Gather the Bones

by Alison Stuart

  Sarah straightened. “I don’t know. It doesn’t sound right to me. Who’s the third one, the one what’s causing the trouble?”

  Helen touched her wrist. The physicality of the third spirit set it apart from Suzanna and Robert. It seemed to have the power to move objects and to harm people. Suzanna had a mischievous power, she could move objects and, apparently, trip people up but this third had physically hurt her and probably caused the tunnel collapse. Had Evelyn’s fall been an accident? She shivered and willed herself not to think about it.

  Back in the library, Pollard had emptied the lower shelves, stacking the books neatly against the far wall. He fetched a ladder and a bag of tools and, grumbling, climbed up to the higher shelves, handing the dusty books down to the women.

  Emptied of books, the bookcase was still a massive piece of furniture, eight feet high and six feet wide.

  “There’s no way we can move it.” Pollard declared standing back to look at it.

  “We are just going to have to take it apart, shelf by shelf,” Helen said.

  “Are you sure?” Pollard asked.

  “Don’t argue, Pollard. Let’s just do it.”

  By lunchtime, the last piece had been unscrewed and moved away revealing the thick stone wall. Helen stepped into the cobwebby recess and ran her hands over the wall.

  Her fingers found the faint indentations about four feet from the floor. Pollard passed her the flashlight and she knelt down, brushing the dust of the century away. In the beam of the light she could just see the faint etching of a martlet in the stonework, just as it had been in the crypt.

  She stood up and stepped back, brushing her hands against her skirt. She knew all she had to do was to press the stone but her courage failed her. It could wait for the moment.

  “Let’s have some lunch,” she suggested. “I told the hospital I would be in to see Lady Morrow for afternoon visiting hours. Any further exploration can wait till I’m back.”

  * * * *

  Helen’s first sight of Evelyn’s heavily bandaged head shocked her. With all her other concerns Helen had assumed her indomitable mother-in-law would recover but faced with the reality of Evelyn’s injuries, all she could do was to sink on to the chair beside her bed. She picked up the thin bird-like hand and curled her own around it.

  “No change?” she asked a passing nurse.

  The woman shook her head. “No, poor lady. She’s not moved since they brought her in.”

  “Evelyn,” Helen whispered. “I’m going to stop this thing before it hurts anyone else.”

  There seemed little point in staying except to keep vigil and finishing what she had started that morning took on a new urgency.

  Returning to Holdston, Helen changed into her jodhpurs and an old jumper, and joined Sarah and Pollard in the library. They stood in a semi-circle looking at the engraving on the wall.

  “What do we do now?” Pollard said.

  “Put your hand on the etching and push,” Helen instructed.

  Pollard complied and just as it had in the crypt, they heard the sound of stone grating on stone. Pollard jumped back as if bitten and gave Helen a quick glance. She nodded and the man pushed again and an identical entrance to that in the crypt swung open. Pollard stepped back and the three of them stood staring at the dark hole in the wall as the trapped air rushed out smelling of damp and something else, indefinable and unpleasant.

  “Pass me the flashlight, Pollard,” Helen said. “We should have a look.”

  She took a deep breath and lay down on the floor playing the beam over the dark void.

  “What can you see?” Sarah asked.

  “There’s a straight drop of about eight feet. Wait, I can see rings and narrow stones sticking out from the brickwork like a sort of ladder. Then there’s a ledge about three feet wide and then another hole so it can’t be the bottom.”

  “It would have to have gone down a fair way to get under the moat,” Pollard observed.

  Helen stood up, brushing the dust from her trousers. “I’m going down there.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Mrs. Morrow,” Pollard said. “If anyone’s going down, it’ll be me.”

  His wife looked at his imposing bulk. “You’re too big. You’ll never fit in that space.”

  “I’ll do it,” Helen said.

  Sarah straightened, shaking her head. “No, Mrs. Morrow.” Sarah turned her eyes up to look at the ceiling. “Wait until the Major’s up and then we’ll decide.”

