by Tamara Berry
Nicholas does, that’s for sure. He must have snuck in while I was sleeping, then used my distraction as I searched for him to slip back through again.
“Wait—what are you doing?” Rachel asks as I lift a leg and prepare to enter the troublesome hole. “You can’t go in there. You don’t know where it leads.”
On the contrary, I have a pretty good notion that it will let me out in the cleaning closet downstairs. All those built-in cupboards are ideal for hiding another panel like this one. “Rachel, we can’t stay up here. I know it seems exciting, being locked in by a ghost, but it’s not. As long as we stay where he wants us, we’re completely at his mercy.”
For once, I’m not talking about the ghost, but Rachel doesn’t know that—especially since I’ve never been more earnest in my life. The color drains from her face. “You think he wants to kills us?”
I have no idea what he wants, but I do know that I’m not about to sit around and wait to find out. “I think getting you to safety is the most important thing,” I say. “And I think the passage is the only way to do it. Winnie wouldn’t have shown it to me otherwise.”
Light steps from the hallway propel me into action. My sister may have proven herself more than helpful in getting us out of here, but even she’s not going to be able to stop a fully grown man from exacting vengeance if we’re trapped like sitting ducks. Without waiting for the girl to protest, I grab Rachel by the arm and yank her forward.
“Now, Rachel,” I say. “I’m sorry, but it’s the only way.”
Her eyes fly open wide as I shove her into the bed panel. “But whoever that is can let us out now.”
True. Whoever that is can also murder us where we stand. I’m not so confident in my physical prowess that I’m willing to fight off Nicholas or Thomas, especially in my current condition.
“Go, Rachel. I’m right behind you.”
The urgency in my voice compels her to comply. “The cat—?” she asks as she slips into the hole. I take a last look around the room, but Beast is nowhere to be seen. As much as I hate to abandon the animal to her fate, I have a strong suspicion that of all of us, she’s the most likely to make it out of here intact.
“We’ll come back for her,” I promise and follow Rachel into the panel.
I have no way of knowing who is at the door to her bedroom or how much time we have to spare. As soon as we make it past the headboard, I close the panel and plunge us into a darkness so profound, it’s unlike anything I’ve experienced before. It seems impossible, but it’s colder in here, too, as though the cause of the house’s extreme temperature is this icy barrier between it and the rest of the world.
“Ellie?” Rachel squeaks as she reaches for my hand.
“I’m here,” I promise. I’d like to use both hands to feel around me, but I have to make do with the one she leaves free. From my cursory exploration, it seems as though we’re in a small tunnel, just high enough for me to stand without hitting my head on the ceiling, although a taller person would have to stoop. The walls are made of stone and are slick with moisture, the ground underfoot made of dirt and rubble that seems to have fallen away from the walls over the years. “We’ll take it very slowly, okay? One step at a time.”
“But I don’t understand,” she says, fear trembling her voice. “What are we running from?”
“Xavier,” I lie, unwilling to name her uncle for fear it will cause a breakdown before I can get her outside and to safety. To reassure her, I give her hand a squeeze as we start moving forward. I use my outstretched arm to fumble along the passageway, trying to gauge distance and direction without sight. I’m not sure about anything until my foot hits a rough step and I find myself moving down. This must be where the hollow space between the yellow bedchamber and Rachel’s room hits the outer wall. There’s some kind of secret stair that will take us down to the main floor and to the cleaning closet.
More confident now that I’ve got my bearings, I take the next two steps quickly. I regret it almost immediately.
“Oh, God.” Behind me, Rachel wretches. “What’s that smell?”
Death, is my best guess—and fresh death at that. The same cloying decay from the bones under the stairs is evident here, but in a much larger concentration. My eyes water as I realize it’s only getting stronger the farther down we go.
“I think it’s the mustachioed man,” I say, choking on a gag of my own. I press my hand to my mouth. “I’m sorry, but it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
“I can’t.” She tries to yank away from me, but I have her held firm. “Ellie, I can’t.”
“We have to. Just breathe through your mouth and focus on each step forward.”
Now, more than ever, the need to keep going is strong. There’s no longer any denying it: Thomas and Nicholas were working together, which means one of them killed Walter Powell and stashed his body in this tunnel. It’s only a matter of time before they figure out we’ve escaped this way and come after us.
“It’s only one dead body. It’ll be okay.”
I don’t know if it’s the confined space that causes it, but the smell becomes more noxious with each step we take. Based on how cold it is in this passageway, hovering near freezing, I’d have thought Walter Powell’s decaying process would be slower.
That’s when I hear the crunch.
Rachel screams. I whirl and clamp my hand over her mouth, but the sound echoes long enough that I’m sure we’ll be overheard. It also echoes long enough that I’m starting to have serious concerns about where this tunnel ends. Surely, we should have reached the cleaning closet by now?
“What was that?” Rachel asks, her voice wavering.
“I don’t know.” Nor do I particularly want to find out, but when I take another step, I not only hear the crunch, I feel it.
“Ellie?”
Since I doubt I’ll get her to move unless I have some kind of answer, I squat down and grasp my hand around in the dark until it comes into contact with the source of that sound.
