by Mike Ashley
“The boulder has come to rest on an upper balcony. I’m balancing on it right now. Falling snow has extinguished the embers but it’s still hot. I can’t stay here much longer. If I can’t get into the house I’ll have to come back up.”
“Is there a window?”
I heard him fumbling among the shadows. “Yes and it has a handle. Let’s hope it opens inwards. I’ll give it a try now.”
He did and the resultant creak was like a laugh. Then he vanished and the flashlight went with him. I found myself staring down at the top of the boulder and the ash which filled its indentation. He had entered safely. I hastened to join him.
THE HOUSE WAS EMPTY
The Baron was absent and nobody else was at home. I closed the window behind me and crossed the room to where Curtis stood. The cold was intense and the floor and walls were coated with frost. This was obviously the highest floor of the mansion and the room was relatively small and bare. It contained a bed, desk, chair and a few other small items of modest furniture.
But Curtis was excited. “Look at this, Warren!”
He played the beam of his flashlight over a cabinet in the corner. I saw nothing remarkable in its contours and simple decoration.
“I don’t understand,” I replied.
“It’s almost identical to the one I purchased in that antique store. I guess the Baron must have sold some of his possessions before he disappeared. I hope this doesn’t mean he was short of money. I’d hate to think this adventure was pointless!”
“Never that,” I answered. “Shall we go down?”
He nodded and we passed through the open door onto a wide landing. We instinctively knew the house was too large to explore all at once. We desired to find the main rooms and become familiar with those first and we assumed they were located on the ground floor. We passed a table on which stood a candelabrum holding two candles. Curtis reached into his pocket for matches and lit the wicks. The glow was weak but welcome.
“One hundred years old,” he muttered.
We reached the stairway and began our descent. There were brackets set into the wall also holding candles, some mere stubs, and we lit these too on our way. We decided to light every candle we encountered to chase away the perennial night. Because of the frost it was impossible to say whether there were carpets beneath our feet. I was inclined to the belief the stairs were bare. The lower we went, the colder it became.
When we reached the next floor down we took a detour through some of the rooms before returning to the stairway. We followed this procedure for every floor. In the wavering glow of the candles above us I felt I was swimming through an undersea grotto. Certainly I hadn’t been this cold since the caving trip I undertook with Curtis a few years previously, a trip which involved diving into pools that had never seen the sun. Stamping my feet did little to warm them. I was numb all over.
After a while, an odd thought occurred to me.
“The layout of this house is regular. The shapes of the rooms and their relative positions are conventional. I was expecting unnatural angles and corridors that go nowhere. After all, it was built by lunatics.”
“Yes but it wasn’t designed by them. The Baron designed it and he was mad too. Doubtless his design was mad and they constructed it in a mad way. The two madnesses cancelled each other out. Thus the result is unintentionally normal.”
I snorted. “How grotesque!”
We finally reached the ground floor and wandered together into an enormous room. This was what we had dreamed about, a chamber filled with the trappings of wealth. One wall was dominated by a monumental hearth. A marble mantelpiece held ornaments that demanded closer inspection. A grandfather clock, utterly silent now, stood in the middle of the opposite wall. Between them a couple of elegant chairs were arranged at pleasing angles. A chandelier hung from the ceiling and burst into a cluster of tiny suns as the flashlight caught it.
Smirking at each other we pointed at a table which held two silver goblets and a bottle of wine. Before sampling this vintage we rested on the chairs. But something wasn’t right and we remained tense.
“I’m too weary to search for treasure now.”
Curtis didn’t argue. “Yes and it’s too cold to relax properly. That wine won’t really warm us. How about if we start a fire and get this room warmed up? Then we can sleep for an hour or two and be refreshed for the plundering later. There are some books over there. We’ll use the paper to get the blaze going.”
I sat rigid, trying not to let my teeth chatter, my hands gripping the frosty arms of my chair. “But the chimney isn’t open to the sky.”
“Do you think the smoke will come back down? If it does, we’ll vacate this room and shut the door tight. I still think it’s worth a try. Fetch the books and I’ll break up some furniture. Here are the matches. I wonder why the snow didn’t fall down the flue and fill the house? I guess there must be a grille at the top of the chimney.”
I rose stiffly and approached the bookcase. I had expected volumes of science or magic in a foreign language but these tomes were ordinary enough, encyclopedias and works on local history and geography. I tore out the pages and cast them into the fireplace. Curtis searched a cabinet and after convincing himself it held no money or anything else of value he flung it to the floor, repeating this action until it shattered.
We crouched before the hearth, warming our hands and faces.
Soon we were able to add the remnants of another cabinet and a table. There was almost no smoke in the fire and I was grateful for this, but the flames contained unexpected colours. Now we were warm enough to try the wine. I had a corkscrew on my pocket knife and managed to work the frozen cork out.
“Wait! Did you hear that? A gurgling sound!”
“It’s the wine in the bottle!” laughed Curtis.
