Jashandar's Wake - Book Two: Unclean Places

by L. S. Kyles

  Chapter 32

  Mums’ earlier assumption had been correct. The mansion was just as nasty on the inside as it was on the outside, only without the convenience of fresh air. In retrospect, she would compare the experience with that of pulling back a heavy curtain of hair and walking straight into a giant, cube-shaped armpit.

  She took one step inside the foyer of the place, her arm still lodged in the vines of the entryway, and looked around. She was not Iman Janusery, not by a long shot, and her arm would remain pressed in these vines until she had ample time to quiet her alarm.

  Before her, a blinding rectangle of light streamed passed her mane and shoulder and made its mark on the glossy black of the waters. She could see no-see-ums flittering about inside (or maybe they were just gnats, she couldn’t tell), but not as many as she expected. Perhaps the smell was getting to them as well.

  She stepped over the threshold and let the vines swing across the entryway. Darkness sprang back inside the room and obliterated the light. With it, came the rotten stink of vegetables she had been keeping at bay with the cross breeze. She placed a hand to her snout and began breathing through her mouth.

  …cling, dunk…dunk...cling…

  Somewhere in the distant rooms, she could hear the effects of her footfalls in the water, the sound of floating debris knocking without rhythm against the walls.

  …dunk, dunk...cling…

  Ever-so-slowly, her liquid brown eyes acclimated to the dimness and the sheet of stygian took on varying degrees of murk. She could see edges forming in the dark, lines of lesser black cast against the deeper shades of night. Were these things shelves? Were they cases? Had someone overturned a table?

  She decided it didn’t matter and took another step inside, pausing as the floating detritus bobbed and sank and brushed against her legs. Most of the moving flotsam was small and round—the larger and longer shapes jutting motionless from the water—but none of it appeared large enough to harm her.

  She lifted her eyes and searched for the stairs. At either end of the room, dull light sifted through the shade in the form of two identical doorways. She set off for the one on her right, selecting it for no particular reason, and made it only three paces before stopping dead in her tracks and looking around the room, spellbound.

  This was why, she thought, completely forgetting her need for fresh air. This was what he’d meant.

  In a long ago time, a time before the ineffable flood and the reign of the boggen, this room had been used as a lobby or anteroom by a very wealthy family. It was a place for guests to remove their hats and coats and for messengers to await their hosts. At least, that was the utilitarian purpose of the room. The esthetic purpose was to render the visitor speechless with awe, as it has done with Mums.

  Aside from the door-shaped lights on her left and right, the rest of the room was lined with shelves, wall to wall and floor to ceiling. The planking in question was, quite naturally, warped by time and ugly with rot, but it wasn’t the planking she was looking at. It was the things on the planking, the precious artifacts of steel and clay that she had hitherto associated with cultural museums and very old civilizations.

  There are others, sure, Iman had told her, but none this nice.

  At the time, Mums had thought the captain was being naïve and foolish (as usual), but now, after feasting her eyes on the anteroom alone, she had a better appreciation for what he had meant. This place spat in the face of a traditional colonial home. This place was, as Iman had said, a veritable mansion.

  She tracked her eyes along the wall to her left and spied a set of mold-caked pottery and a ceramic figure missing its arms. She ran them along the wall to the right and saw a series of turd-green trophy animals and a collection of heavily-corroded swords. Lowering them to the floor, she spied a broken suit of armor lying on its side, the eye slits of the helmet seeming to follow her across the room.

  Averting her eyes from the face shield, Mums hurried into the next room and located what she believed to be the dining area. Along the far wall, a finely-crafted table had been knocked upon its side and was slowly turning to sludge. Around it, an array of high-back chairs lay scattered in every conceivable position. Behind these, a fire place set between the two vine-covered windows, its mantel littered with intriguing conversation pieces that were now just mud and rust.

  Again, there were two doors at either end of the room and again she waded to the door on the right side.

  There were no stairs inside. It was a dead end chamber that appeared to be a decayed family room, one she recognized from outside as the room with the monstrous hole in the wall.

