Billy was still resistant to the notion, but it started to break through his guard. In fact, Trevor's words worked like a worm wriggling into their brains—a seed of doubt that was just enough to persuade them.
"But what about the shadow?" Bridgette said, more to herself than him.
"A dream," Trevor said. "You were sleeping soundly when I woke you up."
He clapped his hands together as if to mark the end of the discussion. "Ladies and gentlemen, in case I have to remind you, there's no way we're leaving. Not with the golden egg we're sitting on." He reached into his pocket and pulled out the gold coin he'd found. "We found it in the bay, just like the one my buddy showed me. It's out there. You all know it, because you can feel it, just like I can."
"Funny that we didn't find, you know, an actual giant ship," Dawson said sarcastically.
"Still a needle in a haystack," Trevor said coolly. "In fact, with the way the bay's patrolled by cops, we can't just flounder around, searching every inch of the thing; we need a more precise approach, like a surgeon."
"What are you saying?" Bridgette asked.
Trevor smirked. "I'm saying that whoever owned this mansion when the treasure was lost—this Jasper guy—knew exactly where it was. He didn't lose it at all; he just left it in the bay for safekeeping. Think about it. How do more pirates steal something when they don't know where it is?" He hurried down the hallway to the living room suddenly and started down the stairs.
The others followed him, confused as to where he was going. "Did he just call us pirates?" Billy asked, then a childlike smile came over him at the idea.
Bridgette stopped on the stairs and leaned over the railing as Trevor started to head through a doorway. "Where are you going?" she asked.
He stopped and turned. "To the forbidden wing," he said. "It's time to see what's in there."
If Walls Could Talk
"The forbidden what?" Bridgette asked as they all hurried to keep pace with Trevor.
Trevor ignored her question until the six of them stood in a long hallway at the rear of the mansion with a closed door in front of them. "There's an extra wing behind this door, or a ward or whatever you want to call it. Will said it's the only place that's off-limits to me, even though I'm the security guy."
"Wait, who's Will?" Karen asked.
"You know, the curator guy," Trevor said. "The one who hired me."
"You're such a stellar employee," Dawson said.
"What's in there?" Bridgette asked.
"Don't know," Trevor replied. "But I'm willing to bet something I'd find mighty interesting." He jiggled the doorknob. "There's no way someone could keep an exact memory of where the treasure's buried after all these years; there has to be some kind of written record."
"You're saying a map," Billy said.
"That's what I'm thinking." He sized the door up, looking in the gap between it and the frame.
"How are you going to get it open?" Bridgette asked. "You can't break it, otherwise he'll know."
"Relax," Trevor said. He retrieved a credit card from his wallet and slid it between the door and the jamb. "Normally this doesn't work on a lot of doors anymore, but an old one like this?" He jiggled the card as he twisted the doorknob, and suddenly the door opened. "Presto."
A narrow hallway waited in dim light beyond. The six of them bunched up in the doorway, each trying to get a look. Trevor led the way, and they passed what looked like two storage rooms on either side of the hallway before coming out into a grand hall. It looked similar to the size and opulence of the entrance hall. Except everything was destroyed. Vases were smashed on the floor, paintings with torn canvas hung crookedly on the walls, tables were tipped over and crushed, carpet runners lay creased and messy, chunks of stone were broken away from their sculptures. And there were the odd remnants of dark and muddy red streaks across the marble floor, apparently hastily cleaned.
"What happened in here?" Bridgette asked. The six of them slowly made their way across the hall, careful to step over the debris.
"One hell of a bar fight," Dawson said.
"It's true," Billy said, almost short of breath.
"What's true?" Karen demanded.
They walked under dusty gold chandeliers and saw dust particles floating in the sunlight coming through large windows. The smell was unpleasant, like the scent of whatever happened here had been preserved all these years.
"This was the heist," Trevor said almost in a whisper. "The pirates came right in here. By the looks of it, not by stealth. This must be the only part of the mansion they didn't clean up. They kept this part away from the tourists."
"But why?" Bridgette asked.
"I don't know," Trevor admitted.
"It's hard to breathe in here," Janet said. Indeed, the air felt stagnant compared to the rest of the museum; it was like they could sense the rage and avarice that flowed through this hall.
"I'm not sure this was just a simple heist," Dawson said. "Seems like there's more to it."
"Maybe," Trevor said. After spending a moment taking in his surroundings, he spotted an unassuming door ahead and pointed to it. "There," he said. It hung limply on its bottom hinges, tilting across the doorway. The jamb had been smashed in. Trevor pushed on the door and it almost tore itself off its frame as it groaned and swung in a wide arc. The room beyond was dark and he felt around the wall for a light switch, but there was none. "I don't think there's any electricity in this wing. The rest of this place was retrofitted with electrical wiring, but it must have stopped here. They really didn't touch this wing at all after it happened." He fished in his pockets for his lighter and flicked it on. The small flame was hardly much, but it was enough to see that the room was small, unlike most other rooms in the mansion. The walls were papered in a pea green with white trim at the top and bottom. An old burgundy carpet stretched across the floor.
"What was this room for?" Janet asked as the others crowded in behind him. "A closet or something?"