I shook my head. “It’s coming from the wall above the hearth.”
Moving closer I placed my hands on the wall and quickly drew them away. Then I moved to the side and tried again. I bit my lower lip nervously.
Curtis had already poured and tasted. “Not bad. Well?”
“Blisters. It’s red hot.”
“What do you expect? You touched the wall directly above the hearth.”
“No, it’s spreading. I don’t think this is an ordinary fireplace. There seems to be liquid behind it. Probably oil of some kind in a tank. There must be a network of pipes embedded in the brick.”
I followed the moving heat into the shadows. I realised it was spreading along the floor and ceiling too. Curtis unbuttoned his jacket.
“What do you think it means?”
“The entire room is a giant radiator. Maybe the whole house.”
“So what? The Baron was eccentric.”
I stepped to the window and pressed my face against the glass. A sudden crash made me spin around. Curtis was adding more fuel to the fire. I strode over to stop him but then questioned my caution. There seemed no harm in the idea of turning our domestic climate from polar to tropical. I assisted him and we removed our outer clothes item by item, pausing only to finish the bottle. I offered to search for more wine. One wall was now so hot it glowed dully. I discovered that the warmth really had spread beyond the limits of this room. Out in the hall I found another bottle, this time of brandy, idle on a table.
Curtis had taken my place by the window. He beckoned to me.
“A gap of several inches has opened between the house and the snow outside. If this continues we’ll be able to melt our way out of the crater!”
“And expose the secret to everyone,” I pointed out.
“We’ll claim the treasure first anyway. And you have to admit this is an easier way of getting back out.”
I did. While I was doing so there was a powerful lurch.
“What was that?” I cried.
Curtis answered, “I think the house is sinking.”
“There must be more snow beneath it. How can this be? Let’s extinguish the fire and stop it going any de
eper. We’d better hurry!”
“There’s nothing to put it out with. And even if we douse the flames the house will remain hot for a long time yet.”
I grabbed his arm. “Upstairs quick! We can get out through a window at the top and still be at our original level. It’s our best chance.”
But I knew this was a forlorn hope and so did he. The house was sinking faster and more smoothly now, though it groaned and creaked as it gathered speed. In fact we just stared at each other and didn’t move a muscle, apart from those necessary to keep us alive and form a pair of very frightened smiles. Then we regained something of our normal composure and sighed softly at our predicament and remarked on how ironic it was.
“I wonder how deep the snow is?” I muttered.
He returned to the window and there was a snapping noise which I assumed was his foot treading on a piece of broken furniture that had somehow escaped becoming fuel. But it wasn’t. He stood for a long time at the glass, rubbing his hands which were behind his back. I didn’t care for this mannerism and told him so but he ignored me and mumbled something about the amount of oxygen contained in all the cubic space in the house and how long it would last two men and the fire they had to feed.
Finally he looked over his shoulder and answered me.
“It’s not snow now. It’s ice. The Baron must have constructed his mansion on the surface of a frozen pool. Not a normal frozen pool but one solid all the way through. We’re melting our way into it and the ice is doubtlessly sealing itself again above us. If we extinguish the fire we’ll eventually cool and slow down and stop and be entombed forever. We have no choice but to keep burning the furniture. It’s a one way ride.”
I was incredulous. “To where? The bottom of the lake? What good will that do us? It’s death either way.”
The mansion shuddered and I nearly lost my balance.
“The pressure outside is enormous,” he said. “It can only get worse. I’m truly sorry for dragging you on this trip. You were my friend.”
“I still am!” I spluttered.
His tone became thoughtful, even slightly mystical. “Very well. We both know that the story of the Baron and his missing mansion is the most popular of our local legends. But there are others. I am currently thinking about one in particular. I’ve always wondered about this crater and what made it. The result of volcanic activity or the wound inflicted by an ancient meteorite? I never imagined it might be the special lake.”
I took his meaning and went very pale.
He added, “The one rumoured to be bottomless.”
THE DAYS PASSED
We dropped like a hot boulder in the shape of an altar. But the only indentations were in our hearts. Ice opened below us and clenched above like a sequence of blue-white fists. And we wandered our domain, our prison, collecting fuel and searching for food. We smashed wardrobes and clocks and existed on sherry and spirits. But in a corner of the kitchen where the heat had not yet spread I found a ham and a tin of biscuits preserved in the frost. We ate without pleasure and listened to our own teeth in despair.
At least we had stopped accelerating. The pressure of the ice squeezed the house but the hot oil in its veins expanded it and this balance was expressed as a shallow breathing of our total environment, the breathing of a man ready for his coffin, though in fact it was we who were buried. We discussed the legend of the bottomless pool. There was nothing to it really and perhaps that is why it was so terrible. I’m not sure if either of us hoped for anything. We kept ourselves busy.
