by steve higgs
The dwarf spoke up. ‘Lord Hale, have your family ever had any dealings with Columbia or the Incas specifically?’
Lord Hale looked perplexed as he scoured his memory. ‘I don’t… maybe. It would have been generations ago. Do you think there might be a connection?’
While the men by the door discussed the Incan empire, the five women I hadn’t yet met were beginning to chant in the far corner. I turned my attention their way and was about to move when Patience put out an arm to stop me. ‘Don’t disturb them, girl. What’s wrong with you? Don’t you recognise witches when you see them?’ Five sets of piercing blue eyes all snapped up to look in our direction. ‘Oh, my gosh!’ squeaked Patience. ‘I think I pissed them off.’
‘Witches?’ sneered Tempest’s mum, Mary. ‘Godless heathens.’
The chanting stopped and a bony finger pointed at her as the eldest of the five raised her right arm. ‘Not godless. Different gods. Will your god grant you protection this night?’
‘There is only one God,’ Mary spat back at them. ‘You ought to think about taking Jesus Christ as your saviour and stop worshipping horse gods with big whatnots or whatever weird nonsense it is you want to follow.’
Another of the women surged forward, only to be caught and held back by her companions. ‘She insults us!’ she raged.
Calmly, the elder witch, a slim woman in her late forties said, ‘The uneducated always fear that which they cannot comprehend.’
‘Let it be, Mary,’ warned Tempest’s dad.
I could see she had no intention of doing so but as she wound up to return a fresh verbal volley, I realised I was shivering again. ‘Has anyone else noticed the temperature is dropping?’ I asked. My breath was coming out in clouds suddenly.
Tempest stuck his head back through the door, huffed out a breath and looked down to the floor. I tracked his eyes so saw it too: a thick mist was rising from the floor. ‘What’s beneath this room?’ he asked Lord Hale.
On the spot, Lord Hale didn’t have an answer, ‘Oh, I don’t know. Actually, I’m not sure I have ever been in this part of the house before.’
‘So, you cannot tell me what is on the other side of this wall, then?’ Tempest pointed to his left and hefted a sledgehammer.
‘Where the devil did you get that?’ asked Dr Parrish in surprise.
‘It was just lying around,’ Tempest replied without bothering to look at him. ‘Lord Hale?’ he prompted.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Lord Hale, his brow wrinkling. ‘What is it you are proposing?’
Tempest grasped the hammer with both hands as he stepped between Dr Parrish and Frank. ‘To me, it feels like we are being led through this house. Every room we find ourselves in only has one way out. I think I would like to create a new way out.’
‘Goodness me, no!’ blurted Lord Hale, finally understanding what Tempest planned to do.
‘Yeah, let’s remodel!’ cackled Big Ben, following Tempest as he lined himself up to a wall.
‘No!’ insisted Lord Hale. ‘This is my ancestral home! No damaging it, please.’
Tempest turned around and put the hammer down, accessing Lord Hale with a frown. ‘I thought you were about to be dead and desperate to have us save you? If you are to die tonight, why care about a little bit of redecoration for the new owners?’
Lord Hale let his shoulders slump. ‘I suppose you are right. I want to explore a little further though, see if we cannot find our way back to a point in the house that I know. There’s no point knocking through a wall to find it goes nowhere.’
Tempest couldn’t argue with his logic or his request to delay the smashing, so he put the hammer over his shoulder and started back toward the door and the passageway beyond. ‘Let’s see where those stairs go shall we?’
He wasn’t in the lead though. The elegant woman I saw in the bar earlier was, the one who had been drinking the Bloody Mary and watching everyone. I hadn’t heard her speak yet, but she did now. ‘I think we have wasted enough time talking. You say your name is Tempest?’
‘It is,’ Tempest replied.
‘Good. Strong name for a strong man. Stick close to me please, I shall feel safer with you by my side.’ I rolled my eyes. In all this craziness, the middle-aged socialite had time to flirt with my boyfriend and he was trailing along beside her like an obedient dog.
Dr Parrish followed, with the dwarf, Lord Hale and Frank on his heels, then the five witches, Big Ben, Patience, Tempest’s parents and me. I wondered how far Tempest would get before he thought to check I was still following.
The passageway went about thirty yards and then became a set of rickety, creaking, wooden stairs. Ahead of me, the group descended them using torchlight to see by. My phone was back in my clutch bag, but I could see enough and had no idea how long we would be creeping about in the dark. If other people’s phone batteries started to die, I wanted mine to have juice left in it.
The stairs took us down and down. I didn’t start to count until I realised we had gone down more than a floor’s worth. We had been on the ground floor so were now somewhere beneath the house in the basement levels I saw labelled in the elevator. It finally levelled off, but we had to be two floors down, so did that mean we were now at the bottom?
