Houses of Stone (19 page)

He obviously didn't like the idea, but after a moment he said, "I guess this would be as good a time as any. The water should have subsided by
now, and if it rains again tonight . . . It's a filthy mess, though. Wear— uh—something old. And boots, if you have them."

He hadn't looked directly at her except for the first startled acknowledgment of her sudden appearance. Amused, Karen went to her room and exchanged her lace-trimmed pale-blue, rosebud-embroidered robe for jeans and sweatshirt. The robe was another
of
the follies she had committed under the influence of Joan and Sharon; she wore it, in private, because it would have been a waste of money to buy another, more practical garment. It must have given Cameron a false impression, especially after the pink frilly gown she had worn to tea. He had been embarrassed, bless his innocent little heart. Or perhaps he had feared Mrs. Fowler would see them in what she would certainly interpret as a potentially compromising position. If she could see Mrs. Fowler's window. Mrs. F. could undoubtedly see the apartment from that same window, and it wouldn't surprise her to learn that Mrs. Fowler kept a pair of binoculars on the windowsill.

Her present ensemble ought to convince Cameron her wardrobe was not limited to business suits and frilly frocks. She studied the effect in the mirror as she applied lipstick. The jeans had a patch on one knee and the color had faded to a blue almost as pale as that of the robe, with streaks of yellow paint still showing from the time she had redecorated her apartment. The sweatshirt featured the President of the United States, in glowing blue neon, playing a blue saxophone. How was that for making a statement? She slid her feet into sneakers, pulled her boots from the closet, collected her purse and the briefcase, and went out. She could have sworn she saw the curtains of Mrs. Fowler's bedroom window twitch.

The air was heavy with moisture and warm enough to make the sweatshirt unnecessary. She might be glad of it later, though, if the cellar was as damp and chilly as cellars often were.

Cameron had left the gate open. Not until she reached it did Karen realize the pillar of smoke she had seen came from the vicinity of the house. Apprehension dried her mouth as she pushed her car along the drive at a speed that endangered the muffler, the tail pipe and a few other important appendages. Had her premonition of fire been born of concern, not about the apartment but about the house? Subconsciously she must have noted its vulnerability—the time-dried wood, the paint
cans and other flammable materials . . . Not the house, she prayed silently. Please, not the house. Not yet. I'm not through with it.

The fire was outside the house, not inside. A column of flame rose skyward from a blackened pile in the cleared space before the steps. Karen slammed on the brakes, and Cameron Hayes came around the corner of the house carrying an armful of broken branches. He stopped and stared, and then ran toward her. She was already backing away. When she stopped the car, at a safe distance from the blaze, he thrust his head in the open window.

His expression led her to expect a blistering reprimand. Instead he took a deep breath and said, "Sorry. I should have warned you I intended to burn trash."

"My fault, I was driving too fast. I was afraid the house had caught fire."

"And that you'd see me on the roof, screaming out curses, like the first Mrs. Rochester?"

Karen's face grew warm. She hadn't even considered danger to him, she had been too concerned about the house. Apparently he took the blush for maidenly confusion, for he went on, "Your lecture on Gothic novels aroused my curiosity. As you have probably deduced, I've been reading
Jane Eyre."

So had she. In her present mood she was abnormally sensitive to coincidences—if that was what they were. "Why that book?" she asked.

"Because it was there, I suppose. In the bookshelf."

The answer was so obvious she was ashamed she hadn't thought of it. Bronte's masterpiece was a classic, often assigned reading for high school or college English courses. Cameron hadn't struck her as the sort of man who kept his old schoolbooks, but one never knew.

"I hope you enjoyed it."

"More than I expected," he admitted. "The first part was kind of boring, but it livens up after Rochester appears on the scene. Though what she saw in him—"

"He represented freedom, escape from the narrow confines of a woman's world, communion with an original, expanded mind—"

" 'Original' is right. He pretends he's in love with another woman, lies to her about his crazy wife—"

"Nobody's perfect."

He gave her a startled look; then his face dissolved in laughter. "That's an original, expanded way of looking at it, I suppose. Okay, I can take a hint. Ready to explore?"

Karen got out of the car. "Yours is an enlightened, liberated viewpoint, actually," she said demurely. "A lot of male critics consider Jane a prissy, priggish pain in the butt."

"I didn't say she wasn't." His eyes inspected her from the top of her head to her sneakered feet. "Didn't you bring boots? You're going to need them."

