Burial (29 page)

The bedroom was dark and cold and filled with the same herbal aroma. We stood by the window for a moment, so that our eyes could get accustomed to the gloom. Then I said, ‘Karen — can you lock the door and put on the security chain? Then listen out for Gimpy Rheiner.'

Amelia was standing between the two beds. She looked very pale and still. ‘Anything?' I asked her.

She nodded. ‘There's something here. Something close. I have a very strong feeling about a door being open.'

‘You mean, like a spiritual door?'

Again she nodded. ‘But it's not like anything I ever felt before. It feels
dangerous
, if you know what I mean. Like a roller-coaster ride in pitch darkness.'

‘I went on one of those in Disneyland.'

‘This is a hell of a lot more dangerous than Disneyland.'

She closed her eyes. ‘I feel it. It's very, very close. It's there, to the right.'

‘I can't see anything,' I told her.

‘Her eyes were still closed. ‘It's there, right there!'

‘I still don't see anything!' I said, beginning to panic.

But then she opened her eyes wide and pointed at the bed. ‘
It's there
!'

With a huge surge of fright, I dragged back the blankets; there was nothing there but a rumpled sheet. ‘Where?' I demanded. ‘Where?'

‘
Under the bed
!' Amelia shrilled at me. ‘
It's under the bed
!'

I stared at her. I was trying hard not to hyperventilate. ‘
Under
the bed?' Her eyes stayed tight shut. Her cheek-muscles were taut. Her jaw was rigid. ‘Umh-humh,' she said.

I turned back to the bed. All of my life I've been afraid of things lurking under beds. Even when I was a kid I didn't let my toes peek out from under the covers, because I knew for an absolute fact that trolls with razor-sharp teeth were hiding and waiting, and as soon as I peeked my toes out they would bite them off.

When I grew older I could never quite shake that feeling off. Under the bed was a dark space where anything could lurk, where anything could wait for you while you were asleep, ready to snatch at your unprotected ankles.

Karen, from the door, said, ‘Ssh! I think I can hear the elevator!'

‘The bed, Harry,' Amelia repeated. ‘It's under the bed.'

I thought: what the hell did I come here for? Why the hell did I allow Karen to get me mixed up in all of this? I thought of Martin, under arrest for a surrealistic murder
that he hadn't really committed — that's if you believed in psychic possession. But what if you
didn't
believe in psychic possession? Supposing the whole jury was made up of James Randis? What then? I was risking my life for nothing; and for somebody I hardly even knew.

Erskine, I thought, you've already donated quite enough sweat and adrenalin to other people's good causes — not to mention all that pleasurable and profitable business that you've sacrificed. How about taking care of yourself for a change? I hadn't known either of the Greenbergs; I hadn't been acquainted with Martin Vaizey, not until Amelia sent me round to Central Park West. I was an innocent bystander, that's all, and it was only my emotional involvement with Karen and Amelia that was keeping me here.

But — ‘
The bed
!' screamed Amelia — and I seized the end of the bed and hefted it over to the right.

What I saw under that bed made me stumble two paces back; and then another pace; and stand with my back hard against the wall. I was trembling and sweating and I had to keep coughing to clear my throat. I was like a man who has nearly stepped over a precipice, except that this was much more frightening than any precipice. This was
forever
.

Beneath the bed, there was a narrow trench in the floor, as narrow as a freshly-dug grave; but this grave was totally black and totally cold and apparently bottomless. I couldn't understand where it went. Down through the floor, down through the room below, and the room below that, and then thousands and thousands of feet, down through the solid bedrock? How could that be?

A thin icy wind keened almost silently through the hole; more like a memory of a wind that a real wind.

I didn't understand how such a hole could exist, and I didn't particularly want to understand it either. I turned to Amelia and said, ‘What? What the hell is it?'

She opened her eyes. ‘It's the door,' she said, with great
simplicity.

‘The door? The door to where?'

‘The door that somebody opened and then forgot to close. Or didn't
want
to close.'

‘But what's
down
there? Where does it go?'

Amelia leaned over it for a long time, making sure that she didn't stand too near to the edge. Her hair flew out behind her, proving that the grave was wide open; and that some kind of wind was blowing through, whether it was real or imaginary.

