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He looked at me. “I’ll overrule that. You can try again later when I put you to bed and kiss you good night. You might find me more biddable then.”

His voice told me there would be nothing so innocent as a good-night kiss later, and I was looking forward to it. It took my mind off what we were doing; not completely, but enough. I just hoped there wouldn’t be any priests at the church.

I hadn’t considered that the church would be closed, but of course it was. I looked at windows we could possibly smash to get inside, and Auris gave me a funny look and said he would go and find the church’s caretaker.

That left me to wander, my breath fogging the air. The church grounds stretched behind a wall, and the building was surrounded by a cemetery, headstones vanishing from sight where the lights that sat at intervals along the footpaths couldn’t reach.

I had my camera with me, and my flash as well, but I didn’t want to draw too much attention to our presence, so I stuck to low-light photography for now. I hadn’t really thought about adding a bone church to the project, but from what I’d seen online, it made a pretty good fit. If I could take photographs that weren’t the kind of thing you could already find online, all the better. Even if I couldn’t, there was a fascination growing inside of me. I was looking forward to seeing the ossuary for myself.

I went around the church and captured a few headstones, although they didn’t seem old or abandoned. If there were still living relatives, I’d have to blur the names of their loved ones or find other subjects. So I focused on the building, apart from one shot where I captured the tips of gravestones like an ocean at the bottom of the frame, the wall in the background, and a tree, naked and with winter-dark bark, caught in a play of shadow and light that made the branches look alive and monstrous.

Auris came back with a man somewhat past middle age. He wore a woolen cap with a tear in the fabric.

“You entranced him?” I whispered when the man unlocked the church for us.

“Yes.” He handed me the flashlight he’d brought from the car. “Ready?”

“Oh, yes.”

The caretaker left Auris with the keys, and I wondered about that. “He’ll stay by the entrance to the church grounds in case someone comes by and sees light through the windows. He’ll tell them there’s a photo shoot.”

“Right. That’s smart.”

Auris ran a hand down my back. “Well, you shouldn’t break into a place without at least the outline of a plan.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I believe it speaks for you. Come along.”

We crossed the threshold, Auris walking ahead of me. The church was dark around us, and cold, though not as cold as the November night outside. My flashlight told me what I’d been certain of already: Sedlec Ossuary was not your average church, not by a long shot. There were the normal church things—candles, crosses, paintings of saints—but what ruled the space were the bones.

They weaved along the ceiling in garlands of vertebrae, cast shadows from a massive chandelier made of skulls and shinbones, and generally filled every wall space, from below eye level to high above it, from knucklebone to toothless jaw. There were so many bones here, all ordered, taken apart and rearranged into nothing at all resembling a human body.

“Wow. It says a lot about me that I don’t find these scary, doesn’t it?” I took my first picture, looking up at the ceiling, bones looming above in serpentine curves.

“Probably.”

His voice came from my right, but I didn’t immediately see him. I followed, photographing as I went, but we weren’t here for a photo shoot, not really. There were pyramid-shaped arrangements to our left, and the skulls watched us.

“There,” Auris said after a while.

He pointed at a stretch of darkness. It was possible that the piece of darkness he’d found was a little grayer than the rest of the darkness around us, but even with the flashlight, I wasn’t sure.

“I don’t see anything.”

“It’s the sacristy. The crypt will be in there, I think. It doesn’t exist on any floor plan I’ve seen, but the priests said it was here. We’ll have to go look. I can go by myself.”

“Leave me while you get to explore in search of the secret crypt? Hard nope.”

Auris turned and held out his hand. “Very well. There is no one here. You don’t have to be frightened of anything, but watch your step.”

I nodded and took his hand, my camera dangling from its strap around my neck while I steadied the flashlight in my other hand. Like that, I followed Auris into the darkness.

10

We walked through the echoey church holding hands. Auris tried two keys before the small sacristy door swung open with the third. The lintel was low, and while the hinges didn’t squeak, a shudder ran down my spine when we passed through the door.

The sacristy had windows, so I could see gray outlines of candleholders and cabinets, crosses, and saints in gilded frames. I kept my flashlight aimed at the ground and followed Auris, who was steady in his exploring, not trembling like I was with a blend of anticipation and something that was one half excitement, one half fear of the unknown.