"They're in the car."

"Good. The water's gone down, but there's a lot of mud on the floor. And other things."

"I'm not afraid of snakes, if that's what you mean. Or mud."

"Snakes, spiders, rats. Very Gothic." He smiled. "I'm sure you could tackle a tiger single-handed, but I'd prefer to come with you. Can you wait half an hour or so? I want to let the fire die down before I leave it."

He had phrased it as a request, but he had every right to insist on her compliance. It was his house, and his liability, if she accidentally injured herself. She told herself that that was why she acquiesced—not because she was afraid to go alone. But only the need to search for what might be the final proof of her belief that Ferncliffe had been Ismene's home could have forced her to suggest the visit to the cellar. If an empty attic and a harmless woodland path had sent her imagination into overdrive, how would it react to a dank dark underground cavern, the quintessence of Gothic nightmare?

It wouldn't misbehave in his presence, she assured herself. Sheer pride would inhibit another expression of "womanly" squeamishness.

After Cameron had returned to his fire she leaned against the car and studied her notes. In passing, Ismene had mentioned a number of the features of the fictitious house. If they matched the features of the real house, the identification would be strengthened, even if she didn't find what she hoped to find in the cellar.

One difficulty was the question of how much had changed since the early nineteenth century. Karen decided she wouldn't worry about that now. It was a complicated question that might necessitate consulting an expert in architectural restoration. Some parts of the house were obviously relatively late in date; others, like the main block and the long wing jutting out behind it, were just as obviously very old. The house Ismene had described had two such wings. One might have been destroyed, in a fire or otherwise, but there ought to be some traces of it remaining . . .

She was stalling, and she knew it. Sooner or later she would have to face that cold hallway. Squaring her shoulders, she went to the door.

It wasn't as bad as she had feared. Knowing what to expect helped. So did her memory of the dreadful blast in the attic. By comparison, this was like a balmy afternoon in Bermuda.

Still, her fingers were stiff and clumsy with cold when she heard the front door open and Cameron called to her. "Ready when you are."

He studied her clipboard curiously, but said only, "You'd better leave that and your purse in the kitchen. You'll need both hands."

"For climbing the walls in case I'm attacked by a tiger?" Karen inquired. She followed him through the maze of corridors that ended in the kitchen. No question about it, the temperature in this part of the house was a lot more comfortable. "What on earth have you got down there?"

"You'll see. Here." He handed her a flashlight and took another from the same drawer before leading her back toward the front of the house.

She had not noticed the narrow wooden door. It was in a deep alcove under a staircase—not the one in the front hall, another, even narrower, flight that might have been the servants' stairs of the original house. The hinges shrieked when Cameron pulled the door open. Reaching inside, he pressed a light switch.

Why the flashlights? Karen wondered. She started down the steps. They were only boards nailed onto a support, with no risers between. She took hold of the railing and felt it give; Cameron's hand closed firmly over her arm. "It would be a grave error to depend on that," he said. "I haven't got around to replacing it yet."

He held her arm until they reached the bottom of the steps. She was beginning to see why he had told her she would need both hands free. The floor was slimy with a mixture of mud and the crumbled mortar that had fallen from the stone wall. The roughly shaped stones had once been painted. Little of the paint or the mortar remained; the latter substance wasn't modern cement, but a pale-brown, crumbling mixture. It must be part of the original foundations, but only one wall was old. The others
looked like partitions of wood or plasterboard. A single bare bulb dangled from the ceiling, which was crisscrossed with a maze of pipes. The only objects visible were an oil tank and a huge antique furnace.

"Where are the tigers?" she asked. "This is no worse than my parents' basement before they installed a sump pump."

"That was one of the useful items Uncle Josiah refused to buy," Cameron said dryly. "He decided it was cheaper to seal this room off and let the rest of the place rot. I presume it's the picturesque part you want to see."

Without waiting for an answer he headed for a door opposite the stairs. It screeched horribly across the floor as he wrenched it open. Karen stepped carefully across a hole in the floor that must act as a drain, and went to Cameron's side.

The stench that issued from the open door, compounded of mold, damp, and other elements she did not want to identify, was so strong it made her gag. Her companion gave her a sardonic look. "Sure you don't want to change your mind? Come on, then. Mind the steps."

