The monkey aptly named Mephistopheles.
Wilde thundered up the stairs after it. The monkey scampered along the second floor landing and dodged through an open bedroom door. It was a room he recognized: Madame Zhozhovsky’s. Wilde quickly guessed that Conan Doyle had returned to study the crime scene a second time. Before he entered, he took the precaution of covering his nose and mouth with a lavender-scented handkerchief.
“Arthur, are you in here?” he called, stepping inside. A quick glance disappointed him. But then he noticed that the monkey was also nowhere to be seen. The wardrobe door was slightly cracked. It swung open to his push and his jaw dropped when he saw the obsidian rectangle of the secret passage. There was no question now of where Arthur had gone. Wilde couldn’t see far into the passage, but he knew that secret passageways were seldom dusted. He was wearing a black velvet jacket and black trousers—the worst possible choice. And then he looked down at his feet. He was wearing his two-guinea shoes. Exploring the passage was out of the question—he was simply not dressed for it. But then he reviewed the wardrobe he had fetched, and realized he was in a bit of a pickle. Wilde had picked out a selection of outfits based on style, color, and texture—he had not packed for the possibility of crawling through secret passages. Arthur, he reasoned, was a strong and resourceful man, excellently equipped for self-preservation. But still he dithered at the threshold, torn between fashion and friend-preservation. Yes, Conan Doyle was perhaps his best friend. But Wilde was wearing perhaps his best jacket.
He faced a vexing dilemma.
And so he stood, peering into the darkness, unmoving, his mind reefed in an inextricable knot. Finally, he shook himself, liberated a lamp from the hallway table, and plunged into the secret passage. He reasoned that, should Conan Doyle perish because he dallied, he would never feel comfortable wearing the clothes again.
Thus it was a moot point.
He paused when the secret passageway reached a junction, with one shaft leading off to his left and one to his right. With a lifelong preference for the sinister, he turned left. Within twenty feet he stumbled upon a flight of stone steps ascending steeply upward. At this point he contemplated turning back. He was a big man in a narrow space and claustrophobia was tightening a knot at the base of his skull. Nevertheless, he steeled himself, muttered, “ad astra,” and began the long climb.
He was puffing hard, his thighs burning by the time he reached the top step, coughing on the dust his feet were raising. “This jacket and trousers will never come clean,” he mourned aloud.
But then he saw that the way ahead was barred not by stone, but by a wooden door. Set in the top was a brass spy-hole cover. It was stuck fast, glued in place with the dust of decades, but cracked loose when he put his weight behind it. A cone of daylight streamed out, splashing across Wilde’s face.
He contemplated a moment. Who could stand before a spy hole and not peer through? Certainly not Oscar Wilde. He pressed his face close to the spy hole and gazed into a dimly lit space filled with mirrors. As his hand pressed against the door, it rested upon a handle mechanism, which unlatched with a metallic ka-chunk. The secret panel broke loose with a crack and swung inward, stone dust grating beneath its sill.
Feeling rather like Lewis Carroll’s Alice, Oscar Wilde stepped from the darkness into the mirror maze.
CHAPTER 23
THE FAR SIDE OF THE MIRROR
The smell of formaldehyde was sharp and pungent. The room he was in had the cave-like feel of a chamber deep beneath the ground. Around him were tables covered in sheets draped over familiar shapes—corpses. Suddenly, one of the corpses sat bolt upright, and the sheet whispered to the floor. The dead man’s eyes were glassy and staring. Rictus had drawn the lips back so that he flashed the rotten stumps of a ruined smile; a knife wound across his face gaped like a second livid, red mouth.
Conan Doyle knew he was in the very worst place to be. Terror swarmed and prickled beneath his skin.
A swinging door at the far end of the room whuffed open and a small form stumped forward, tapping the way with a cane.
“Wh-who is that?” he called out.
The diminutive figure tap-tapped forward into a pool of lamplight.
Madame Zhozhovsky.
“What’s going on?” he cried, terror surging in his throat. “What’s happening? Where am I?”
The old lady put a crooked finger to her lips and shushed him. “You are in, what the Buddhists call, the Bardo.”