I jolt upright almost immediately.
“Keep walking.”
“But—”
“Don’t ask questions, Rachel, and don’t pay any attention to what you’re stepping on. We have to get out of here.”
I don’t know how many steps it takes before she realizes what’s underfoot. We’ve leveled out by now but have descended so many steps I think we might have bypassed the first floor and gone straight to the kitchen in the basement. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we’ve stumbled onto the infamous smuggling tunnels, since the rocky walls have become replaced by dirt.
The only question is, how far do they go? And, more importantly, how are we supposed to find our way out of them without a light?
“Oh, my God,” Rachel says, her voice hollow. “They’re bones. We’re walking on bones. We’re walking on dead people.”
As if in confirmation, she steps on one. It must be a femur or something, because it rolls and she slides forward. Only by making a frantic grab for her am I able to keep us both standing. We’re shaking, our bodies rocked by spasms as we hold one another. I can’t tell if the shaking is caused by the cold or because we both realize that escape from this place might not be as simple as I’d hoped.
“How many?” she demands.
“I don’t know,” I say. When she remains silent, demanding an answer, I add, “Too many.”
“Who put them here?”
“I don’t know that either,” I say.
But I do. Suddenly, I know it all.
“Educational materials,” I breathe.
“What?”
Educational materials. That day in the Hartford family cemetery, Inspector Piper implied that spirit workers have cornered the market on the sale of human remains, but it isn’t true. Yes, there are mediums and spiritual practitioners who will pay a pretty penny for a bone or two, but there are plenty of other organizations out there who would pay to get their hands on fully intact skeletons—a
nd who aren’t always willing to wait for someone to donate their body to science to do it.
Colleges and universities, private schools and research centers, even black-market pharmaceuticals—they all create a strong demand.
Of course, getting your hands on illegal human remains isn’t easy. You need a source, a method of transport, and a way to conduct your business outside of prying eyes. In other words, you need a man who buys up old English properties with the cemeteries attached. You need a smuggling tunnel that leads directly to the ocean where a fishing vessel lies in wait. You also need to be paying off someone who works in the trade compliance offices.
You need the combined efforts of Cal, Thomas, and Nicholas to make it work. And you need to be able to kill anyone who threatens to get in the way.
“Rachel, we’re going to keep running along this tunnel, okay? The end of it should be somewhere near the ocean. It’s going to be a long trip, and it’s going to be dark and scary and full of bones, but you have to keep going. And if we get separated for whatever reason—”
“No!”
“If we get separated for whatever reason,” I repeat, more firmly this time, “you have to find Inspector Piper and tell him what we found.”
It’s a good thing I manage to get my instructions out in time, because we’re hit with a brilliant flash of light as a doorway from somewhere back at the house is opened. The light is strong enough to illuminate the bodies in the passageway, which I can see now are piled in rows along the edges, shrouded as though ready for transport. It’s only our frantic movements that have dislodged them and caused bits and pieces to fall away.
Having my suspicion confirmed in such a way does little to reassure me, especially when a voice—gruff and frantic—calls out from the direction of the light.
“Eleanor!” It’s Nicholas. “Eleanor, you’re safe. You can come out now.”
“Uncle Ni—” Rachel begins, but I push her gently in the opposite direction.
“Don’t, Rachel.”
There’s just enough light for me to see the way her eyes widen with understanding, the quick nod and short intake of breath as she realizes that if her uncle knows about this passage, then he has to know about the bodies contained within it. Without waiting for more, she turns on her heel and scuttles off in the opposite direction.
I’m not one for prayer, as anyone who’s ever met me can attest, and sending whatever positive energies I have out into the world doesn’t feel like enough to keep her out of harm’s way. The only thing I can do for certain is keep Nicholas distracted long enough for her to make good her escape.
“I don’t know how much time we have,” Nicholas calls again. He steps farther into the tunnel. “Come on. We’ve got to get you out of here. Is Rachel with you?”
I’m debating between telling him the truth and lying to protect her when my world goes black for the second time today. Since I’m not wearing a lace tablecloth and the sickening thud of what I fear is a human bone against my skull precedes my loss of consciousness, I can only assume the attack comes from behind.
Oh, dear, I think before my body slumps to the ground to join the others. I really was hoping not to die here today.
Chapter 26
I awaken, groggy and gagged, in the middle of the ocean.
Well, I assume it’s the middle of the ocean, but only because I have a tendency toward seasickness and I can’t account for the interminable nausea any other way.
“Oh, good. She’s awake. I didn’t think she was ever going to come around.”
I blink, my gaze swimming as the world comes into focus around me. The boat we’re on isn’t a large one, which would explain why I’m being tossed about like a tree in a windstorm, but there seem to be plenty of people in the fish-scented cabin. Nicholas, of course, looking like a shiny penny without a hair out of place or a wrinkle in his crisp white shirt. Thomas, clad in a parka and soaking wet, having just come in from the howling outside. And Fern, still in her séance blacks, holding a leveled gun at my head. I recognize it as one of the rusted showpieces from the armory, its pearl handles yellowed with age. By the look of it, it hasn’t been shot since the eighteenth century, but that doesn’t make me feel much better about having it directed my way.