He took her arm again and turned on his flashlight. Karen followed suit. The pale-yellow beams were lost in the cavern of darkness ahead. There were three steps, rickety and slippery with wet. Cameron hadn't exaggerated about the mud. It squelched disgustingly under Karen's booted feet when she stepped down onto the floor.

Cameron's voice was eerily magnified by echoes as they moved slowly forward. "This part of the cellars was never electrified. When they installed central heating—around the turn of the century, it must have been—they raised the floor of that one section in order to make the furnace more accessible. I suppose the old boy's decision to shut the rest of it off makes some sense; there was ample storage space, in outbuildings and in the house, and it would cost a fortune to renovate this area. It should be of interest to historians, though; some parts are original, and over two hundred years old."

Karen was becoming accustomed to the odor now; it was nothing worse than damp and decay. She was relieved to find that her discomfort was entirely physical. The air was no colder than that of any other underground region, and although she would have preferred to be elsewhere she had no feeling of mindless panic.

"Stop a minute and have a look around," Cameron said.

It was sensible advice. She had had to concentrate on keeping her footing; the mud was as slippery as ice, and the idea of falling into it, getting the noxious stuff on her clothes and skin, was not attractive. Settling her feet firmly, she sent the beam of her flashlight slowly around the room.

The image of the cave was irresistible—limitless caverns, natural prisons of windowless stone, deep in the bowels of the earth, lightless and inescapable—the classic metaphor of confinement and burial alive. The stone walls shone greasily green with lichen. The indescribable substance underfoot covered her feet; pools of sickly iridescence marked its surface. Somewhere, under the slime, was a solid surface. Stone, brick? She was not tempted to investigate.

The wall on the right was blank except for a barred opening high against the rough wooden boards of the ceiling. A window well, she thought, but not the one into which she had fallen; this one was dark, its covering still intact. On the walls ahead and to her left, some of the stones had been shaped into arches. If there had been doors, they were gone; darkness as solid as wooden paneling filled the openings.

"There are two more rooms like this straight ahead," Cameron said. "One opening out of the other. The arch on the left leads to a passageway with two rooms on either side and another at its end. I made a rough plan; if you'll accept a copy of that in lieu of further exploration, you will do me and yourself a favor. The rest of the place is just like this, only worse."

He was trying to control his voice, but she heard the strain in it. "Are you claustrophobic?" she asked, without stopping to think that it might not be a tactful question.

"Doesn't it affect you that way?"

He wouldn't admit it, of course. "I'm not a happy person," Karen said frankly. "But the smell and the slime and the mud bother me more than the sense of enclosure. We can go. I'm sorry to have inflicted this on you.

"Not at all." But his movement was a little too abrupt; turning, he slipped and had to take a few quick running steps to keep from falling. The mud sloshed and splashed. Viscous drops struck Karen's hand and clung like glue.

"Sorry," Cameron said breathlessly.

"Oh, stop apologizing!" Karen resisted the impulse to scrub her hand against the seat of her jeans. The mud stank horribly. It would be easier to wash her hands than her pants.

She moved cautiously toward the steps, where Cameron joined her. His breathing was too quick and too loud, though he was obviously fighting to control it. Men, she thought contemptuously. Why hadn't he admitted he suffered from claustrophobia? An impulse she was soon to regret prompted her to say cockily, "No tigers, no snakes."

She heard his breath catch. The beam of his flashlight swung to one side. Greenish black, thick as her wrist, scales shimmering with wet, it was framed clearly in the light before it slithered out of sight, with a wet sucking sound.

As she stumbled back, feeling her feet sliding out from under her, Cameron's arm caught her and pulled her against him with a force that drove the breath from her lungs.

"Just a water snake," he said. "Perfectly harmless. There are copperheads in the woods, though, so if you go exploring watch where you put your feet and hands."

He did that on purpose, Karen thought furiously. He knew the damned thing was there; he must have heard or seen something I missed. Of all the silly, childish tricks—getting back at me because I witnessed his moment of weakness . . .

"You can let go of me now," she said through clenched teeth.

"As soon as you get up those stairs safely."

"Thank you so much."

"Not at all."

Karen made no attempt to free herself. She had found what she wanted. Every detail matched Ismene's description of the cellars—including one particular detail that gave the final proof of her hypothesis. The capstone of the arch that opened into the passageway had been shaped, by nature or a sculptor's hand, into the shape of a monstrous head.