World Tree Girl

by Kerry Schafer

  Jill laughs. “And you think I killed this Sophronia person. Are we forgetting that I was in the hospital? Unconscious?”

  “You know what?” Jake’s voice is thick with a menace that sends a little chill down my own spine, even though it’s directed elsewhere. “I want to find Sophronia. I don’t care what genetic code she’s got. I’ve known her since she was a baby. She’s a good kid. So where is she?”

  “How should I know that?”

  “Where are the rest of them?”

  Jill clamps her lips together. “I don’t have to talk to you.”

  It’s the same defiant looks she wore the day she stabbed me.

  “Oh my God,” I say. “You still hate Phil.”

  “He called the cops on me. Chose one of his women over his own daughter.” Her chest heaves with emotion, and her eyes burn with fury.

  “You did try to kill me.” I keep my own voice dry and even, despite a sickness in the pit of my stomach.

  “He was my father.” Her voice breaks on the word, and she goes with the emotion, crumpling into a damsel in distress and glancing up at the men from eyes luminous with unshed tears.

  I wait for them to fall for it. Jake has his sympathy look, the one where his eyes soften and his lower lip folds up a little over the upper. He’s an old hand, though, he won’t let emotions change anything. It’s Matt I worry about. His Greek god face looks more chiseled than ever.

  “You father’s death made a convenient excuse,” he says. “But that’s not why you’re here. It was Dr. Sorenson’s death that brought you. That and the Manor. What’s here that you want so desperately? I can’t imagine you want to run this place any more than Maureen does. And yet here you are, contesting the will. Running off employees. Meanwhile, all your research subjects are being knocked off, one at a time.”

  “I think you killed them,” Jake says. “It fits.”

  “Aline died while I was still in France!” Jill protests. “Don’t you try to pin this on me.”

  “How do you know when she died? I don’t think we’ve mentioned that. Have we mentioned that, Maureen?”

  “Pretty sure I haven’t.”

  “That’s it,” Jill says. “Not another word until I have an attorney.”

  “Fair enough. You have the right to remain silent.”

  While Jake is spieling off Jill’s rights and calling a deputy to come take her to jail, Ravenna draws me aside. “The cards are bad,” she tells me. “Very bad. Sophronia, the one who is missing—there is great peril connected to her. Something much bigger than her death. I want to help.”

  “I don’t suppose the cards tell you anything about where to find her?”

  She shakes her head. “No. It’s just the same cards over and over. I don’t know the addresses of the test subjects, or even their names. I just go where I’m sent.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Jill says. “Attorney. That’s the only word I’m saying.”

  Matt walks over to join us and takes one of Ravenna’s hands in his. She startles, as if an electric current has passed between them, her eyes widening.

  “Do you have the cards with you?” Matt asks her. “Show us again.”

  “All right.” She sits down at the table and reaches for her handbag.

  Matt takes it from her and smiles at her, charming and helpful. “Let me get those out for you.”

  He digs in her purse and then sets the card deck out on the table. Ravenna shuffles and cuts the deck, then lays out a spread. I recognize the cards, every last one of them. As she says, they are the same.

  Matt sits down across from her, lining them up in a neat row. Death, the Tower, all of the others. Last, his fingers touch the card showing the dead coming out of their graves. “I wonder…”

  Both Ravenna and I look at him, waiting. “What if it denotes a place, rather than an event or a person? And the black robed woman on this card could be Sophie. We know what the Tower card is. But this graveyard…”

  At his words, the hair on the back of my neck stands up. The temperature in the room drops dramatically so that we all shiver. My radio comes on, tuned just between stations to an ear-bleeding blend of static, rock, and sports commentary. I turn it off and unplug it, but the thing won’t be silenced. The electric lights flare brighter and brighter until all of the bulbs pop.

  When a tap comes at the door, I assume at first it’s spirit activity, but the tapping increases in volume and I finally go to open it. Val stands there. Her eyes are closed, and she moves into the room like a sleepwalker, seamlessly avoiding the collision course of packing boxes and random furniture. She goes straight to the potato salad container that holds Phil’s ashes.

