere vanity and that might be called vainglory

I backed up a step, another. “Kiss my ass, you ugly bastard.”

In a rending fury, it fell upon me, ice-cold and merciless. Uncountable maxillas and mandibles chewed, spurred heelbones ripped, stiletto-sharp phalanges gouged, a whiplike spine with hooked and razored vertebrae slashed me open from abdomen to throat, and my heart was found and torn apart, and thereafter what I could do for the children of St. Bartholomew’s School was limited to what power I might have as one of the lingering dead.

Yes, it could have gone as badly as that, but in fact I just lied to you. The truth is stranger than the lie, though considerably less traumatic.

Everything in my account is true through the point at which I told the bag of bones to kiss my posterior. After issuing that heartfelt vulgarity, I did take one step backward, and then one more.

Because I believed that I had nothing to lose, that my life was already forfeited, I turned boldly from the apparition. I dropped to my hands and knees, and crawled through the four-foot-square aperture between the service passageway and the boiler room.

I expected the thing to snare my feet and to haul me back into its realm. When I reached the boiler room unharmed, I rolled onto my back and scooted away from the open service access, anticipating the intrusion of a questing, pincered, bony appendage.

No keening arose from beyond the wall, but no clitter-clatter of retreat, either, though the rumble of the boiler-room pumps might have masked all but the loudest of those noises.

I listened to my thundering heart, delighted to still have it. And all my fingers, and all my teeth, my precious little spleen, and both buttocks.

Considering the walking boneyard’s ability to manifest in infinite iterations, I saw no reason why it wouldn’t follow me into the boiler room. Even in its current configuration, it would have no trouble passing through the four-foot-square opening.

If the creature entered, I had no weapon with which to drive it back. But if I failed to make a stand, I’d be conceding it access to the school, where at this moment most of the children were at lunch in the ground-floor refectory, others in their rooms on the second floor.

Feeling foolish and inadequate, I erupted to my feet, snatched a fire extinguisher from its wall rack, and held it ready, as though I might be able to kill those bundled bones of contention with a fog of ammonium phosphate, as in bad early sci-fi movies where the heroes are apt to discover, in the penultimate scene, that the rampaging and apparently indestructible monster can be dissolved by something as mundane as salt or laundry bleach, or lavender-scented hairspray.

I could not even be sure that this thing was alive in the sense that people and animals and insects are alive, or even in the sense that plants are alive. I could not explain how a three-dimensional collage of bones, regardless of how astoundingly intricate it might appear, could be alive when it lacked flesh, blood, and visible sense organs. And if it wasn’t alive, it couldn’t be killed.

A supernatural explanation eluded me, too. Nothing in the theology of any major religion proposed the existence of an entity like this, nor anything in any body of folklore with which I was familiar.

Boo appeared from among the boilers. He studied me and my ammonium-phosphate-fog weapon. He sat, cocked his head, and grinned. He seemed to find me amusing.

Armed with the fire extinguisher and, if that failed, with only Black Jack chewing gum, I stood my ground for a minute, two minutes, three.

Nothing came from beyond the wall. Nothing waited at the threshold, tapping its fleshless toes impatiently.

I set aside the fire extinguisher.

Staying ten feet back from the low opening, I got on my hands and knees to peer into the passageway. I saw the lighted concrete corridor dwindling toward the cooling tower, but nothing that would make me want to call Ghostbusters.

Boo went closer to the service aperture than I dared, peered in, then glanced at me, perplexed.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t get it.”

I replaced the stainless-steel panel. As I inserted the first bolt and tightened it with the special tool, I expected something to slam against the farther side, rip the panel away, and drag me out of the boiler room. Didn’t happen.

Whatever had prevented the beast of bones from doing to me what it had done to Brother Timothy, I do not know, though I am certain it had wanted me and had intended to take me. I’m pretty sure that my insult — Kiss my ass, you ugly bastard — did not cause it to sulk away with hurt feelings.