"Look," Trevor said, standing in the middle of the empty room. He crouched and shone the light over the floor. The carpet was indented in rows and columns by small, rectangular objects, spaced narrowly apart from each other. "This is where they kept the treasure! Look at the indents! After all this time, it still has the shape! They must've kept gold bars here. Probably a lot of them. And over here... the indent is big, maybe like a chest or something."
The others looked around the room with a newfound sense of awe. For any of them who had been skeptical, suddenly it all began to feel a lot more real. Dazzling images flashed in Bridgette's mind. With just one mere thought, the whole room magically transformed into heaps of sparkling gold and jewels, even though the reality was dark and empty.
"This was the last thing they did before they got back on their boat and sank," Billy said soberly.
With nothing left to see in the room, they walked back into the hall. There were a few other rooms on either side of the hall, but none dissimilar from any they found in the rest of the museum; there was a servants' quarters, a small kitchen, a dining room much smaller than the one they'd eaten at, and a bathroom. But there was one room sitting at the end of the hall behind large, ornately-carved wooden doors.
The sound of them were thunderous as they pushed them open. A grand bedchamber lay behind them, much larger than any of the bedrooms they had been staying in. The room was designed in the shape of an octagon with tall windows on every other wall looking out on gardens on one side and the bay on the other. At the far end of the room was a large four-poster bed with posts that stretched all the way up to the ceiling, styled to look like marble columns. Hand-stitched burgundy curtains hung from them, faded from years of sunlight washing over them. And sitting over the bed on the wall was a large portrait of a man sitting perfectly upright in an old-fashioned suit, a slight smile parting his lips. The canvas was torn, like someone had slashed it with a knife or a sword. The loose flaps of canvas gave the man's face a hideously fiendish quality, like one of t
hose paintings in a creepy old house where the eyes seem to follow you.
Other peculiar paintings hung on the walls, too. They all depicted old ships out at sea, each one of them battered by stormy winds and weather. Some of the paintings showed ships in the middle of capsizing or being torn apart by a maelstrom. All of them combined to give a very grim and ominous feeling to the room.
"Okay, this place gives me the creeps," Karen said. "Just putting that out there now."
"What are we looking for exactly?" Bridgette asked.
"I don't know," Trevor said. "Could be a file, maybe a map. But there's got to be something here." He opened the doors to a tall wardrobe and a plume of dust greeted him, making him cough.
The others began to wander farther into the room, each of them unnerved by some unseen but strongly felt presence.
"Why's that picture all cut up?" Janet asked, pointing out the portrait of the man.
Billy studied it carefully. "That's Jasper!" he said after a moment. "I recognize him from the busts I've seen, and that statue in the courtyard! This must be where he slept. An entire wing to himself..."
"But why would someone want to destroy it?" Janet asked. "It's like someone had a vendetta against him."
Billy tapped a finger to his lips. She was right; all of this was about more than just stealing treasure. And he wanted to get to the bottom of it.
Trevor crossed the room to an old writing desk that seemed like it would be right at home in the Oval Office of the White House. He rifled through its drawers with no regard for its condition or preservation. Messy stacks of yellowed papers and notes sat inside, most written on old parchment. He skimmed through them, looking for anything that resembled a map or a set of coordinates.
As the others wandered through the room, Bridgette noticed Janet still staring at the torn portrait over the bed with intense focus, almost like she was in a trance.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
Janet jumped at the sound of her voice, her attention finally breaking from Jasper's painted form. "What?"
"Are you all right?" Bridgette repeated. "You seemed like you were worlds away just now."
"I did?" Janet asked with genuine confusion.
Bridgette wanted to add that she also seemed to have a look of fear on her face as she gazed at the painting, but Janet seemed to be completely unaware of what she was talking about. "Never mind," she said. "I'm sure it's nothing."
When Trevor was finished searching the drawers, all he found were letters written in almost illegible script, itemized lists of various shipping incomes and costs from Jasper's trading company, or various other records of things unimportant to him.
"Damn it," he said. "There's nothing here."
Dawson rolled his eyes.
But Trevor wasn't about to give up. He spotted a table sitting next to Jasper's bed. On it was a small, hand-carved wooden box with a lock built into the front. Trevor walked over to it and inspected the box. "This has to be it," he said. "The old man kept the information close to him at all times. He must have never let anyone else see it." Trevor wedged his fingers under the lid of the box and tested the lock. The mechanism was small—not very sturdy at all—and it felt loose.
"What are you doing?" Bridgette asked. "You can't break that open! He'll know!"
"He'll know nothing," Trevor retorted. "Little lock like this? This thing must've broken on its own a long time ago." He got a good grip and wiggled the lock back and forth.
"You're not going to find anything in there," Dawson said matter-of-factly.
In the next instant, the lock broke and the lid flew open on its hinges. The only thing inside, sitting on a plush burgundy cushion, was a rolled piece of parchment. Trevor took it and carefully opened it up, then his eyes went wide with excitement. "Holy shit, guys. This is it!"
The others quickly gathered around, except for Dawson who hung back and looked on bitterly.
