Chapter 5

Marcus took the key ring from Priya's hand. The weight of it surprised him—eight old keys, some brass, some iron, clicking together in the amber lamplight. The one the small figure had pointed to was older than the rest, blackened iron, worn smooth at the edges, with a bow shaped like a cross.

He held it up to the door. The keyhole was black with age, a tiny slot in the rusted metal, and the key slid into it without resistance. It turned with a sound like breaking a seal, and the metal tongue of the lock moved with a grating drag. Marcus pulled on the handle. The door creaked, unsealed, swinging open one inch.

Then it swung open all the way, and the dark air hit him in the face.

The room behind the door was small. Narrow, windowless, about the size of a walk-in closet. A single bare bulb hung from the ceiling, coated in grime, struggling to cast its dim light into the corners. The walls were bare brick, old and weeping, the mortar crumbling between the joints.

And in the middle of the room, sitting cross-legged on the bare concrete floor, was a man.

He was old. Far older than Marcus's memory of his father. His hair, once sandy-brown like Marcus's own, had gone white and patchy, falling past his ears. His skin was grey, papery, thin over the bones. He wore a faded blue shirt, stained and torn, and his hands were loose in his lap, his fingers thin as twigs, the nails long and yellowed.

The man raised his head. His eyes were sunken, dark-ringed, but they were his father's eyes. Same shape. Same color. Same steady, unhurried way of looking at the world, like he had all the time in it.

"Hey, son," he said. His voice was cracked, thin, barely above a whisper. "Took you long enough."

Marcus didn't move for a long time. He stood in the doorway, his hand still on the key, his chest rising and falling faster than it should. Then he dropped the keys where he stood.

"Dad?" His voice cracked on the word. He knelt in the doorway, reaching out a hand, and the old man reached out his own hand, and their fingers touched. Marcus felt the bones under the skin, the wrongness of it, the eight years of it, and a sound escaped his throat that was somewhere between a sob and a laugh.

"You're alive," he said. "You're—how is that—the funeral—I buried you—"