‘It's remarkable,' she said, standing up straight. ‘It's truly remarkable. It's one of the largest openings I've ever come across.'

Karen said, ‘Sssh! I'm sure I heard the elevator!'

I glanced down at the empty black hole under the bed. ‘You've seen something like this before?' I asked Amelia.

‘Oh, yes. They're quite common. But they're usually very, very small. Like a reflecting puddle, maybe; or a chip of broken glass; or a mirror; or a miniature picture. They're like windows. They happen everywhere. In the street, in the countryside, everywhere you look. They let us see right through to the world of spirits; and in return, the spirits can see us.'

‘So — these windows — these doors — they work two ways?' I asked her.

‘That's right. They're better than television, better than a book. If you can keep a window open for long enough, you can watch somebody's life, year after year.'

I looked down at the cold black hole. ‘There's nobody down there — not as far as I can make out.'

Amelia said, ‘I don't know
what's
down there. The last hole I saw was about the size of a pinprick. I never saw anything like this before.'

‘So what do we do?' I asked her.

‘I don't know,' she said. ‘This is way beyond the limit of my expertise. I mean, this is spirit activity on a massive scale.
It's powerful, it's sustained. It obviously has some purpose, but I don't know what.'

At that moment, I heard a passkey turning in the lock, and Karen called, ‘Harry!' and backed away from the door. The door jarred open on the security chain, and I heard a furious voice shouting, ‘Who's in there? Who is that? This is private property! If you don't open the door, I'll call the cops!'

‘Oh God, its Hopalong Rheiner,' I said. ‘Time we made a graceless exit.'

‘Harry,' said Amelia, ‘we have to find out what's causing this hole — where it goes to, what it is.'

‘Who's in there?' Mr Rheiner bellowed. ‘If you don't open that door I'm going to break it down, and then you'll be sorry!'

‘What are we going to do?' asked Karen, on the verge of panic.

‘We'll play it straight,' I told her. ‘We'll let Mr Rheiner in, we'll show him the hole and tell him what we're doing. Look at it, there's no denying its existence! A hole, right, six feet by three feet, and it goes down for ever!'

‘But he'll call the police, or make us leave,' said Amelia. ‘And we
have
to find out what this hole is.'

I lifted my hand reassuringly. Have no fear, Erskine's here. I went to the door and stood in front of it for a while, watching it furiously shake and rattle, and then I said, ‘Mr Rheiner?'

‘Who the hell are you? How d'you know my name?'

‘Mr Rheiner, it's Harry Erskine, from next door. My friends and I visited this room a little earlier today.'

‘Oh, it's you! I said to my wife, there's something I don't like about those people. I didn't like you the moment I clapped eyes on you.'

‘Mr Rheiner, we're not trying to cause trouble. But we've discovered something important — something that may explain what happened to George Hope and Andrew Danetree.'

‘Listen, friend,' Mr Rheiner raged, ‘either you get out of that room
now
, this minute, or else I'm going to call the cops and have you arrested for trespass.'

‘Mr Rheiner, you don't understand.'

‘You're damned right I don't understand! I run a respectable hotel here! Nobody got themselves murdered here and nobody did anything illegal or immoral! So get the hell out while I'm still feeling generous about it!'

I drew back the security chain and opened the door. Mr Rheiner was standing in the corridor with a furiously scarlet face. He was brandishing a policeman's nightstick.

‘Right,' he said, swinging his way into the room. ‘I want you out, and I want you out now, no arguments!'

I pointed to the hole in the floor. Black, empty, keening and cold. Mr Rheiner stared at it and then he stared at me. His eyeballs glistened with disbelief.

‘You see?' I challenged him. ‘I was telling the truth.'

‘You pulled up the floorboards.' he said, accusingly.

‘No, sir. No way.'

‘You pulled up the goddamned floorboards! Do you have any idea how much that's going to
cost
me?!'

‘Mr Rheiner, look at it. Nobody pulled up the floorboards!'

Mr Rheiner peered at the hole. Then, slowly, he eased himself down on his knees next to it and stared right into it. He poked his nightstick into it, as far as it would go. The hole was dark and deep and totally empty.

