Unhonored (11 page)

“Good morning, Ellis!” the young man said in a clear voice.

“Good morning, Murray,” Ellis answered easily, and then stopped on the stairs.

Murray turned again to continue his conversation with his companion as they reached the bottom of the stairs and turned to the left, vanishing from view.

“Who was that?” Alicia asked. “I don't think I've ever seen them before.”

“Murray Abramowitz,” Ellis said. “He was a fellow student of mine at Boston Medical College.”

“Do you think he can help us?” Alicia started down the stairs.

Ellis gripped her shoulder and held her back. “I don't think so, Alicia.”

“Why ever not?”

“Because he died in 1914,” Ellis said, her brows furrowed as she tried to consider the event. “He was in France at the time.”

“War casualty, then?” Jonas asked.

“No,” Ellis continued, her voice thoughtful as she spoke. “He was a medical corpsman and was going to war, but it was the flu that took him.”

Ellis realized that Jonas was staring at her.

“What is it, Jonas?” Ellis asked.

“You remembered him,” Jonas said.

“Yes, I suppose I did,” Ellis realized. “But why him? Why Murray Abramowitz? I barely knew the man's name. He was a fellow medical student and I remember the sad irony of his death but he was nothing special to me. Why remember him of all people?”

“Maybe it's easier to remember people who aren't important,” Alicia suggested. “They can't hurt you.”

Ellis caught her breath before she spoke. “I'm not all that sure I want to remember now.”

“Let's keep moving,” Jonas urged.

They came to the top of the stairs. The landing there was absent of any furniture or ornamentation. There was a pair of doors opposite the staircase with more doors to the right and left. The ceiling was a dome of stained glass through which scant light shone down.

Ellis looked at Jonas.

“To the right,” he said, “I think.”

“Aren't you sure?”

“A great many of the corridors are duplicates,” Jonas replied. “Knowing where you are isn't a question of which corridor you're in, so much as which similar corridor is connected to which other similar corridor and in what order. Let me take a quick look around a couple of corners to be certain. Wait here.”

Jonas moved to the corridor to their right, slipping quickly out of view.

“Corridors on top of corridors,” Alicia huffed. “I'm sure I don't know why he insists on using the passageways. The larger rooms should afford us faster progress and they are all connecting.”

“I take it you've been in this part of the house, too?” Ellis asked.

“Oh, certainly! Although I'll admit to it being such a very long time ago. Since before you left, in fact. Merrick was so determined to be rid of any remembrance of you that he sealed this Book and had vowed never to open it again. Of course, that was before you…” Alicia paused, looking around her in alarm. “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“That sound,” Alicia whispered. “Listen!”

Soft sobbing. It echoed slightly but sounded quite nearby.

“Through there,” Alicia murmured, her hand pointing toward one of the doors opposite the stairs leading to the landing.

Ellis stepped toward one of the doors. It was slightly ajar. She gave it a gentle push and it opened onto a large assembly room, towering nearly two stories high to a recessed ceiling. The paint was fading but Ellis could see that the walls had been decorated to look as though they had Roman columns with ornamental garlands between them. Plaques with Roman inscriptions were also painted onto the walls and the ceiling featured Baroque paintings as well. There were arched doors leading out of the room on both sides and a second set of arched doors at the far end of the assembly room. The far doors were open to a dark crossing corridor beyond.

A small face peered back at Ellis through the left-hand door at the far opposite side of the room. It was the face of a girl—perhaps eight or so years old. Her hair was carefully braided with bright red bows matching her dress.

The girl stepped quickly back, her visage vanishing from the open doorway.

“Hello?” Ellis offered, her voice echoing between the fading, stained walls of the assembly room.

“What is it, Ellis?” Alicia asked behind her.

The face of the little girl appeared again. She stepped out to stand in the archway. She didn't move, just stared back at Ellis, wet streaks of tears running down both of her cheeks.