The voices I could hear below me as I came down the last few steps were exclaiming about the mist following us. I turned around to see what they were talking about, but sure enough, the thick mist rising up from the floorboards in the creepy toy room was coming down the stairs toward me. It was impenetrable, light from torches below bouncing off it as it crept over another step to obscure it.
Tempest was pushing his way back through the crowd in the passageway below. ‘Amanda, can you smell it?’
‘Smell what?’
‘No. I mean, can you take a whiff of the mist and tell if it is dry ice?’ he clarified.
I had to question if I would know dry ice if I smelled it, but I suspected I would, so I went back up a few steps to scoop some of the thick mist. An itchy voice at the back of my head told me a hand was going to reach out of the mist any second now and grab me. If it did, I would honestly wet myself, but nothing happened as I sniffed at the mist cupped in my right hand. It was almost thick enough to bite but it wasn’t dry ice. Or, at least, I didn’t think it was.
‘We should move on,’ insisted Dr Parrish, his face appearing at the bottom of the stairs as he once again tried to lead the group.
I ignored him. ‘I’m not sure what it is, but I don’t think it’s dry ice.’ Tempest nodded and held out his hand for me to take as I descended the last few stairs. ‘So what is it?’ I asked. ‘Any ideas?’
‘None yet,’ he admitted.
Then we heard his mother’s voice. ‘Tempest?’ she called from the passageway the group were now congregated in. She sounded worried. ‘Tempest?’ she called much louder this time.
‘Yes, Mother,’ he answered, people trying to get to the side so he could pass. It was a log jam and his mother had moved to the front of the line, probably to put some distance between herself and the witches, but now she was staring at the elegant socialite and gripping her husband’s arm for all it was worth. Pushing by Frank, there were still half a dozen people in the way. ‘What is it, Mother?’ he asked, a trace of impatience in his voice.
His mother held a trembling finger up and pointed to the wall opposite. Following her hand, I saw the wall was mostly a mirror. In the dark I hadn’t noticed, but the length of the wall on that side was one giant mirror from about four feet up to about six feet. Looking at my reflection, I saw my hair was mussed up and I had cobwebs in it. That wasn’t the most immediate problem though; the elegant socialite was. ‘She’s got no reflection,’ Mary stammered, her finger wobbling as she stared.
Tempest saw it too. Right where his mother stood, her reflection and that of her husband as they looked at the mirror were clear, but the woman, whose back was to it, simply didn’t appear in the mirror.
The woman smiled, then opened her
mouth to reveal dangerous looking canine teeth as she hissed.
Tempest’s mother screamed in surprise and the woman lunged for her. His dad stepped in to deflect her, but she just swatted him away with a stiff arm. We were through the crowd now with just the dwarf and his axe in the way.
He raised it to block Tempest. ‘She’s a vampire!’ he yelled. ‘There’s nothing you can do!’
Tempest said nothing and paid the dwarf no attention as he leapt into the air to sail right over his head. The sledgehammer, I realised, wasn’t in his hands, so he must have put it down at some point, but he didn’t need a weapon like that to deal with a crazy woman attacking his mum.
She already had hold of Mary but seeing Tempest coming, she hissed at him, pushed Mary away and ran, her elegant gown flapping behind her as she vanished into the dark.
Torches were all pointed down the passageway, but I was casting a big shadow as I ran after them with Tempest’s dad at my side. The passageway came out into a large, empty room but now I couldn’t see anything. Surely Tempest couldn’t either, but rather than stumble blindly into something, I fished my phone out and got it working – just in time to see that Tempest was hurt.
Caught in the beam of light my phone cast, Tempest had blood coming from a wound on his head. He was hurt but before I could do anything, the vampire grabbed his arm and pulled him through a gap in the wall which then instantly closed and sealed.
Running footsteps behind me heralded the arrival of everyone else, including the elderly Lord Hale who was out of breath and clutching his heart. ‘What happened?’ asked Big Ben, looking around for Tempest as I clawed at the wall where he vanished.
‘Give me a hand here!’ I shouted, sparking him into motion. He arrived at the wall a second later, Dr Parrish, Frank and others with him. ‘He was hurt, I saw him bleeding, but Lady Emily pulled him through here and then it closed on them.’
‘Where?’ asked Dr Parrish, taking my claim seriously, but unable to see where the solid stone wall might have moved.
Nothing but a faint crack showed where the gap had been. ‘It moved like a door,’ I explained. ‘As if hinged from the left edge. So, where I am pushing is the piece that will swing open.’
Big Ben didn’t waste any time, grunting with effort as he heaved against the door, Tempest’s dad joining in along with Frank but there was no more room to get anyone else in and their combined effort was doing exactly nothing.