“Am … am I dead?”
She shook her head. “Consciousness has withdrawn from your body. You linger on the threshold. But beware—this is the realm of nightmares. Your greatest fears. A place between life and death, where the soul is tested and triumphs … or is destroyed, absorbed and imprisoned for eternity.”
More of the corpses sat upright. Sheets slid to the floor. And then tables groaned and squeaked as, one by one, the dead climbed down. Conan Doyle saw faces eaten away by syphilis and cancer, missing noses, empty sockets lonely for an eye.
“Who are these people? What is this place?”
“An illusion. An hallucination. What you fear the most, torn from a memory. Part of what you never resolved in life.”
“Yes,” Conan Doyle gasped. “I recognize parts of it: the morgue at Edinburgh hospital. I worked the night shift as a student of medicine. I was alone, and I was terrified.”
The corpses shuffled toward him, encircling him.
“This is not real,” Zhozhovsky said, “but the terror is real. You must let go of it.”
The figures crowded closer until he could taste the cloying reek of rotting meat and decay. They began to paw him with bloody stumps, hands shedding sheets of gray skin.
“Look away,” she urged. “You must look away. Paradise is there, you just have to turn your gaze a fraction.”
A ruined face gibbered inches away, rotten corpse breath washing over him.
“I can’t … can’t look away.…”
Hands began to paw at him, trying to pull him to the floor. He knew that if he lost his footing and fell he would never stand again.
“Resist!”
“I cannot! Help me!”
“You must resist. Put your mind somewhere else.”
He retched, gagging. The stench of rotting flesh was overwhelming, triggering waves of fear and revulsion. A scream coiled in his chest, gathering, and he knew if he opened his mouth, if he unleashed it, the scream would annihilate him.
“Look away!”
He pushed through the shadows in his mind, and grasped onto a memory, like a drowning man clinging to a chunk of flotsam.
Instantly, he was out of the dark place. He looked around. He was standing on the windy battlements of Edinburgh Castle, looking out over the gray city toward Arthur’s Seat, the hills to the east. A tall man towered beside him: it was his father, and he was a small boy. He recognized it as a moment from his youth, before his father’s drinking robbed him of his mind. The familiar bearded face looked down at him and smiled. “Have you come to stay with your old dad, young Arthur?”
A small woman stumped toward them. She lowered her hood: Madame Zhozhovsky.
“This, too, is an illusion. You still hover on the boundary between life and death. You must go back. Your mission on Earth is far from over.”
Conan Doyle looked at his father. He could not remember him looking so young. Joy tightened his chest. It was a happy moment. One of the happiest moments in his life. Why should he leave it?
“None of this is real. You must leave.”
“But why?”
“If you die in Thraxton Hall, your soul will be bound to it for eternity—as mine is.”
“I want to stay. I don’t want to leave—”
“Steel yourself and turn away!”
With a supreme effort, Conan Doyle tore his eyes from his father’s.
Instantly, the castle, the battlements, his father, vanished.
He was back in the crypt of Thraxton Hall. He
looked down to see a coffin. At the same instant, he could see himself lying inside, eyes shut, head lolling slack, a handful of burned matches in his soot-smudged fingers.
Madame Zhozhovsky had disappeared, but he felt a presence close by. A small figure appeared at the end of the crypt: it was the little girl in the blue dress. She stood watching him mutely, tears falling as she sucked a finger, and then turned and fled.
He hesitated. She could be a trickster, a revenant. Despite his misgivings, he left the coffin and followed. He rounded a corner into another passageway of the crypt. The girl sat on the stony ground, her filthy bare legs folded under her. She looked up at him with despair on a face streaked with tears.
“Who are you, little girl? Are you Annalette Thraxton?”
Without answering, she sprang to her feet and hurried away. But at the entrance to another passage she stopped and looked back shyly, waiting for him to follow.