The air grew stale in time but we discovered that fresh oxygen could be obtained by going into a spare room, one we had not yet entered, and there were plenty of those, but we rationed these gulps of purity carefully. I think I was most afraid of breaking through the ice into ordinary water and drowning in one of the rooms, but this seemed increasingly unlikely. The legend insisted the lake was completely solid, an infinite icecube in nothingness, and that is what I gradually came to believe.
We still looked for treasure, without success.
I was reading one of the Baron’s books, tearing out each page as I finished it and casting it to the flames, when Curtis suddenly shouted.
He was standing at the window, a duty we took in turns, and I glanced at him with a mixture of gloom and wild optimism.
“There’s something out there. It has gone now.”
“What was it?” I asked.
“It might have been a submarine. An early design. We’ve passed it so I suppose we’ll never know for certain.”
Then he burst into tears. It was the first time I had seen him weep and I was grateful he had surrendered to the impulse before me, but I couldn’t think of a way to comfort him. Words were useless. I decided to rely on the brandy bottle or whatever alcohol came to hand. There was nothing available in this room so I rose and departed and passed into the hall. Most of the original candles had burned out but we had found spares and some were monsters, whole legs of wax which could last months. Yet we were conscious of the need to preserve air and we had blown many out, abandoning the majority of the house to shadows.
I returned with a bottle of rum and some interesting news.
“I’ve discovered a study beyond the kitchens. It contains a telephone! One of the first practical models. The Baron was clearly a man of the moment. I don’t mean to sound ridiculous but what if it still works?”
Curtis had dried his eyes and was manly again, but his cheeks were damp and his efforts to appear in control were mostly wasted.
“I saw no cables leading into the crater,” he declared.
“True. But I’m going to try. Nothing else to do today. Come with me. Won’t it be a relief just to dial a number?”
He meekly nodded and followed me to the study. The telephone was a contraption fitted inside a cabinet bolted to the wall. It was a primitive device but recognisable enough, with a mouthpiece and dial. I opened the cabinet doors and stood there awkwardly, trying to operate the mechanism and rehearsing what to say.
“Who are you ringing? The police?”
“My wife in Kamloops. I want her to know first.”
Curtis scowled and paced in agitation as I pressed the earpiece to the side of my head and dialled the number. It was answered almost immediately. There was no need for me to talk. I listened with a frown and then replaced the receiver.
“What happened? What did she say?”
“It was a wrong number. I got a man. He said, ‘Who? What? Eh! He’s not at home. Haha!’ Then he hung up.”
“Let me try,” demanded Curtis.
I shrugged and he took my place and his fingers were busy with the dial. Though he held the earpiece I distinctly heard the voice at the other end of the line.
“Who? What? Eh! He’s not at home. Haha!”
I was bewildered but Curtis was terrified. The colour drained from his skin. He staggered back and clutched me to steady himself.
“There’s something about that voice,” he stammered.
“Yes it does sound peculiar, almost artificial.”
Voicing this thought gave me an idea. I groped behind the cabinet for the cable at the back of the telephone. Then I followed it along the wall and through a side door into a short corridor. I turned a sharp bend and entered another room, little more than a recess, bare apart from a table on which sat an antique gramophone. The disc was spinning and the arm that held the needle was raised above it. The cable stopped here. I called back to Curtis to ring a number, any number, and he replied that he would. Hidden relays in the gramophone clicked and the needle lowered onto the disc. The thin voice came again and then the arm raised itself. It was a trick.
I wandered back to Curtis. “The Baron must have made that recording and invented an automatic device to set it in motion whenever anyone used the telephone. But why? It’s an obscure joke. I’m not laughing.”
“Nor me. I recognise that voice.”
“Impossible. The Baron vanished a century ago.”
“It was the voice of the man in the antique store.”
I blinked. “The senile old fool?”
“None other. I never imagined the Baron might still be alive. We made a big mistake. He never dwelled in this mansion. He built it as a trap, not a habitation. He became a shopkeeper and existed in humble isolation.”
“Well he certainly never attracted any attention.”
Curtis nodded. “That was the idea.”
“Who was the trap intended for?” I pressed.
“Remember that other ending to the legend? The devil came for him and that’s why he disappeared. But in fact the Baron outwitted the devil. He didn’t construct his house in a secret location to escape his fate but to entice it. Once his enemy found it and entered and activated the trigger by lighting the fire the whole edifice would sink into the eternal ice.”
“I can’t believe the Baron is more than a century old.”
“Come on, Warren! Is that any stranger than what has happened to us?”
I began to lose my temper. I didn’t want superstition to endanger our hopes of survival more than necessary. “It doesn’t matter. The devil didn’t come.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“The house was still on the surface of the lake when we found it.”
Curtis cried in perverse triumph, “Precisely! We entered and sprung the trap. And now we are entombed. What does this mean?”
“That one of us is the devil?” I whispered.
He jumped up. “Not you! Coming here was my idea! It’s my fault. I always felt there was something wrong with me, even when I was a child, a discomfort with my own being. I had an urge to be mean to people. I was too shy to do it properly but now I know the reason for the faults in my character. I’m the devil.”