  She picks this up and shoves it against my belly until I grab it, then exchanges her hold on it for a grip on one of my hands. She tugs, and I let her lead me as far as the door. Then I resist.

  “I need to go to the graveyard.”

  She doesn’t register that she’s heard me. Her grip tightens on my hand. She pulls again, harder.

  “You should see what she wants,” Matt says.

  “I don’t know that we have time for side trips.”

  There is no way this little woman’s hands can be so strong. The fingers clamped around mine are bone on bone. There will be bruises. An invisible breeze whirls around me. Again she pulls at me, and this time there’s no resisting. Wherever the strength that moves her is coming from, it’s beyond my power to refuse her.

  “I’ll go to the graveyard,” Matt says. “Come as soon as you can.”

  “Don’t go alone,” I call over my shoulder from the hallway. “You and Jake go together. Take the salt sprayer and the silver.”

  “No way are you going off by yourself,” Jake protests, right behind me. “This is crazy. She’s possessed.”

  “I think the spirits are trying to help.”

  “You think.” He snorts. “Can’t remember a single story of a possessed person doing anything good. This is why there are exorcisms.”

  “I don’t think she’s possessed exactly. She’s a medium.”

  Val doesn’t take me far before we stop. Right across the hallway, in fact, to the suite last occupied by Jill. She opens the door with her free hand and leads me in, Jake trailing behind.

  “Jake,” I say, turning my head to fix him with the most commanding glare I can manage. “Something is going down in the graveyard.”

  “Something is going down right here,” he says, stubborn as a mule. “I’m not leaving you alone with a whole bunch of ghosts.”

  We’re shouting at each other to be heard over the increasing volume of the radio, now echoing down the hallway. I’m pretty sure the residents on the floors below can hear it. They’ll be coming up to investigate.

  “And what exactly are you going to do about it if the spirits do turn on me?” I ask him.

  “Watch,” he says. “At least I’ll know whether to expect you back or not.”

  He closes and locks the door behind us. I have to admit I’m glad he’s with me. My hand is starting to ache. The ashes are heavy in my other arm.

  “You can let go now,” I tell Val, or whoever it is that’s driving her. “We’re coming.”

  She releases her grip and I flex my fingers, grateful nothing is broken, then shift my grip on Phil and check my weapons. I’ve still got Phil’s flashlight at my belt. My gun. Not the salt sprayer, which is an oversight I’m going to regret.

  Val opens the door to the closet, and then the secret door at the back and sets foot on the stairway.

  “There’s nothing down there,” I argue, following anyway. “Storage. Hot water room. Spiders. Mice.” Even as I say it, memory rocks me hard. My first encounter with the Medusa happened down in this basement. Blood drops disappearing before my eyes. That invisible clammy cold invading my hand, my arm, moving toward my heart.

  What was she doing down here?

  My heart remembers, too, picking up its pace and thudding against my ribs. When we hit the basement, i
t’s all as I remember it: Storage area off to the right. The closed door to the room holding the boiler. The wall down the middle of the room, blocking us off from the secret passage that leads to the lab. The ordinary, public access staircase leading up into the Manor.

  I stop at the center of the room, where the Medusa attacked me before, braced for another assault. Nothing happens, other than Jake bumping into me from behind and putting a steadying hand on my shoulder. He’s warm and human and I’m grateful for his company.

  “What now?” I ask.

  The ghosts are not forthcoming. All is quiet. Val opens her eyes and blinks at me, then Jake. Unlike a sleepwalker, though, she doesn’t look bewildered or frightened.

  “Through a glass darkly,” she says, her dark eyes intent on my face.

  Which is not helpful.

  “White rabbit.” She smacks the back of her hand against her forehead in frustration. “Through the looking glass. Backward. Outland. Australia.”

  There’s no mirror in here. No windows. Nothing that is remotely connected to her words. I know that the words she can access are connected to an image in her brain, but it’s like a demented game of charades to figure out what she’s trying to say.