“I don't know,” Ellis said to Alicia. She turned her attention to the girl. “Don't be afraid, little one. I'll help you. Are you lost?”

Ellis stepped into the room, her quick strides carrying her across the floor. The floor groaned with every step. She could feel the soft boards, spongy and weak, giving beneath her footfalls.

“Ellis!” Jonas had appeared at the door behind her, calling out. “Wait!”

She took another step toward the little girl.

A great crack resounded through the room as the floorboards gave way beneath her.

Ellis fell through the rotted floor.

 

11

HIDE & SEEK

A mold-ridden couch collapsed beneath Ellis, breaking her fall as she crashed down onto it from the room above. Instinctively, she held her forearms in front of her face, her eyes held tightly shut. She felt the floorboards, strips of wooden lathe slats and a cloud of crumbling plaster rain down about her.

“Ellis!” She could hear Jonas call desperately down for her from somewhere above. “Are you all right?”

She held her breath, daring not to move until the debris had settled.

“Ellis!” Jonas called more anxiously. “Please! Answer me! Are you hurt?”

“Only my pride, I think,” Ellis responded.

Ellis tentatively shifted her arms, venturing to open one eye. The plaster dust still hung in the air but there was sufficient light from the hole in the ceiling to see the extent of the room. It was nearly a match in size to the one above it although in this case its walls were wainscoted with dull, gilded edges. There were a number of furniture pieces in the room, a second couch and several chairs. The upholstery on each was swollen and the stuffing bulging outward from tears in the fabric. It appeared to Ellis to be some kind of sitting room or antechamber, although to what she could not guess. The arrangement of the rooms in this place was still baffling and without any reason that she could fathom.

Ellis moved with deliberate caution as she sat up. She looked up and was surprised to see that the ceiling was over fifteen feet above her. The anxious faces of Alicia and Jonas were staring back at her, silhouetted against the light from the dome of the room above.

Ellis brushed the splintered wood off of her traveling suit, her legs still slightly uncertain as she stood up. “What about the girl? Is she still there?”

“What girl?” Jonas asked.

“There was a little girl on the far side of the … oh, never mind.” Ellis could see from the expression on Jonas's face that if there were any little girl in the doorway before she was most certainly not there now. “I seem to have taken a detour.”

“We'll get you out in a minute, Ellis,” Alicia said, her voice wavering slightly, betraying her uncertainty.

“I don't see how.” Ellis shook her head. “Unless either of you have been carrying a ladder or even just a good length of rope that I don't know about.”

“Listen. I've found a long gallery up here that should keep us ahead of Merrick,” Jonas called down to her from the ruined ceiling above her.

“And what happens if he catches up with us?” Ellis asked.

“Just stay where you are”—Jonas had already vanished from the hole, his voice distant and echoing—“and I'll find a way to get you out.”

“Don't worry, Ellis,” her father said to her. “It's just a game.”

Ellis shivered. The memories of her past kept bubbling up into her conscious mind. They were not complete: only phrases or lines from people whom she suddenly cared for deeply and yet, at the same time, still felt removed from. It was like a badly scratched phonograph record that would play a few notes of a familiar song and then skip entirely to a completely different tune.

She concentrated on the room, trying to keep the memories at bay for the time being. Like the room above, there were six exits from the room—one at each side of the end walls and one in the center of each of the longer sides—although here the oak doors with the dull finish were all shut. There were paintings mounted to the walls above the wainscot in a patchwork of frames that encircled the room. Each lay in shadow with no light shining directly on their canvases.

Ellis took a step closer to one of the longer walls, peering intently at the largest of the paintings there as she approached it.

She stopped.

It was a depiction of the Curtis lighthouse during a storm. The waves crashed against the island's eastern rocks, rising up and seeming to engulf the structure. The lighthouse stood against the threatening darkness, its beam cast outward through the rain and over the sea. Two small figures could be seen silhouetted against the lamp: a woman and a small child both clinging to the railing and threatened by the storm.