“Fern?” I ask somewhat thickly, the words difficult to force out through the cloth shoved in my mouth. “What are you doing here?”
No one can make any sense of what I’m saying, which is probably for the best, since the answer is provided for me a few seconds later.
“Would you please let me shoot her and toss her overboard?” Fern asks, annoyed. “I don’t know why you didn’t let me do it in the passageway. I’m sure we’re far enough from the castle by now. Thomas’s clipper gets excellent speed.”
Nicholas releases a gentle cough—that sound of his that captures so many of his qualities. His genteel irony. His polite disinterest.
His downright villainy.
“A few more kilometers should do it,” he says. “We want to be sure she won’t wash up on shore. Everyone in the village knows she was staying with us, so we have to make sure she’s totally unidentifiable. Thomas? You have us on course?”
Thomas sighs and pushes his plastered hair back from his forehead. Unlike Fern and Nicholas, he looks exhausted. I can only imagine it’s because he’s had to do all of the work piloting his clipper in a rainstorm. Even now, with the three childhood friends banding together for murder, he’s the one carrying most of the weight.
“Yes, we’re good.” He casts me an anxious look. “Are we sure—?”
“We’re sure,” Nicholas says with the kind of commanding formality I doubt many have withstood. “Fern, why don’t you give me the gun? I don’t know how reliable that piece is. We might be better off strangling her.”
Fern doesn’t relinquish her hold on the weapon. “I tried that already. She’s much more difficult to kill than you’d think, looking at her.”
“Perhaps you aren’t strong enough,” Nicholas suggests with another of those slight coughs.
Fern turns her glare on him instead. “I was strong enough to push Walter down the stairs, wasn’t I? Thomas, be a darling and stop the boat here. We’ve gone far enough. I want to get back before Mother and Cal start to ask questions.”
I watch the three interact with a kind of wary detachment, almost as though I’m floating above my body rather than inside it—my first out-of-body experience. I’ve heard enough of the stories of their youth that I can picture them as children just as easily as I see them now. Fern in charge, ordering the two younger boys to do her bidding, excitement over a smuggling tunnel and buried treasure causing them to band together against the world.
Too bad the buried treasure is human remains. Too bad they’re murders and scavengers, not children.
Thomas doesn’t appear happy to go back outside, where rain spatters the windows and the dark, howling wind has turned the sea into a creature from my nightmares, but he departs when Nicholas nods his agreement.
“What are you going to do about Rachel?” Nicholas asks as soon as the door shuts behind him. “You know she’s going to ask questions.”
“I can handle my baby,” Fern says.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but she’s not a baby any-more.”
Fern whirls on him, her eyes flashing. “I’ll thank you not to concern yourself with my affairs. I don’t know why you came out here in the first place. This isn’t your scheme. This isn’t your money. You did enough damage bringing this psycho out here in the first place.”
“Psychic,” Nicholas corrects her.
“What?”
“She’s a psychic, not a psycho. And all I wanted to do was figure out who was trying to drive Mother mad with all those ghost antics. What was the purpose of Xavier, by the by?”
By this time, my head is feeling less foggy, the train-wreck sensation abated and replaced with a dull ache that matches the nausea roiling through my gut. This conversation, howe
ver, is starting to make me believe the damage is lasting. Shouldn’t Nicholas know the answer to that question already?
“Who can say?” Fern shrugs. “Perhaps he’s a real ghost.”
“Now, Fern. You know as well as I do that there’s no such thing as ghosts.”
For reasons I can neither name nor understand, that mocking rebuke galls me more than the rest. How dare he continue to disparage my profession? The least he could do if he’s going to have Fern hit me over the head with bones and tie me to chairs is show my work the respect it deserves.
“There is too,” I say around my gag.
“What’s that?” Fern asks, leaning closer.
“Ghosts are real,” I say, striving for clarity.
Nicholas sighs. “I fear you’re going to have to remove her gag if you want her to make any sense. For all we know, she’s putting a curse on us. I don’t know about that ghost nonsense, but the spells could be authentic. She came very highly recommended.”
Fern casts a sharp, suspicious look at me and eyes the handle of her gun, as if debating the merits of knocking me out with it again. I find it strange to think of such a lithe, delicate woman resorting to physical violence, but there’s more determination to her than I first realized.
That was my biggest mistake. Her beauty lulled me into thinking she was frail, shallow. I should have known that any woman who would treat her own child like a mirror that must be hidden away is capable of anything.
“Do you think she’s already cursed us?” Fern asks.
“It’s possible.” Nicholas shoves his hands deep in his pockets. “She found the secret passageway after less than a week at the castle. Not even I managed that, and I’ve lived there my whole life. If I hadn’t forced Thomas to show me how those wine racks in the kitchen cubby opened up, I doubt I ever would have. How did she do it, if not through magic?”
A look of anxiety crosses Fern’s face. It’s the first time I’ve seen any real expression there, and it makes her look uncommonly like her brother. “Maybe Walter showed it to her. I told you he found the coordinates Thomas was stupid enough to inscribe on that bible page.”
