The Walker in Shadows (28 page)

"I suppose that proves something," Josef remarked with restraint, eyeing the mess on his polished floor.

"It confirms something I had suspected," Mark replied austerely. "Kath, you better take Jud home."

"Or vice versa," Pat said, as the dog retreated at full speed, towing the girl with him.

"We'll need tools," Mark said. "Something heavy, like a sledgehammer."

"All the tools I own are on the workbench," Josef said. He sat down on the bottom step, pulled Pat down beside him, and put his arm around her. Mark paid no attention. Flashlight in hand, he surveyed the walls, mumbling to himself.

"… mirror image… has to be here. Or changed, for the sake of security? Psychologically…"

A door upstairs banged and Kathy came to the top of the stairs.

"Mark? Any luck?"

"Not yet. Come on down."

Kathy obeyed. Her father rose to let her pass. He sat down again, and the two young people retreated into a corner, where they stood whispering.

"Time," Pat said suddenly. "What time is it?"

Josef glanced at his watch. "A little after nine. Do you realize that boy hasn't asked for his dinner? He must be on to something big."

Mark walked along the far wall, giving it an occasional thump with the hammer he held. When he reached the corner he stopped, his nose inches from the neighboring wall surface, and stood still so long that his mother, whose nerves were already twitching, said sharply, "Mark, if you are going into another trance, this whole deal is off, do you hear?"

"Mom, for God's sake." Mark turned and glared at her. "You make it sound like I didn't clean up my room or something." He transferred his attention to Kathy, who stood close by him, watching him expectantly. "It's here, Kath. Down below. Must be in the floor somewhere."

He squatted, examining the bricks, and then looked accusingly at Josef. "You had this fixed. It's new mortar."

"Oh, God, give me patience," Josef said, to nobody in particular. "Forgive me, Mark. I had meant to have the bricks taken up and concrete poured, but someone convinced me that would be a sin against history. These bricks are of the Civil War period, I was told, so…"

He paused, forgetting his annoyance as he realized what he had just said. "Civil War… Do you suppose-"

Mark was already at the workbench, throwing hammers and screwdrivers aside, as he searched for what he wanted. He returned to the corner with a chisel and mallet. Kathy moved back out of range as chips of mortar began to fly.

Josef looked at Pat. She moved a little closer to him, and his arm tightened around her shoulders.

It took Mark almost an hour to remove a section of floor two feet square. He rejected Kathy's offer of help. No our else offered. Despite the damp coolness of the cellar, perspiration was pouring down his neck by the time he finished. He then uttered a word his mother had forbidden him to use in her presence.

"Watch your mouth, bud," she said.

"Sorry. I thought I'd find… But it's dirt. Packed, beaten earth."

"Ha," said Josef, leaning back.

"Well, but naturally," Kathy said. Squatting on her haunches, she leaned forward to inspect the site of Mark's labors. "She'd have to put something over it, to hide it, before she had the slaves lay the bricks."

"What are you talking about?" Pat asked.

The others ignored her.

"Hey, that's right," Mark said. "Kathy. Shovel."

"In the garage," said Josef. He slid to one side so that Kathy could pass him. Again he and Pat exchanged eloquent glances.

"We've got to watch the time," she whispered.

"Almost three hours yet. Don't worry, I'll keep track."

Kathy returned with the demanded implement and handed it to Mark. He began to dig. The earth was hard-packed, but it was damp and-as it turned out-only about eight inches thick. Pat and Josef, abandoning their pretense of disinterest, watched as Mark gradually uncovered a flat wooden surface. The rusted iron ring made its function clear.

"Trapdoor," Josef muttered. "I'll be damned."

But for a moment no one moved. Mark leaned picturesquely on his shovel, mopping his damp forehead with his sleeve; and Josef, too fascinated to resist any longer, came to his assistance. He tugged at the ring, his face reddening with effort.

"Stuck," he grunted. "We need a chisel, Mark. On the workbench."

Mark pried and Josef pulled. At first it seemed that they were making no progress. The hinges gave way all at once, sending Josef sprawling. A dark, square hole gaped. From it came a breath of air as stale as death itself.

