Fortress of Ephemera: A Gothic Thriller (6 page)

In the great hall we passed a great pyramid of rolled up rugs, a white sea of draped furniture, an island chain of grand and baby grand pianos—seven in total, I think—and a regiment of grandfather clocks about forty members strong and ticking out of synchrony. It was materialism run amok. It was the garbled language of the mad. It was virtually a walk inside an unhinged mind.

With the ground floor windows boarded up, the darkness achieved a lurid hue. It was the darkness of spelunking, of shut closets and blankets pulled overhead in the night. Nary a city sound, nor the pounding sleet, could be heard, so thoroughly did the family's copious accumulations insulate the household.

“It's quiet as a crypt in here,” Patrolman Cox said, “save for Noah's jingling.”

“Cold as a crypt too,” Howard said.

Willie, just ahead of me, whispered over his shoulder and through his mask: “Smell's getting worse. What is it?”

“A putrid stew,” I whispered back, “with a thousand or more ingredients. Simmering since before you were born.”

The miasma so overwhelmed Miss Buxton that she was having difficulty engaging her target of charity in conversation. With every ragged breath or extended pause I expected her to retch, though she never did. Not then.

Our tortuous goat path narrowed to about sixteen inches at one point, and we had to journey sideways until it widened again. Progress halted briefly as Patrolman Cox announced we had reached “a fork in the road.” Noah directed him to take the right fork, and within minutes we were descending a rickety wooden staircase lined on both sides with empty milk bottles and cardboard boxes of canned goods and catarrhal powder and leading into the basement. I had not previously visited this portion of the home—I hadn't seen most of it, in fact—and I recall feeling a mix of trepidation and wonder, like the boy Aladdin descending into his cave, for I knew this much: that more of the unimaginable awaited.

The Basement

Approximately 6:00 PM

Now the basement of the average American domicile—the attic too, I suppose—is a likely place in which to find Langley-like clutter. (Perhaps there is a little Noah and Elizabeth in most of us. How about yourself, Doctor Dunn?) So imagine just how overstuffed we found this one particular basement.

It was a dense, surgically packed clutter from the cement floor to the ceiling rafters, except for a pair of Noah's meandering trails, a fully outfitted workbench with a place to stand in front of it, and an automobile buried merely to its wheels in the center of the room.

Yes, an automobile. And no flivver this one, but a turn-of-the-century era luxury car with a white frame of pressed steel, red leather seats, and a golden horn the size of a gramophone's.

“Now don't that beat all,” Willie said, wide-eyed.

“What's next?” Howard wondered. “A Sopwith Camel?”

“It's beautiful,” Miss Buxton said through her handkerchief. “What kind is it, Mister Langley? I don't think I've ever seen one before.”

“It's called a 'Mercedes,' ” he said. “A 'Mercedes Simplex.' My father purchased it about six months before his death in 1903, and it arrived by ship from Germany the day after his funeral. Although I don't feel the urge to drive motor cars myself, I couldn't very well part with this one, given the sentiment involved, as well as its surpassing beauty. And who knows that I won't need to travel somewhere far off one day, in some kind of emergency, so it's always here, waiting on me.”

“How'd you get the car in here?” Howard asked. There was only a bulkhead door leading outside, barely visible from the tonnage of trifles stacked in front of it.

“And after you've answered how,” I said, “perhaps you could address why?”

But the attention of our host had been drawn by now to Patrolman Cox, who had begun heaving junk hither and thither in an attempt to expose the gas and electric meters. (How he had determined that they were located behind the furnace, I don't recall.)

“Careful with those boxes!” Noah cried. The patrolman, at a burly six foot two, or even a bit more, and in the prime of his life, made rapid progress with the excavation, stirring dust into the air, which reeked of mold and cat urine.

Oh, that reminds me: I've neglected to mention the two dozen mongrel felines—part Persian, part Siamese, part Satanic—surrounding us from their junk pile perches, hissing at us and hoisting their bendy backs into Japanese bridges. We had all put our gloves back on to reduce the amount of skin exposed to their claws and teeth. Noah's shushing sounds and “Kitty, kitty” calls had soothed the cats somewhat and had even coaxed a few down to the floor to rub against his legs.