Ellis shifted her gaze to another, smaller piece of art next to it. This depicted a nursery with a bassinet near a window but there was something wrong in the composition of the painting. The light coming through the glass illuminated an empty rocking chair in stark light while casting the more prominent cradle in shadow. Beyond the glass was a bright garden with a picket fence and a gate.

Ellis looked closer.

There, beyond the gate, was the shadowed figure of a man.

“Jenny!”

The name echoed, as though being summoned from a distance.

Above her, Alicia gasped.

It sounded as though it came from the direction where Ellis thought the stairs might be.

“Jenny!”

Ellis spun to her left. It was a deeper voice calling this time and closer from beyond the long wall on her left.

“Oh, Ellis,” Alicia said, her voice now tightened to a fearful squeak. “They're getting closer!”

“Quiet!” Ellis called up in hushed tones. “Where's Jonas?”

“I don't know!” Alicia looked about her, her voice quivering. “He left … I don't know where he went!”

“Jenny!”

“Jenny!”

“Jen-ny!”

Multiple voices this time. Ellis thought they were coming from the end of the room that would have been back toward the staircase.

The voices were getting closer.

“You've got to run!” Alicia whispered hoarsely from above.

“Why?” Ellis asked, her eyes fixed on the closed doors at the end of the hall directly beneath where Alicia stared down at her. “They're looking for Jenny, not me. We're
all
looking for Jenny!”

“It doesn't matter,” Alicia called desperately back at her. “After what you did to Merrick's play, running like that from the theater … if they catch you, there's no telling what he'll do to you!”

A sudden knocking shook the door behind Ellis.

She jumped at the sound, turning. She waited a moment but nothing happened. She took a step toward the door.

“Ellis!” Alicia whispered frantically from above. “Don't open it!”

Ellis glanced up. “Maybe it's Jonas.”

Silence filled the space for a moment. Ellis reached hesitantly for the stained brass doorknob.

“Run,” Alicia whimpered. “Oh, please, just run.”

A thunderous knocking shook the door in front of her so violently that she could see the upper corner separate from the frame.

Ellis jumped back, turned and ran.

She ran for the far end of the room, twisting the doorknob and throwing open the door. The hall she entered twisted mazelike deeper into the ruins. The doors to either side were open as she fled down the corridor, weak light streaming in from each one as she rushed past. There were voices coming from the rooms as well, echoing in the abandoned space. Sometimes muffled and sometimes entirely too clear.

“That is a completely inappropriate question for Sunday School, Sister Harkington! I shall speak to your mother about this immediately after…”

“From what lurid magazine did you copy this story, young lady? Ellis, do not deny it! You could not possibly have written anything this well on your own…”

“She's a Harkington! No one who is anyone speaks to the Harkingtons. They're such a disgrace…”

“Gee, Ellis, I'd really like to take you to the dance but there's this other girl…”

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see dark, shadowy figures standing in the rooms but she kept running. The memories each voice sparked were painful, vivid and, worst of all, entirely her own. Each incident rushed up into her mind with painful awareness. The Minister's Wife, the Teacher, the Girls from her class, the Boy in the empty classroom; each memory with its disappointments, pain and shame rushed at her out of each open doorway like a terrible jack-in-the-box of the mind, springing hurtful memories at her from her childhood.

Ellis steeled herself against them, running faster down the twisting gauntlet of her childhood.

Other voices, too, were still heard behind her.

“Jenny!”
they called like hounds at her heels.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

The hallway abruptly ended at a door. She pulled it open with vehemence, charging into the room beyond.

She nearly collided with the broken bed in the corner of the room. Rebecca, her childhood friend when Ellis was only eight years old, lay in it coughing weakly and covered in the measles. She reached out her blotched hand for Ellis, calling her name. Ellis swept quickly past the bed to the next door beyond, forcing it open with her shoulder.