  Briefly, she considered the idea of venturing over and pushing back the vines for a quick breath of air, but for some reason the monstrous hole in the wall stayed her soaking feet.

  If they have holes in the walls, her mind reasoned, then why not the floor? And if there’s a hole in the floor, do you really wish to dangle your feet over the edge?

  She turned back to the dining area and weaved her way through the fallen chairs. At the far end, she peeked through the doorway and was greeted by a dimly-lit chamber, the darkest so far. There were things bobbing at her feet, black things rising and falling in the water. Some had horns, others a single reaching arm.

  She shied back from them, stepping out of the doorway and seeing, as the light from the dining room windows poured past her, that they were pots and kettles.

  The kitchen? she wondered, glancing around the corner at the ruptured cabinets to the right and the dangling utensils in the ceiling. Upon several sets of looping chains, she saw forks and knives, pots and pans, all of them—chains included—coated in a slick layer of grime.

  Across from her, where a column of bricks crawled down the wall and plunged its head beneath the waters, she spied a tarnished cooking stove with its door wide open. At some point, the stove had been vented into the wall, but now the flu and ductwork were missing and there was only the rheumy hole in the masonry.

  Mums frowned at the hole and backed away, her eyes moving to a place on her right, between the larder and cutting table, where light was seeping through the wall. The light formed the shape of an upside-down ‘L’ and she wondered about the possibility of an external access door.

  She consulted the dining room wall, surveyed the bright glow of sunlight illuminating the vines over the windows, and decided it must be an external wall.

  Likely a service door, she thought. Probably for bringing in the firewood and supplies and the unsightly service staff.

  She continued backing across the flooded dining area, ignoring the temptation of a fresh breath of air. As inviting as it might be, she wasn’t interested in testing the backdoor or in going anywhere near that runny, chimney hole.

  But it’s good to know, she thought. Windows will work in a pinch, but there’s nothing like a good door for when you’re running for your life.

  She ducked through foyer door and made tracks around the watchful suit of armor, being careful to keep her eyes on the unexplored doorway. It was a risky move, rushing through the lobby and disregarding the floor, but it was a risk she was willing to take, especially if it meant getting out of the water.

  She exploded through the unexplored entryway, her paranoia at a full gallop, and found the room as poorly-lit as the kitchen. With heart pounding, she took several strides through utter darkness, waiting for her eyes to adjust and being rewarded with the sight of a staircase in the back.

  Relief washed through her like a mug of fresh brew and she lifted her foot from the water, praying to her Fates (thank them and keep them and have them make true). She pressed her foot down on the first plank and felt the soggy flex of saturated wood. She returned the foot to the water and ran her eyes up the staircase, trepidation gobbling her nerve.

  There wasn’t a flat step in the queue, and a few steps were actually missing, and where the banister should have protruded from the wall, there were only dowel supports jut
ting up like an old woman’s teeth. The banister itself had either disintegrated with time or been torn asunder by something large and ominous thundering up the stairs.

  The thing that came through the sitting room wall, she wondered, and craned her head in the direction of the foyer.

  This thought (after frightening her silly) actually brought her some solace. She had no proof that such a monstrous beast existed, or that it had ever climbed these rickety steps, but she had no proof to the contrary either.

  And if the stairs had held it…

  She drew a fetid breath of air, possibly to make herself lighter, and set a foot on the first of the spongy planks. It groaned deeply, sounding like Reetsle when she’d told him he couldn’t kill the slithering beast at Eastpost, but it held. She tried the next and found it held as well, groaning like the first and then hissing like a witch’s cat at the end. The third snapped beneath her, but she managed to stutter-step to the next before falling through. After that, the remaining steps held true.

  At the top, she switched her club to her right hand and swiped her left at the bugs. They were worse up here than on the first floor and she wondered if that were a good sign or a bad sign. It crossed her mind that maybe something had died in the one of the three rooms she was staring at. She swiped at the pests once more and kept moving, making her way for the closest of the three doors and being sure to stay in the middle of the hall.