“Well, what are you two waiting for?” Patrolman Cox asked the Edison men when he'd exposed their meters. “Put your wrenches to work, and let's be off.”

As the workmen loosened the meters, with Noah hovering between them, increasingly agitated, I recalled a Daily News story on the Langleys that I'd read the week before with a sense of amusement I no longer felt. The story mainly recounted neighborhood gossip about the family, the more outlandish legends and rumors, including that Noah stored a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost automobile in his basement.

Nearly right
, I thought now, and wondered what else the article had right, or nearly so. Priceless artifacts buried beneath the debris? Including the mummy of an Egyptian king in a bejeweled sarcophagus? That a ghost haunted the mansion? And could often be heard howling or wailing into the night? The aforementioned vampire theory?

Suddenly, the only legend or rumor that I felt I could wholly discount was the one maintaining that Noah lived alone with the corpse of his dead twin, Elizabeth, having myself heard that call bell ring whilst speaking with Noah during a previous visit.

It may sound foolish to you, Doctor, that I seriously pondered such absurd notions as ghosts and mummies and vampires, even for an instant, but consider the absurd environment. The Langley household was one not unlike a waking nightmare, and I am too poor and unskilled an author to limn its full effects on the human mind—its full and immediate effects, I might add.

“Damn thing's rusted on here,” Willie said of the gas meter a moment or two before he dropped his wrench, startled, and sprang backwards into a stack of sawhorses, shouting a vile expletive (a four-syllable rebuke of carnal intercourse with one's mother, if you must know).

“Hell and damnation!” Howard said when he saw what Willie had seen. “Would you look at that thing!”

He pointed to the top of a wooden crate at eye level beside the furnace, where a kitten with two tails, three hind legs, and a head as lumpy as a rotting grapefruit pawed at a spider web.

“It must be the result of inbreeding,” I said. Indeed the entire Langley mansion struck me as a world turned in upon itself, like a tumor, the grotesqueries inevitable.

Noah pronounced the freak kitten harmless so long as one didn't attempt to pet it, or to pick it up, and Willie and Howard went back to work, though neither man took his eyes from the animal long.

With a final grunt and twist of the wrench Willie freed his meter. Noah snatched the meter away unexpectedly (though perhaps we should've expected it) and cradled the metal instrument in his arms as if it were baby Jesus in the court of King Herod.

“Now, Noah—” I began, but cut myself off when footsteps sounded at the top of the creaky staircase. With a quick slap of leather, Patrolman Cox cleared his weapon from his holster and raised it in my direction.

“Duck, Trenowyth,” he whispered, “you're in my line of fire.” I did, pulling Miss Buxton down with me, just in case.

“You blokes down here, are you?” called an Irishman's voice from above. “Front door was open, so we let ourselves in. Hope you don't mind much. The sleet is bucketing down outside, and my friend here is sick.”

“Yeah, sick,” called a second Irishman's voice, and then he coughed. “Sick I don't have a few bob for a pint of the black stuff.”

I heard sniggering on the staircase, where two pairs of legs in dark trousers were descending, preceded by prancing flashlight beams. Behind me I heard a thud and an
oof
and another heavier thud, the fall of some bulky object. I turned to find Patrolman Cox face down on the floor of the path, immobile. Howard Kemble was stooped over his body, monkey wrench in hand, picking the cop's gun up off the floor. Howard straightened and aimed the weapon at me.

A Ruse Revealed

“Attention ladies and gentlemen!” Howard exclaimed through his flu mask, the barrel of the revolver pointing at my midsection from a distance of about seven feet. “This is a robbery!”

Miss Buxton did not shriek in fear, as one expected of her sex, nor fling herself upon me as though she meant to hide in my overcoat. She merely sidled closer until our garments brushed.

With his monkey wrench playfully held aloft, Howard said: “Sorry to throw one of these into your plans for the evening, Mister Trenowyth, Miss Buxton. But it just couldn't be helped.”

The recent arrivals—both alien micks, as it turned out, rather than American-born—had made the bottom of the stairs and now crept along the narrow path behind us, one trailing the other. They wore flu masks too and pointed their light beams at us, as well as their buck knives.