CHAPTER 34

RODION ROMANOVICH ARRIVED IN THE GARAGE wearing a handsome bearskin hat, a white silk neck scarf, a black three-quarter-length lined leather coat with fur collar and fur cuffs, and — no surprise — zippered rubber boots that rose to his knees. He looked as if he had dressed for a horse-drawn sleigh-ride with the czar.

After my experience with the galloping boneyard, I was lying on my back on the floor, staring at the ceiling, trying to calm myself, waiting for my legs to stop trembling and regain some strength.

Standing over me, peering down, he said, “You are a peculiar young man, Mr. Thomas.”

“Yes, sir. I am aware.”

“What are you doing down there?”

“Recovering from a bad scare.”

“What scared you?”

“A sudden recognition of my mortality.”

“Have you not previously realized you are mortal?”

“Yes, sir, I’ve been aware of it for a while. I was just, you know, overcome by a sense of the unknown.”

“What unknown, Mr. Thomas?”

“The great unknown, sir.

I’m not a particularly vulnerable person. Little unknowns don’t disconcert me.”

“How does lying on a garage floor console you?”

“The water stains on the ceiling are lovely. They relax me.”

Looking at the concrete overhead, he said, “I find them ugly.”

“No, no. All the soft shadings of gray and black and rust, just a hint of green, gently blending together, all free-form shapes, not anything that looks as defined and rigid as a bone.”

“Bone, did you say?”

“Yes, sir, I did. Is that a bearskin hat, sir?”

“Yes. I know it is not politically correct to wear fur, but I refuse to apologize for it to anyone.”

“Good for you, sir. I’ll bet you killed the bear yourself.”

“Are you an animal activist, Mr. Thomas?”

“I have nothing against animals, but I’m usually too busy to march on their behalf.”

“Then I will tell you that I did, indeed, kill the bear from which this hat was fashioned and from which the fur came for the collar and cuffs of this coat.”

“That isn’t much to have gotten from a whole bear.”

“I have other fur items in my wardrobe, Mr. Thomas. I wonder how you knew that I killed the bear.”

“I mean no offense by this, sir, but in addition to the fur for various garments, you received into yourself something of the spirit of the bear when you killed it.”

From my extreme perspective, his many frown lines looked like terrible dark saber scars. “That sounds New Age and not Catholic.”

“I’m speaking metaphorically, not literally, and with some irony, sir.”

“When I was your age, I did not have the luxury of irony. Will you get up from there?”

“In a minute, sir. Eagle Creek Park, Garfield Park, White River State Park — Indianapolis has some very nice parks, but I didn’t know there were bears in them.”

“As I am sure you realize, I hunted the bear and shot it when I was a young man in Russia.”

“I keep forgetting you’re Russian. Wow, librarians are a tougher bunch in Russia than here, hunting bear and all.”

“Everyone had it tough. It was the Soviet era. But I was not a librarian in Russia.”

“I’m in the middle of a career change myself. What were you in Russia?”

“A mortician.”

“Is that right? You embalmed people and stuff.”

“I prepared people for death, Mr. Thomas.”

“That’s a peculiar way of putting it.”

“Not at all.

That’s how we said it in my former country.” He spoke a few words in Russian and then translated: ” ‘I am a mortician. I prepare people for death.’ Now, of course, I am a librarian at the Indiana State Library opposite the Capitol, at one-forty North Senate Avenue.”

I lay in silence for a moment. Then I said, “You’re quite droll, Mr. Romanovich.”

“But I hope not grotesque.”

“I’m still thinking about that.” I pointed to the second SUV.

“You’re driving that one. You’ll find the keys tagged with the license number in a wall box over there.”

“Has your meditation on the ceiling stains ameliorated your fear of the great unknown?”

“As much as could be expected, sir. Would you like to take a few minutes to meditate on them?”

“No thank you, Mr. Thomas. The great unknown does not trouble me.” He went to get the keys.

When I rose to my feet, my legs were steadier than they had been recently.