  On either side of her, pasty tendrils snaked along the flaked and broken walls, and along the edges of the corridor something soft and black filled the corners. She couldn’t tell what the stuff was, but assumed it was decomposed leaves. Or rather, she hoped it was.

  She stepped through the water-stained doorway and into the pinkish light, continued on until she was standing by the curtain of vines from whence the light came. She toyed with the idea of pushing back the gut-like tendrils—like curtains, like extra cover if we want to peak outside—but decided against it.

  Compared to the hall outside, there was an ocean of sunlight in here. Besides, she didn’t like the idea of drawing attention to herself, not if the slithering creature was within sight. She left the milky curtains alone and turned to inspect the chamber.

  It was hard to tell with such advanced decay, but she assumed it was a bedroom. On one side, there stood a moldy chest of drawers and wardrobe and on the other a moss-green abortion that might have once been a bed.

  She studied the latter and decided that now, with three of the four posts broken and the canopy draped across its face, it looked more like a shrouded corpse than a place to lie down for the night.

  But someone used to lie there, she thought. They used to lie there and dream.

  The very thought of lying down seemed to suck the energy from her legs and she found herself sidling into the corner and slumping against the wall, never realizing how tired she was until her haunches struck the floor and her shoulders hit the wall.

  She pulled the cudgel into her lap—fully intent on placing it between her legs and tracing it with her finger—but hugged it to her instead. She stared at the dirty light in the hall and wondered if it were safe to close her eyes, if maybe she had time to take a nap before tracking down Reetsle and Iman and reviewing their plans. She was still contemplating this option when a pair of heavy boots came tromping inside the room.

  Mums blinked open her eyes, unaware she had closed them, and saw Iman Janusery hunched over the chest of drawers. Before she would speak, he yanked out a drawer, dumped the contents on the floor, and tossed the empty tray at the bed.

  The decomposing bedding managed to cushion much of the blow, but Mums still winced as wood struck fabric. Iman took no notice at all, already digging through the soiled and ratty garments as the discarded drawer came to a stop against the adjacent wall.

  Mums opened her mouth in a snarl, fully intent on giving the good captain a piece of her mind, and forgot what it was she had wanted to say. There was just something about the way he was digging through those garments that seemed to negate her own urgency.

  She closed her mouth and watched as Iman pawed through the last of the shirts and pants and then jerked out a second drawer. He dumped it beside the first pile and gave it a toss at the bed, descending upon the moldy articles before the drawer had come to a stop.

  What does he think he’s doing? she wondered, watching him grab a pair of pants and shake them like a sackful of goodies. His eyes were on the floor the whole time, searching for loose items. When nothing came out, he slung the pants to the side and moved for the next item, paying no heed to the wet thump they made as they struck the wallpaper. Mums had seen enough.

  “Iman dear,” she said, sliding her cudgel to one side.

  Without looking at her, Iman yanked out another drawer and dumped its contents on the floor. “Hey, Mums,” he said, his tone flat and disinterested, the voice of a man who had just woken up. “What’d I tell you about this place? Nice, huh?”

  Mums made another groan as he tossed the spongy drawer at the bed, but again resisted the urge to spill forth a lecture. Right now, she wanted to know what he was doing. Or, better yet, why he was doing it.

  “Iman dear,” she said, scooting back on her haunches. “Is something the matter?”

  Kicking at the newly-made pile of socks and undergarments, Iman said, “Nope.”

  “Are you sure?” Mums asked. “You seemed to be looking for something.”

  Iman’s eyes picked over the socks and this time he said nothing.

  Mums sat up a little more. “Well, whatever it is you’re doing,” she said, “you need to do it a little more quietly. Or,” she added, glancing at the window, “perhaps not at all.”

  Iman to stopped kicking the booties and looked up at her, his usually carefree eyes full of a sobriety that shouldn’t be there, his usually grinning mouth set with an intensity that seemed a little out of place.

  He stared a moment more, then said, “Mums, you okay?”

  Mums drew herself up with a breath and exhaled wearily. “As a matter of fact, Iman Dear, I’m not exac—”

  Out in the watery streets of Elnor, the halfling had begun to yell.