"It's a map of the bay," Trevor said. His finger traced the ink on the parchment that showed a cliff skirting around the edge of the map with a mansion drawn on it in crude rectangles. A grid was laid over the parchment with letters stretching down the left side and numbers stretching across the top to break the bay up into sections.
Bridgette's eyes traced the map and noticed where the ink seemed to run off the right side. She also saw that that side of the map looked uneven, like it had been torn. "It's only half, though," she said.
"What?" Trevor asked.
"Look." She pointed out the telltale signs to him.
He had been so absorbed by his find that he hadn't noticed. "There's no 'X' either," he said. "How am I supposed to know where it is?!"
"It must be on the other half."
"What's this?" Billy asked, leaning in. His finger traced a handwritten sentence at the top of the parchment. Just like the rest of the map, the sentence was cut off. He read the part that remained: "'The treasure lies beyond the'..."
"Beyond the what?" Bridgette said.
Trevor's eyes narrowed. His temper had flared, but he calmed himself down. "We're gonna need the other half to find out."
Dead and Buried
The afternoon crawled at a snail's pace. Trevor paced around the mansion, alternately glancing down at the piece of map in his hand and searching for the other half. The others felt themselves slide down into a gelatinous malaise, like they were waiting for word from Trevor on what to do. It was his boat, his job that got them here in the first place, and his plan; the ball was firmly in his court.
In their angst, the others started to become uneasy. Billy or Bridgette would try to offer suggestions to Trevor, but he would distractedly wave them off, deep in thought. Dawson, on uneasy ground with Trevor's plan from the beginning, wanted to leave after their misadventures in the night. And despite promises and possible treasure maps, he still wasn't convinced this whole adventure was anything other than a stupid idea. This of course caused tremendous tension with Bridgette.
"We can't leave now," Bridgette said.
"Yes we can," Dawson retorted. "This place is making all of us go crazy. Can't you see it?"
"You're talking about what I saw. The person in the hallway and all that."
"No. I don't believe there's any supernatural stuff going on. I think you probably were dreaming, honey. I'm talking about us almost being arrested. Doesn't that worry you at all? I mean, just what the hell are we doing here?"
She understood where he was coming from. She had been thrilled to come here and loved the adventure of it all, but she had to admit that things were taking a darker turn than she had anticipated. "But... what about Trevor?" she said. "We can't just leave him here by himself. You know he'll stay, no matter what."
Dawson sighed and rubbed a hand over his tired face. "Honey, he's a big boy. Believe me, he'll be fine on his own. Until he drowns or gets arrested, that is."
"Don't say that," Bridgette said coldly.
"Say what? You know it's true."
"I just wish you wouldn't talk about him like that. He's still our friend."
"Don't give me that garbage," Dawson snapped.
"Excuse me?"
"He's your friend, not mine. And you're protecting him. Poor little Trevor, community misfit. He's always been the black sheep out of your little friend group, always a little too moronic, always a little too sophomoric. You've always felt bad for him. Or maybe it's more than that. So why don't you just cozy up to him? What am I even doing here?"
"Dawson, it's not like that!" Bridgette protested.
"Sure it isn't. You still have feelings for him, don't you?" He took a step away from her and shook his head. "I can't believe I got played for the sucker."
"Baby, would you cut it out! I don't have feelings for him, but I can't let him do this alone!"
Dawson was stone-faced.
"I... I don't love him," Bridgette spluttered, trying to find some way to convince him on this stupid subject. "I love you!"
"You sure have a funny way of sh
owing it," he said. Then he turned and walked out of the living room.
Bridgette stood there, stunned, and watched him go. She couldn't believe he was acting this way, but she knew he wasn't as serious as his words; he just needed to blow off some steam. So she would let him.
Dawson had walked off toward the back of the mansion where the sealed wing was—probably just wandering in no particular direction, she figured—so Bridgette left the living room the other way, sauntering down the hall and glancing out the windows at the serene bay. She didn't notice until now that her face must have reddened during the argument, and she slowly felt the heat drain away. When she got to the parlor she glanced toward the loggia and saw Trevor leaning against the railing. She hesitated for a moment, wondering what Dawson would say if he saw her, but then she realized that she didn't care.
She walked over to him and said, "Hey." When he didn't turn around or seem to notice her at all, she touched his shoulder.
Trevor jumped and spun around, holding an almost furious look on his face. When he saw that it was her, he softened, but only a little.
"What's gotten into you?" Bridgette asked.
"No, nothing," he said quickly, turning back to the bay. His eyes narrowed as he scanned the water, then he looked down at the piece of map in his hands and muttered under his breath. He looked like he was trying to solve some complex mathematical equation in his head.
Bridgette took a step back from him. "Um... I was thinking we should maybe think about dinner soon."
He didn't look at her, still muttering.
"Do you think maybe you should take a break from that for a minute?" she asked.
"Fine! Fine! Dinner, whatever!" he said, not looking at her and instead waving his hand in a jerky motion. In the next moment, he turned away from the balcony and stormed off to some other area of the mansion, his eyes fixed on the map as his mouth moved silently and quickly.
The Box Set of Hauntings and Horrors Page 46