Mark turned on the flashlight. Its beam showed sagging wooden steps descending into darkness.

"Wait," Josef said, as Mark turned preparatory to descending. "Those steps don't look very solid."

Mark put his foot on the top step and pressed. The whole structure collapsed in a shower of splinters.

"Termites," Mark said. "Or damp. The floor is only about six feet down. Here, hold the flashlight."

He handed it to Josef and lowered himself, disregarding his mother's groan of protest. Josef kept the flashlight steady. It illumined Mark's sweating face as he stared up, but showed nothing else.

"I'm standing on the floor," Mark said. "Come on down."

"At the risk of sounding like a coward, I'd like to be sure I can get up again," Josef said. "Wait till I get a stepladder."

He lowered it to Mark, who held it steady while first Pat and then Kathy went down. Pat had caught the fever. Forbidding as the dark hole appeared, she would have fought anyone who suggested she remain above. Josef was the last to descend. He brought the flashlight with him, and handed it to Mark. Not until then did Pat see the nature of the place into which they had descended.

The room had once been virtually airtight, every crack carefully sealed. It was so no longer. The insidious damp of Maryland soil had crumbled the mortar between the stones; water had seeped in and dried and seeped again, so that the lichen-stained walls bulged ominously in places. The damp had affected the objects in the room too. There was nothing left of the bed except a low, irregular platform, and even less remained of what had lain upon the bed. Its shape was due more to suggestion than to actual form; but enough was there to bring a suppressed cry from Kathy.

"It's okay," Mark said-but his own voice was not quite steady. "Could be worse."

He turned the flashlight beam full on the bed.

The rotted remains of a sheet or blanket covered the shape below, but things protruded here and I here:.1 rounded curve of skull, the end of a long bone-a femur, probably, Pat guessed.

"Human," she said softly.

"Oh, yes." Mark said, turning the light away from the pitiful remains. It illumined smaller piles of decay and stopped at one. There was little to distinguish this heap from the others-once pieces of furniture-but Mark stepped to it and fumbled in the debris for a few minutes before producing a handful of metal disks.

"Buttons," he said. "Stamped 'CSA.' He put his uniform on the chair before…"

"A Confederate soldier," Josef muttered. "Then this room was something like a priest's hole. The Trumbulls concealed fugitives-"

"And spies," Mark said. "You guys are really dense. Didn't you understand all those hints in Mary Jane's letters? She couldn't be explicit, not at the time she was writing, but her friend knew what she meant. This was one of the stations on the Confederate spy circuit. The location is perfect-isolated, only a few Billet from the river-"

"With the Bateses right next door?"

"There was a wall," Mark said. "Remember? The houses aren't that close. On a moonless night one man, creeping through the underbrush, wouldn't be seen or heard. The very fact that it was so close to the Bateses would disarm suspicion. People would think they wouldn't dare. But it was typical of the Turnbulls-that damn-your-eyes bravado."

"This man was no spy," Josef said. "He was in uniform. A fugitive from one of the nearby battles, perhaps. Wounded, hidden by the Turnbulls… Come on, Kathy, stop sniveling; it's only bones."

Kathy gulped and wiped her face with her fingers.

"She's got more sense than you have," Mark said in disgust. "You still don't get it, do you? Not just anybody's old bones. They're his."

"You don't mean-"

"Yes, I do mean. They're
his
. That's Peter Turnbull- what's left of him."

Prove it," Pat said. Then, as Mark took a step toward the rotted bed, she exclaimed, "No, don't… don't."

"I bet I could prove it," Mark said. "He was probably carrying identification. A watch, a locket with his dear old mother's hair… Or, speaking of hair, maybe some of his-"

"For God's sake, Mark." Even Josef was shaken by this callous speech. "You are without a doubt the most ghoulish-"

"What's ghoulish about this?" Mark demanded, in tones of honest surprise. "This is just leftovers, like old clothes. Compared to what we've seen lately, this is clean and normal."

"You have a point," Josef admitted. "And, since you have been right about everything else, I suppose you're right about this. Would you care to explain to us idiots why Peter Turnbull's bones are lying here, unburied and unconsecrated, in the cellar of his own home?"