Ozzie Boone, a four-hundred-pound best-selling mystery writer who is my friend and mentor in Pico Mundo, insists that I keep the tone light in these biographical manuscripts. He believes that pessimism is strictly for people who are over-educated and unimaginative. Ozzie counsels me that melancholy is a self-indulgent form of sorrow. By writing in an unrelievedly dark mode, he warns, the writer risks culturing darkness in his heart, becoming the very thing that he decries.

Considering the gruesome death of Brother Timothy, the awful discoveries yet to be revealed in this account, and the grievous losses forthcoming, I doubt that the tone of this narrative would be half as light as it is if Rodion Romanovich had not been part of it. I do not mean that he turned out to be a swell guy. I mean only that he had wit.

These days, all I ask of Fate is that the people she hurls into my life, whether they are evil or good, or morally bipolar, should be amusing to one degree or another. This is a big request to make of busy Fate, who has billions of lives to keep in constant turmoil. Most good people have a sense of humor. The problem is finding smile-inducing evil people, because the evil are mostly humorless, though in the movies they frequently get some of the best lines. With few exceptions, the morally bipolar are too preoccupied with justifying their contradictory behaviors to learn to laugh at themselves, and I’ve noticed they laugh at other people more than with them.

Burly, fur-hatted, and looking as solemn as a man should who prepares people for death, Rodion Romanovich returned with the keys to the second SUV.

“Mr. Thomas, any scientist will tell you that in nature many systems appear to be chaotic, but when you study them long enough and closely enough, strange order always underlies the appearance of chaos.”

I said, “How about that.”

“The winter storm into which we are going will seem chaotic — the shifting winds and the churning snow and the brightness that obscures more than it reveals — but if you could view it not at the level of a meteorological event, view it instead at the micro scale of fluid and particle and energy flux, you would see a warp and woof suggestive of a well-woven fabric.”

“I left my micro-scale eyeglasses in my room.”

“If you were to view it at the atomic level, the event might seem chaotic again, but proceeding into the subatomic, strange order appears once more, an even more intricate design than warp and woof. Always, beneath every apparent chaos, order waits to be revealed.”

“You haven’t seen my sock drawer.”

“The two of us might seem to be in this place, at this time, only by coincidence, but both an honest scientist and a true man of faith will tell you there are no coincidences.”

I shook my head. “They sure did make you do some pretty deep thinking at that mortician’s school.”

Neither a spot nor a wrinkle marred his clothes, and his rubber boots gleamed like patent leather.

Stoic, seamed, and solid, his face was a mask of perfect order.

He said, “Do not bother to ask for the name of the mortician’s school, Mr. Thomas. I never attended one.”

“This is the first time I’ve known anyone,” I said, “who embalmed without a license.”

His eyes revealed an order even more rigorous than that exemplified by his wardrobe and his face.

He said, “I obtained a license without the need for schooling. I had a natural-born talent for the trade.”

“Some kids are born with perfect pitch, with a genius for math, and you were born knowing how to prepare people for death.”

“That is exactly correct, Mr. Thomas.”

“You must have come from interesting genetic stock.”

“I suspect,” he said, “that your family and mine were equally unconventional.”

“I’ve never met my mother’s sister, Aunt Cymry, but my father says she’s a dangerous mutant they’ve locked away somewhere.”

The Russian shrugged. “I would nevertheless wager heavily on the equivalency of our families. Should I lead the way or follow you?”

If he contained chaos on some level below wardrobe and face and eyes, it must be in his mind. I wondered what kind of strange order might underlie it.

“Sir, I’ve never driven in snow before. I’m not sure how I’ll be able to tell, under all the drifts, exactly where the driveway runs between here and the abbey. I’d have to plow by intuition — though I usually do all right that way.”

“With all due respect, Mr. Thomas, I believe that experience trumps intuition. Russia is a world of snow, and in fact I was born during a blizzard.”

“During a blizzard, in a mortuary?”

“Actually, in a library.”

“Was your mother a librarian?”

“No,” he said. “She was an assassin.”

“An assassin.”