‘Give me that book,' he said, jerking his head towards the window-sill. A dog-eared copy of Ogden Nash poems was lying on the night-stand. I reluctantly picked it up and passed it over. Mr Rheiner took it and flipped it without hesitation into the hole.

He peered down after it. ‘It's falling,' he said, in awe. ‘It's falling.'

Amelia glanced at me impatiently.

‘It's not your ordinary kind of hole in the floor, Mr Rheiner,' she told him.

‘The book's still falling,' said Mr Rheiner, in awe. ‘It must be a hundred feet down, and it's still falling.'

I was tempted for a split-second to give him a kick up the backside, and send him tumbling down the hole to fall as far as his book was falling — which as far as I could see, was for ever. I checked my watch. I looked at Amelia, but Amelia must have guessed what I was thinking, because she shook her head. I could guess what she would say to me: that if I kicked a living man down a spiritual hole, I'd disrupt the equilibrium of the spirit world so violently that all human existence could stop dead, right here and now, as if it had never happened.

I remembered Adelaide Bright telling me that for every psychic success we have a psychic bill to pay; and sometimes that bill is almost more than anybody could bear.

Mr Rheiner stood up. ‘There's a hole here,' he said, in an oddly matter-of-fact voice. ‘A damned great hole, all the way down to the basement All the way down to the goddamned
sewers
.'

He stood up and faced us, brushing his pants. ‘I think you people owe me some kind of explanation, don't you? In one afternoon, you've dug a damned great hole, all the way down to God knows where? And you dug it so's I didn't even hear? What about the Kinseys, in the apartment below. You think
they're
going to tolerate such a hole? I just had their ceiling replastered.'

‘Mr Rheiner —' I began, but he loudly shushed me.

‘You listen to me, feller, I don't want to hear anything you have to say. All I know is, you've wrecked at least three of my best rooms. Either you agree to have them all repaired — and I mean repaired quick — or else I call the cops. In any case, I don't want to see you or your lady friends in my hotel ever again, and I mean
ever
, period. What these two ladies
see in you, I can't even begin to imagine.'

‘Mr Rheiner — ' I began again, but I knew that there wasn't much point. It's always sad and embarrassing when people start being personal.

Amelia said, ‘Harry, I need to try some tests,' but Mr Rheiner stood defensively in front of the hole and folded his arms.

‘You're not coming anywhere near. I want your names and I want your addresses and I want to hear you say that you're going to make all of this damage good.'

‘Mr Rheiner, I don't think you understand what this is all about,' said Amelia.

‘There's a hole in this room, for sure; but if you go downstairs to the apartment below, I don't think you'll find that there's any hole at all.'

Mr Rheiner pugnaciously folded his arms. ‘Lady, this hole is hundreds of feet deep. What the hell do you take me for? Some kind of retard?'

‘You're a retard if you think we dug our way through three floors and hundreds of feet of bedrock in a couple of hours, without machinery and without spoil and without making any sound at all.'

Mr Rheiner pointed at her accusingly, and then at me. ‘I'll find out how you did it. You mark my words. I'll find out how.'

Even as he spoke, however, I saw wisps of what looked like black smoke drifting out of the hole, and sliding in a curious sideways motion under the bed. The smoke grew thicker, until it was blowing around his ankles. Amelia began to back away and took hold of Karen's arm so that she retreated, too.

Mr Rheiner said, ‘There's no use in your trying to duck out of this. You're going to pay for this damage no matter what.'

‘What
is
that?' I whispered to Amelia, as the smoke
around Mr Rheiner's ankles billowed denser and blacker. It didn't smell like smoke. It didn't dissipate like smoke. It seemed to swell; and to grow denser; until it loomed over Mr Rheiner like a hugely exaggerated shadow.

It
was
a shadow. It wasn't smoke at all. It was the raw stuff of darkness; the raw stuff of fright and fear. It grew heavy-headed and forbidding, until it loomed behind Mr Rheiner in a hideous parody of his own lumpen disabled shape. It
was
him; and yet it was something more, something
other
. It was like all that was blackest in his own soul, climbing above him in a threatening theatre of mockery and destructive hatred.