The girl is a portent of death, he thought, she could be luring my soul to destruction. He resigned not to follow her. But then she held out a hand. It was a gesture that took him back to his own children.Something broke inside him. He stepped forward and took her hand. It was cold, tiny, and frail. She fixed his face with an importuning look and tugged. Meekly, he allowed himself to be led. She pulled him into a narrow, stony passage, and he found himself climbing a stone staircase that ascended through darkness. As they reached the top of the stairs, he saw a shining window. Light flooded in from the other side. As he reached the window, he saw that it was, in truth, the back side of a mirror. He looked through it and saw the interior of the mirror maze. And then, to his surprise, a hidden door juddered open and a dusty figure stumbled in. Oscar Wilde! He strode into the room, brushing dust from the shoulders of his jacket, and looked around.
Conan Doyle hammered on the glass with his fists and cried out, “Oscar! I’m here. Behind the glass. Oscar!”
But the Irishman showed no signs of hearing him. Instead, he poked around the room and finally strode straight up to the mirror and peered into it.
He must see me, Conan Doyle thought. He emptied his mind, pressed both hands flat against the mirror, and concentrated with everything he had, trying to transmit a mental cry for help to his friend.
Oscar, it’s me. I’m dying, trapped in a coffin in the crypt. You must find me before it’s too late.
Wilde’s face took on a serious look. He leaned closer, peering deeper into the glass. But then he merely brushed the dust from his large eyebrows and combed the cobwebs from his hair.
Oscar! Conan Doyle screamed. It was his last chance. His only chance.
Wilde abruptly turned from the mirror and strode to the far window. He looked out and must have seen something, because he suddenly bolted from the room.
Conan Doyle realized, with despair, that his friend had been oblivious to the mental signal. He looked around for the young girl, but she, too, had vanished. And then he felt a tidal surge drawing him back from the mirror. Back down the staircase. Back along the passageway. Back into the crypt. The coffin that imprisoned him loomed and drew him irresistibly back inside. With rising horror, he knew that he had failed, and that death and the unrelenting darkness would swallow him … forever.
CHAPTER 24
A TERRIBLE SACRIFICE
Opening the secret door had loosened decades of dust, which sifted down upon the shoulders of Wilde’s black velvet jacket. Gingerly, he attempted to brush the dust from his shoulders without getting any on his trousers, but he was certain his entire ensemble was ruined. He stepped forward to the cheval dressing mirror and peered in. The mirror’s silvering was disintegrating, but Wilde could see enough in the tattered reflection to spring an expression of despair to his face. He resembled a mummy disinterred from a dusty alcove of the British Museum. His large eyebrows were giant caterpillars limned with gray fuzz; his rich chestnut curls were matted with clingy cobwebs. The black velvet suit—now fuzzy as a giant lint ball—would have to be burned. Wilde would have to soak in a hot tub filled with his best bath salts to freshen his skin and scour away the grime of eons.
He glanced around the room. Conan Doyle was obviously not there, and the room held nothing of note except for a collection of the most inordinately ugly mirrors he had ever seen gathered into one place. He paused again to check his reflection in the mirror, brushing dust from his eyebrows as he leaned close.
Then, quite remarkably, he received a strong mental image of Conan Doyle interred in a coffin. The effect was shockingly disconcerting, and he drew back from the mirror. Suddenly from behind he heard a cry and the crack of a whip. He abandoned the mirror and moved to the window. When he looked out, he was just in time to see the black hearse draw away, the two ruffians he had spied in the kitchen, sitting at the reins. A sudden flash of inspiration struck him and he fled from the room as fast as he could.
* * *
Colors swam in his eyes, and Conan Doyle knew it was a sign that his brain, starved of oxygen, was dying. He sucked in a labored breath, but the air in the coffin was used up. He realized the end was near and focused his mind, determined that his final thought would be of the ones he loved. He thought of his wife, Louise, on their wedding day, her face still young and flushed with youth. He thought of cradling his son, a babe in arms, and singing him to sleep. He tried to think of his daughters, the sweetness of their faces as they fed the ducks at the village pond, but the darkness was starting to leak into his mind. Their images dissolved as his mind drowned in shadow.