"Not exactly unconsecrated," Mark said. "She covered him up. And… there were flowers."

From the tatters of the blanket he lifted a cobwebby coil, a fragile ghost of vegetation. It crumbled into dust as he touched it, but a hundred years ago it might have been a wreath.

"She covered him?" Josef repeated, sounding like the idiot he had called himself. "No, it's no use; I cannot possibly follow your… Mark. This is where it comes from, isn't it?"

"Yes," Mark said. "This is where, and this is why. If you'll just wait a minute-"

"Wait? Here? When that cursed thing may… Or does it only come at one a.m.?"

"Well, now, I wouldn't swear to that," Mark said. "We're getting awfully close. In fact, I've got most of it figured out. That's what this is all about-figuring out what really happened. It didn't want-"

Mark's sentence ended in a choked gurgle as Josef grabbed him by the collar.

"Are you telling me, you unprintable delinquent, that you want the thing to come? That you deliberately, with malice aforethought, brought us down here so that it would… Let's get out of here."

He released his grip and turned to Pat.

"No, wait," Mark gasped. "It's all right. I can handle it. We've got to have a confrontation, right here, where it happened, that's the only way… Ah. Here we go." He pointed; his voice shook with an uncomfortable blend of triumph and revulsion. " 'Look, here it comes again.' "

He stepped forward, in front of the others. Josef gathered Pat into one arm and Kathy into the other. "If we survive this," he muttered, "I'm going to kill that boy."

Pat leaned against him, incapable of speech, as the indescribable aura invaded the room. Mark's flashlight was dimmed by the ghastly whirling light. As the light strengthened, two burning blue spots formed in its core.

Pat felt cold stone against her back. They had retreated as far as they could, and still the thing came on, moving forward with horrible, jerky movements.

Mark stood his ground. The light was strong enough to cast shadows, horribly distorted shadows, like parodies of the forms that shaped them-strong enough for Pat to see that the shadow stretching out from Mark's feet was, surely, that of a man inches shorter, broader of shoulder, with close-cropped hair instead of Mark's unruly mop.

A voice spoke, softly. It had to be Mark's, though it sounded nothing like his. Pat was unable to make out the words; but at the sound the whirling light stopped its forward progress with an uncanny, horrid suggestion of human surprise. The voice rose in volume, and changed, in tone and in rhythm.

"Don't you get it? It's all over; we know. You can't stop the truth; you can't hurt anybody; you're dead, dead and damned. Go back to wherever you belong. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, and all the saints, and…"

Mark went on, mouthing an insane litany of mixed-up religious formulas, invoking every deity he could think of. Pat lost track of what he was saying; for, incredibly, the thing began to shrink and fade. For one fantastic moment-and she was never sure whether she really saw it, or whether she only imagined it-just before it went forever she saw it clear, in its true shape: the form of a woman, so emaciated as to be virtually skeletal, her straggling white hair framing a visage completely without color except for the blazing blue eyes.

Then it vanished, taking all light with it, even the feeble beam of the flashlight. A rumbling crash shook the very earth, as if the darkness had solidified and fallen upon them.

Pat would have been thrown to the ground if she had not had the support of the wall and Josef's arm. Choking, she thrust out both hands against air thick with dust.

"Stand still," Josef ordered, tightening his grasp. "Don't even speak loudly. Mark. Mark, are you there?"

At first there was no reply, only the rattle of subsiding debris', and Pat's racing heart stopped. The catastrophe-whatever its nature-had begun at the other end of the room. Mark had been closest… Then her son's voice came out of the dark and she went limp with relief.

"I'm here. Part of me, anyhow…"

"The flashlight?" Josef asked.

"Under a ton of dirt and stone."

"Hang on. I've got a lighter."

The flame flickered and flared. It was sufficient; there was little left for it to illumine. Half the room had vanished under a heap of earth. Mark's legs were buried up to the thigh and the face he turned toward them was streaked with blood from a dozen cuts. But his grin was broad and cheerful.

"Her last gesture," he remarked. "Dumb stunt."