  “We can’t wait,” Helen said, feeling defiant. She knew that after yesterday, Paul would have had very definite thoughts about her current activities. “We’ve got to end this now.”

  She lay down on her stomach and shone the flashlight down the hole again. Her breath stopped as the light picked up a gleam of a lighter colored object on the narrow platform.

  She held her breath, playing the light across the object, immediately identifiable as bone and a human skull.

  She sat up and looked at the Pollards. “I was right. She’s there. We’ve found Suzanna. Now all we have to do is bring her up and she can have the proper Christian burial she deserves.”

  Sam Pollard and his wife, both took their turn at inspecting Suzanna’s tomb.

  “I still think you should wait till the Major’s up,” Sarah’s brow creased in concern.

  “I wouldn’t expect him to go down there,” Helen said. She rose to her feet, brushing her hands on her trousers. “Now what’s the best way of getting down there?”

  Pollard scratched his chin. “I wouldn’t trust those handholds, lass. How about I tie a rope around you so if they give way I’ll have you held fast?”

  Helen nodded and turned to Sarah. “Sarah, can you fetch a basket or something we can put the bones in and bring her up?”

  “Oh, Mrs. Morrow, you shouldn’t...it’s not proper.”

  “I’m not afraid of dead bodies, Sarah. She deserves to be properly laid to rest.”

  Sarah twisted her hands in her apron. “I don’t like this,” she said, looking around the library. “It’s here. It’s watching you. I’ve a bad feeling.”

  “What can it do?” Helen said with more bravado than she felt.

  “You know what it can do. It’s hurt Lady Morrow and Miss Alice. It’s not like the others. It’s got a force to it.”

  “I’ll be fine. We can’t leave her down there. Let’s just be quick.”

  The Pollards left her and Helen sat down cross-legged looking at the hole in the wall.

  “Who did this to you, Suzanna?” she asked aloud.

  For answer the curtains at the windows fluttered, even though the windows were shut fast. She looked around. Nothing–but she knew they were watching.

  Pollard returned with a heavy rope and Sarah with a basket containing a folded sheet. They pulled the heavy oak table over toward the hole and Pollard looped the rope around one leg of the table to act as a cantilever, tying the other around Helen’s waist.

  Sarah Pollard’s face was creased with worry.

  “I’ll be fine, Sarah.” Helen smiled. “I spent my childhood climbing trees and rocks.”

  Helen’s resolve wavered as she crouched down looking into the darkness. Tentatively lowering her legs over the edge, the toe of her boot touched the first foothold and she twisted, letting herself drop over the edge, her fingers grasping the rings that served as handholds. They held fast and giving the Pollards what she hoped was a confident smile, she began to lower herself, her feet slipping on the slimy wall as she sought out each toehold. She thought of Suzanna who had made this journey many times on her way to tryst with her lover in long dresses and without the benefit of the rope securely preventing her from falling. It would have taken courage. One missed step and she would have fallen.

  As her feet touched the security of the ledge, Helen looked up at Sarah’s anxious face peering down at her from the opening.

  “What can you see?” Sarah asked.

  “Just give me a moment,” Helen unhook
ed the flashlight from her belt and swung its beam around the cramped space.

  The brick-edged opening to the right revealed rough-hewn steps that descended into dark, murky water where the moat had flooded the tunnel. Maybe yesterday’s collapse had been nothing more than an accident, the result of years of water infiltration?

  Helen took a deep steadying breath as the light revealed what she had seen from above, a disordered pile of bones, probably scattered by rats over the years. A moldy leather portmanteau lay beside the skeletal remains. Crouching down to examine the remains, Helen played the light on the skull. The breath caught in her throat. Even without touching the skull, it was obvious that the back of the head had been staved in. She looked up at the entrance and wondered if this had been an accident and Suzanna had slipped and fallen. It would have been easy to miss a foothold and without a rope she would have fallen hard. She looked around. Without knowing anything about injuries, it looked as if Suzanna had hit the back of her skull on something long and thin, maybe the edge of the ledge?