* * *
To the great surprise of Mister Greaves and one of the maids, Oscar Wilde, dusted gray as a ghost, rushed past them in the hallway, galloped into the entrance hall, then flung open the front door and leaped down the steps. As he ran onto the gravel drive, Wilde looked to see the hearse trundling away in the distance. Toby, the gardener, was just leading an immense brown stallion and looked up in surprise as the large houseguest accosted him. “The horse!” Wilde shouted breathlessly, snatching the reins. “I must have it!”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Toby said. “But you can’t ride this ’orse.”
“Emergency!” Wilde shouted. “Need the horse.”
“But you can’t ride him.”
“No time to argue. Time is crucial. Give me a leg up.”
Reluctantly, Toby cupped his hands; Wilde stepped into them and clambered on the back of the horse. It was a huge brown shire horse, bred for plowing and hauling. Wilde considered himself a passable horseman, but the mount lacked a saddle. Still, he just had to catch the hearse. He dug the heels of his two-guinea shoes into the horse’s flanks. The beast whinnied, tossed its huge head, and plunged forward. The horse galloped a dozen strides, then slid to a halt and dropped its head, catapulting Wilde over the top. He performed an arm-flailing somersault and landed flat on his back with a spleen-rupturing “OOF!”—the wind knocked out of him.
The Irishman looked up to see Toby standing over him.
“Told you ya couldn’t ride him, sir. There’s only me what can ride Fury.”
Toby assisted Wilde as he staggered, wincing, to his feet. When the playwright could finally draw breath, he said in a tight voice, “Then you must carry me pillion.”
Moments later, Fury thundered off with Toby at the reins and Wilde bouncing wildly behind, oofing with every lunge. They cantered out of the courtyard, down the stony lane, and galloped through the gates of the grounds.
Finally the road descended to where the hearse was pulling clear of the ford, water dripping from its wheels.
“Stop! Stop!” Wilde called out. The driver of the hearse, the short man Wilde had seen in the kitchen, shared a look with the large man at his side. For a moment, it looked as if they would ignore his cries and carry on, but then the hearse pulled up just a few yards clear of the ford.
Toby drew Fury up and Wilde slid off the back of the horse, walking stiff-legged.
“Thank you,” he said breathlessly, and then added, “It is a fortunate thing I already have
two strapping children. After that ride, I believe my days of fatherhood are forever behind me.” After he caught his breath, he turned his attention to the hearse and its two drivers on the far side of the ford. “You there,” he shouted, “fetch that hearse back over here.”
The small man wiped a runny nose on his sleeve and shouted back. “We can’t, sir. There ain’t no room to turn the hearse about.”
Wilde threw a questioning glance at Toby atop the horse. “He’s right,” the gardener agreed. “You’ll have to wade across.”
Wilde looked down at his two-guinea shoes, now scuffed at the toes and gray with dust. He looked back at the two ruffians. He was convinced that Conan Doyle lay in a coffin in the back of the hearse. Every second he delayed could be critical. He took a deep breath in through his nose, pulled his shoulders back, and waded into the ford. With the first step, frigid water flooded his shoes, snatching the breath from his lungs. The bottom of the ford was covered in river-rounded rocks, slippery with moss and green slime. Midway across, the press of water was strong. One foot shot out from under him. He stumbled, splashing water, arms windmilling, and nearly fell, but managed to catch himself and wobble upright. Finally he splashed from the water onto muddy ground, his silk socks squelching with each step. He marched up to the hearse, summoning every ounce of gravitas he possessed. “The coffin,” he said in his most imperious tone. “I demand to see inside it.”
The two men looked at one another uncertainly. Wilde was tall and broad, but the redheaded ruffian was the size of a draught ox—and almost as intelligent. He scratched his fiery muttonchops with a sandpaper sound. When he answered, his tone spoke of clenched fists and broken noses. “Wot you wanna look in the box for?”
Wilde cleared his throat, feigning impatience. “I believe you have a friend of mine in there.” He turned to shout over his shoulder to Toby. “If these ruffians refuse to comply, you are to ride to Slattenmere and fetch the appropriate authorities.”
The Revenant of Thraxton Hall: The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Page 23