  Jake, not having explored this part of the basement before, checks behind the closed door, walks around the room, shining a flashlight into corners. He sneezes at the dust he creates. “There’s nothing down here,” he says.

  Val, muttering to herself, drifts over to the storage units. They are nothing more than wire cages, each padlocked for security and labeled with a number. Some are empty. A few are stuffed with boxes and unused furniture.

  She stops in front of number four, puts her fingers through the wire, and rattles the door, turning to look at me. “White rabbit,” she says again. “Down the rabbit hole.”

  “Are we late?” Jake asks. “Like the white rabbit in Alice…?”

  Alice.

  As soon as the name leaves his lips, it hangs in the air between us. Charged. Crackling with electricity. The two bare electric bulbs hanging from the ceiling brighten and dim. Jake and I exchange a look.

  Alice Sorenson is dead, killed by her own brain child. But what she set in motion is not so easily stopped.

  Val nods, rattling the wire again. “Down the rabbit hole,” she repeats.

  A padlock isn’t much of a barrier. My lock pick set is in my pocket, as usual, and I make short work of it. As soon as the gate is open, Val makes a beeline to the back corner and puts her hands on a large box.

  “You want that open?” I ask, following.

  She shakes her head, vigorously, and tugs on the box. “I’ll move it,” Jake says, and she steps aside while he shifts things around until he can pull the heavy box back toward the entrance.

  “Damn.” Directly beneath where the box was sitting, a thin line marks out a trapdoor, just wide enough for an average human. This was here all the time, and I never knew. No time now to berate myself for not exploring this space further. Jake is already tugging on a small brass handle. The trapdoor opens, revealing a metal ladder descending into a dark shaft.

  I shine my light down, but there’s not much to be seen. The ladder ends about a hundred feet down. Maybe it’s a dead end. Maybe there’s another passageway at the bottom. Clearly, we’re going to need to explore.

  “Val, thank you. It’s going to be dangerous from here, so you should go on back up.”

  I’m wasting my breath. Already she’s started down. The ladder worries me. I’ve only got one hand to work with, since I’m still packing Phil’s ashes. And my leg is not going to approve of this journey.

  “Here,” Jake says, “give me that.” He doesn’t insult me by suggesting that maybe I’m not up to this, or by offering to go first and catch me if I fall, so I hand over Phil.

  Jake pulls a small LED flashlight out of his pocket and holds it between his teeth. Following his lead, I do likewise, and then lower myself into the passage.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The air smells stale and I wonder how long it’s been since anybody else has been down here. I can’t imagine Alice descending this ladder. She was an evil genius right to the end, but she was old and a little frail. Maybe there’s a bomb shelter down below, given that the Manor began its existence as a Cold War military installation.

  By the time I’m halfway down, I’ve stopped thinking. It requires all of my focus just to force my rebellious leg into obedience and keep moving, one rung after another. My jaw aches from holding the flashlight. If Val can do it, so can I, is what I’m telling myself. She’s eighty. She’s had a stroke.

  Still, by the time I step off the last rung onto solid ground, my legs are trembling like a California fault line and despite the constant spirit chill, my shirt is stuck to my back with sweat. There is nothing to say YOU’VE ARRIVED, though. No welcome mat, no visitor’s information sign.

  Jake and I shine our lights around and illuminate a small room about twelve feet square. Bunk beds are built into three of the walls. The mattresses are missing. There’s graffiti carved into the concrete over some of them.

  JASPER WAS HERE.

  USA FOREVER.

  The fourth wall holds an elevator.

  If I hate the elevator in the Manor, this one takes danger to a whole new level. The cage is, literally, a cage, fashioned out of green industrial mesh. An electrical box on the wall next to it has only three buttons: DOWN, UP, and ALARM.

  “Wonder if it still works,” Jake says, pushing the DOWN button. The elevator groans, and begins a descent.

  I turn my back on him and shine my light into every corner, hoping to see the outlines of a door, any door.