  Helen stood up and undid the rope around her waist, calling up to Sarah, to pull up the rope and send down the basket.

  Sarah complied and the basket, secured by its handle, skittered down the wall. Helen untied it and replaced it with the portmanteau, giving a quick jerk of the rope to indicate for Sarah to pull it up. The portmanteau disappeared from the place it had lain for one hundred years.

  With care, Helen unfolded the sheet and laid it in the base of the basket. She knelt down beside the skeleton again and steeled herself. Despite her bravado, she fought the natural human revulsion for dealing with the dead and it took her a moment before she could bring herself to touch the bones.

  “It’s all right, Suzanna,” she whispered, “I’ll be gentle.”

  Fragments of light cloth that crumbled at her touch and a small, black leather slipper gave humanity to the pitiful remains as she gently laid the bones in the basket. The right femur was broken in two. Helen frowned and looked up again at the drop. A broken leg and a smashed skull? Had it been enough to kill her or had she died slowly in agony? She shivered at the thought of the young woman possibly lying here for days.

  She sat back on her heels. If Suzanna had fallen on her way to meet her lover, would the entrance above have been open or closed? Could it be opened from the inside?

  As she pondered Suzanna’s fate, a door slammed in the library above her and the temperature in the musty hole plummeted. Above her, Sarah cried out in alarm. She looked up in time to see the heavy stone of the entrance slam shut with such force, the whole wall reverberated under the force.

  Helen froze, unable to move or scream, as the darkness closed in around her. Something cold touched her ankle and she flashed the light downward to see fingers of the dark, fetid water begin to creep across the narrow shelf on which she stood.

  The flashlight in her hand flickered and Helen launched herself at the wall, scrabbling to find the rings and toe-holds. In her haste, the flashlight dropped and fell with a splash into the water that now swirled around her knees. In the utter blackness, sobbing in terror, she began to climb. Clinging to the topmost ring, she used one hand to push on the wall. It didn’t move. Behind the immovable stone, she heard the sound of scraping on the wall and muffled voices shouting her name. Pollard would be trying his best to shift the opening with the crowbar but it held fast as if mortared in place.

  “Water,” she screamed, finding her voice at last. “The water is rising.”

  Chapter 27

  Paul leaned his hands on the wash basin and scrutinized his reflection in the mirror. An ashen, unshaven face with dark, bruised stains under his eyes stared back at him. The last twenty-four hours had been hell but at least the migraine had passed. As always, it left him feeling drained.

  He ran some hot water and lathered the shaving cream, drawing the razor across his chin, the familiar action steadying his hand. He dried his face and ran a comb through his hair, still damp from the bath.

  As he moved to set the towel back on the rail, he froze as a woman’s scream pierced the silence. The sound permeated the walls of the bathroom, a high-pitched scream of pure terror and he wondered if it was another trick by the specters. The woman screamed again. Definitely human and coming from inside the house.

  Paul bolted from his room and along the corridor, drawn instinctively to the library. At the top of the stairs, he collided with a hysterical Sarah Pollard who shrieked as he caught her by the arms.

  “Sarah. Calm down. What’s happened?”

  She could only gesture toward the library.

  “She’s shut in,” she gabbled. “It won’t move.”

  He released the distressed woman and took the stairs two at a time. Inside the library, he paused long enough to take in the fact that the left hand bookcase had been removed, the books stacked against the far wall. Pollard stood at the solid stone wall, hitting it with a hammer. Stone splinters flew at each blow but the wall remained unmoved.

  The man looked around as Paul entered, desperation written in the lines of his face. “We found an entrance and then it shut on us. I can’t open it,” he said, his voice taut with terror.

  “And Helen...?”

  “She’s in there. I can hear her.”

  “Go and fetch a mallet–something heavier than that hammer. Even if we have to knock the damn wall down, we will.”