Howard said to them: “What took you so long?”

The mick who answered I would soon come to know as Cormac. “It was your fault, Howie. You were too stingy with the birdseed. We lost the trail and had to find our own way through all this shite.”

“There's a lady present,” I cautioned, earning a rabbit punch to the back of the head from Cormac as he came to a halt behind me. Hot breath and more imprecations blew past my ear.

“Yeah, Howie, there's a fucking lady present. And a God damn cop too. You said it would only be this asshole, the mouthpiece.”

“Couldn't be helped either,” Howard said. “You must've seen what happened.” He grabbed Noah by the scruff of his collar and shoved that light, little man forward so that Noah stumbled over the patrolman's body and into Miss Buxton and myself.

“Trenowyth,” Noah said, “you're fired.”

Patrolman Cox had begun to stir. Howard and Willie took hold of him beneath the armpits and yanked him to his feet. However groggy, Cox already understood the situation, I could tell, as a sneer had knocked his handlebar mustache off kilter. They shoved him forward until we'd formed a tight little knot of hostages in front of Noah's prized motor car.

“What do you want from us?” I said to Howard. “Our wallets? Our pocket watches?”

“Hardly,” he said. “Were you always this thick? Or was it the opium done it to you?”

“I beg your pardon?” Had I heard him right? No, my ears had to be playing tricks with me under duress. He couldn't possibly know—.

“Could I be plainer? We are familiar, Sir, with your favorite haunts in Chinatown.”

My face grew hot—and reddened, no doubt—and the only verbal response I could muster was a whispered: “Who are you people?”

“Who are we?” Howard said. “Know this much. We covet a great deal more than wallets or pocket watches. Although we won't rule out relieving you of yours in due time.”

My voice found its volume again. “Yes, I see now, I
was
being thick. For if this were a simple hold-up it would've been far easier to rob us on the street. Instead, you've resorted to an elaborate ruse in order to penetrate this household, posing as New York Edison employees, fabricating a court order.”

“You left out vetting our intended hostages,” Howard said. He smirked behind the mask—or so I read it in the crinkling of his eyes—and he glanced at Miss Buxton, I thought to enjoy the extent to which news of my opium addiction surprised or affected her. I felt the urge to peek at her myself, but couldn't somehow.

Instead I asked Howard: “Why? What is it you're after?” But before Howard had a chance to answer, a new thought of my own leapt straight to my lips. “You're the trespassers from last week. The ones Noah heard breaking in through a window.”

“That's right,” he said, “the very same, and it was that experience taught us a ruse would be necessary.” He whipped off his mask. An angry face with an even angrier wound greeted us, for across his left cheek ran a four-inch, red and purple gash, zippered with fresh stitches, oozing a bit of pus. “Just look what this barmy old codger's done to my face.” He daggered Noah with his eyes before refocusing on me. “He'd rigged up some sort of medieval home security system using a trip wire and a pair of crossbows. It was an arrow did this to me. An arrow! In New York City! Another one grazed my ribcage. I thought Robin Hood himself was about to do me in.”

Howard shifted his stance from me to Noah, stooping low enough for the pair to come nose to nose. “I'd pay you back for this mark right now, little man—pay you back double—only I've pity for lunatics.”

My angle from Noah wouldn't allow me to see his expression as he stared back at Howard, but I witnessed the gas meter cradled again in his arms. He was caressing it subtly with his fingertips, which were filthy, his nails so blackened with dirt as to appear painted.

The wild cats, sensing a change in tension among the humans—or so it seemed to me then—had begun hissing and snarling with more force. Off to my left I caught the silver flash of a buck knife as it sliced into one of the cats who'd ventured too near. (It wasn't Cormac, but the other mick who'd slashed it, the one I'd soon come to know as Brady.) The wounded animal's caterwauling was unnerving, akin to a human infant's torture, and the noise roused the other cats to near mania. What a devilish racket! A sound to soothe Satan! I barely exaggerate when I say it would've been less chilling facing off with a solitary cougar at that moment in that basement.