  “Must be running off the Manor electricity,” he says. “Hasn’t been serviced in a while, I imagine, but it appears to still be working.”

  He’s got that tone in his voice that men get around machinery, the same one a lot of women reserve for babies.

  “Have you lost your mind?” I ask him. “That thing looks like every mining cage in every underground horror movie ever made.”

  “Good thing we’re not in a horror movie.”

  The cables stop thrumming and Jake pushes the UP button, bringing the cage crawling back toward us.

  “There has got to be another way to wherever we’re going,” I say to Val.

  She shrugs. “Had we but world enough and time.”

  There are worse ways to die, I’m sure, than plummeting to your death in a steel mesh cage. Dying by inches in a nursing home is number one with a bullet. I step off of solid ground and into the elevator.

  Jake manually closes the door and locks it. There’s a second button box inside, and Val pushes the DOWN button. The cage creaks into movement. As we descend, our flashlights flicker over red-lettered signs posted in the shaft.

  1700.

  1680.

  1660.

  “Elevation markers,” Jake says. “The Manor sits at 1700 feet, more or less.”

  This is one deep elevator shaft. If the thing crashes, we’re dead. That I can deal with. If it stops working and it sticks halfway down, we’re screwed. The likelihood that somebody will come looking for us is minimal.

  1620 flashes past.

  “Shadow Valley elevation,” Jake says, which means this shaft was sunk all the way through the flank of Shadow Mountain and down past the town.

  “One hell of a bomb shelter,” I say, as we continue to descend.

  We lurch to a stop with a grinding and creaking that makes me think my fear has been realized. But when I shine my light through the elevator door, I see another square room like the one above. Jake opens the doors and we step out.

  This room has no bunk beds, but there are metal lockers along the wall. All have padlocks in place. While I’m curious to know what’s stashed inside, Val has already moved beyond the circle of my flashlight. So I breathe, put a hand on the wall to steady myself, and set out after her.

  “Hope you ate your Wheaties this morning,” Jake
says. “What do you think we’ve discovered, here?”

  “Catacombs?”

  He snorts. “Unlikely, though that would explain the throng of spirits.”

  I shine my flashlight upward, revealing electrical wiring and burnt-out fluorescent bulbs. “Only other thing I can think of is Cold War fallout shelter, but why would there be anything this extensive under a town the size of Shadow Valley?”

  By now my bad leg aches from hip to toe with a sort of deep throbbing that reminds me of the drums in Tolkien’s mines of Moria. The muscles are barely responding to movement commands. My toe catches on a crack in the cement and Jake’s hand immediately steadies me.

  “Maybe there was a missile silo. Those things are more common than anybody thinks.”

  “In that case, shouldn’t there have been a blast door? Because that trapdoor isn’t going to cut it.”

  We walk for a long time in silence, both of us pursuing our own thoughts. Every few hundred feet new tunnels intersect to right and left. We walk for a good long stretch this time, before the narrow passage opens into another room.

  This one is bigger, with room enough to set up cots for a couple of hundred people. Whether or not that was its original purpose, somebody is living here now. A sleeping bag and pillow are laid out neatly against one wall. There’s a camp stove and a mess kit with a small pot and frying pan. A stack of books. Bottles of water. Some backpacker meals of the just-add-boiling water variety.

  I sink down on the sleeping bag, not because my leg is about to give out, but in order to get a closer look at the books. A couple of novels. A Bible. A well-worn copy of The Book of the Dead.

  “Sophronia,” I breathe.

  “Will Robinson,” Val adds.

  “What?”

  “Danger, Will Robinson,” Jake echoes, in a robotic voice.

  Val nods. “Will Robinson.”

  “What is the danger?” I run my hand over the sleeping bag. “Is Sophronia in danger? Or is she the danger?”

  “White rabbit,” Val says, moving off into the stretch of corridor so far unexplored.

  Jake offers a hand up and I take it, not quite able to bite back the groan elicited by a sharp flare of pain.