  Paul seized the shaken man by the shoulder and propelled him bodily toward the door to the courtyard.

  He knelt on the floor and pressed his ear to the wall. “Helen, can you hear me?”

  Even as he spoke, his breath frosted in the air with his words and he slammed his hand into the armorial carving to no avail. The wall presented as a solid, impenetrable mass, behind which he could hear Helen screaming. He thought he heard the word “water” but the wall was nearly a foot thick.

  “Helen!”

  A sickly sweet smell, so familiar although he had not smelt it for many years, permeated the frosty air–the stench of death.

  One of the Chinese vases that stood on the mantelpiece crashed against the wall, barely inches from his ear. The library books began to fly off the neat piles, slamming into the wall beside him and against his body, the sharp, hard corners drawing blood. Paul leaned his whole body against the entrance but it was immovable as if mortared in place.

  Behind the wall, Helen’s cries grew more erratic. The assault from the flying books became more concentrated, accompanied now by an unearthly howling. A heavy atlas caught him above the right eye with such force he reeled back against the wall. Paul slid down to the floor, instinct and self-preservation forcing him to present as small a target as he could. He put his hands over his head, struggling to stay conscious as blood dripped down his face and the world roared in his ears.

  Through the wailing and crashing of the books around him, he heard a dog barking, loud and furious.

  “Reuben?” he shouted the name out loud, and the dog responded with joyful barks.

  “Charlie, save her,” he whispered as the world went black.

  * * * *

  Paul opened his eyes to a still, quiet room littered with smashed crockery, broken books and torn pages. He’d only been out for a short time and he took a deep, thankful breath, wiping his bloodied face with his sleeve. He regained his feet, leaning with all his strength against the wall. It gave so easily, that it was all he could do to keep his balance and not fall over the edge.

  Below him yawned inky blackness.

  “Helen?”

  Silence.

  “Sir, is she all right?”

  He jumped at the sound of Pollard’s voice. The man stood behind him clutching an armful of heavy-duty tools.

  “Do you have another flashlight among that lot?” Paul asked

  Pollard nodded and handed him the flashlight. Dreading what he might see, Paul shone it down the hole. On a narrow shelf below him, the beam illuminated a pale, crumpled figure. Without a second thought, he swun
g over the edge, finding the rings and footholds. His fingers slipped on the rings and the wall seemed to ooze water making it hard to keep his footing. He jumped the last few feet, landing with a muffled curse as the pain from his bad leg shot through him. Helen lay face down at his feet, one hand hanging over the edge of the ledge, her fingers trailing in dark, putrid water, her head turned to the wall. He rolled her over and felt for a pulse. At first, his shaking fingers found nothing. Shifting position, he tried again and only when he felt the firm beat beneath his fingers did he realize he had been holding his breath.

  Helen was soaked, her sweater saturated and heavy with water. He cradled her in his arms, stroking the sodden hair and mud-streaked face, trying to instill some warmth back into her frozen limbs.

  “Helen,” he whispered, kissing her forehead. “Helen, come back to me.”

  She stirred, coughed and her eyes opened. Her whole body shook and she clung to him, her chest convulsing with dry, retching sobs of pure relief.

  “I thought I was going to die,” she whispered at last.

  “What happened down here?” he asked.

  “The entrance closed,” she began, “then I dropped the flashlight and then...oh God...then...the water rushed in...I thought I was going to drown...I climbed as high as I could but it kept coming.” Her voice choked on a sob.

  “Let’s get you out of here. Can you stand?”

  Paul held her steady as she rose to her feet. He put his arm around her and she leaned her head against his shoulder, shaking like a leaf.

  “I think there’ll be two of us who won’t like dark places after this,” she said through chattering teeth.

  Hearing nothing above them, Paul called Pollard’s name and the man’s anxious face appeared in the entrance.

  “Thank the Lord, sir! Is she all right?”

  “She will be once we’re out of here,” Paul replied

  Paul turned to Helen. “Are you up to climbing the wall?”