‘This thing’s not going to move,’ Big Ben concluded, adding a few extra words to emphasise his annoyance. ‘We need a crowbar or something.’
‘What about that sledgehammer?’ suggested Tempest’s dad. ‘I’ll get it.’ He ducked back down the passageway to look for it while I did my best to resist kicking the wall in frustration.
Patience grabbed my arm, using it for support as she reached down. ‘Girl I have got to get these shoes off. They are not made for running around in.’ I was wearing heels too. They went with the ballgown, and without them, the bottom three inches would drag along the floor and ruin. Cursing myself for caring when our situation was so dire, I looked down, using my phone to see, and expecting to find my dress already ruined from running about in a basement passageway. It wasn’t though. The hem, which ended just an inch or so from the floor had no more than one or two small marks on it. Checking my dress, I noticed the floor itself. It was clean. Not just swept to remove the dust but actually clean as if someone had mopped it today. I wrinkled my forehead in wonder but looked up just as Tempest’s father reappeared.
‘It’s not there,’ he puffed, a little winded from running.
‘He left it near the bottom of the stairs,’ Mary provided helpfully.
Michael shook his head. ‘That’s what I’m telling you. It isn’t there anymore. He put it down and someone took it.’
Angry, I swung my torch around, looking for whoever was holding onto it when we so clearly needed it. All I found was a sea of innocent faces though. No one had it. So where had it gone? I rounded on Lord Hale, wanting to grab him by his collar but holding back in deference to his age. ‘Who was Lady Emily. What special set of skills warranted her invite?’
‘Yeah,’ echoed Big Ben.
Lord Hale gave me a look that suggested he thought I was being a bit thick. ‘She’s a vampire, my dear. She used to date my great, great grandfather back in their day and took his death at the hands of the monster quite personally. She has been waiting for her chance to even the score ever since.’
‘Say what?’ Patience wasn’t buying it any more than I was.
Frank tutted in response though. ‘I did tell you she was a vampire, Amanda.’
Ignoring him, I got in Lord Hale’s face. ‘Where is Tempest? Where does that door go?’ Dr Parrish tried to take my arm, wanting to pull me away from our elderly host. I ripped it from his grip, snatching it away without breaking my focus on Lord Hale’s face.
Dr Parrish cleared his throat. ‘Perhaps we should move on.’
Now I turned my attention to him. ‘Perhaps I should kick you in the nuts. Tempest just got dragged through that door and I, for one, intend to find him.’ Michael echoed his support for finding Tempest, as did Big Ben and Frank.
Annoyingly, he used logic and reason against us. ‘But there appears to be no way to follow. The wall is solid, so if your boyfriend did go through it…’
‘I saw it close,’ I growled through gritted teeth.
‘Yes, yes. But no one else did.’ He saw my murderous expression and tried again. ‘Look, all I am saying is; if we cannot go that way, we waste time to continuing to stare at the wall. We should move on and find a way around.’
I was seething. However, there was no argument I could present at this time. Screwy things were happening; things I couldn’t explain. The tension in the room became palpable though with Dr Parrish and I staring at each other and everyone else watching.
Big Ben whispered, ‘He’s pretty good at taking care of himself. He’ll be fine. Of course, had it been me she grabbed, she and I would be getting down to it by now.’
In the dark, I heard Patience whack him on his head with her purse. ‘Didn’t you get enough earlier?’
‘That was more than an hour ago, Patience,’ he replied as if his comment explained everything.
Dismissing them as Patience took to idly threatening Big Ben, I glared at Dr Parrish and Lord Hale. ‘Alright, we move on. I think you two are hiding something though. I think you know more than you are telling us and if I find out that is the case, there’s going to be trouble.’ I delivered my threat without the slightest hint of irony or humour. I wanted them to know I meant it.
Lord Hale’s voice echoed in the dark as I pushed by him toward the dark hole in the corner that was our only way out. ‘I can assure you, my dear, there is no…’
‘Save it,’ I snapped. The black hole was another dark passageway. This one though had a wooden door at the end of it.
Just as I set off, Big Ben stepped in front of me. ‘I think I would like to lead now. Maybe whatever intends to leap out on us next would like a face full of me. That might change things up a bit.’
The whole group followed me into the passageway, Dr Parrish on my shoulder and Tempest’s parents right behind him, Michael doing his best to give reassurance to Mary in the dark.
At the door, Big Ben paused, glanced back and then grabbed the door handle. ‘Here goes nothing.’
The Body in the Library. Saturday, December 10th 2152hrs
I was watching Dr Parrish so when he tensed just before Big Ben opened the door, I saw it. Nothing happened for a second, the door swinging open to reveal a back void beyond, but then a chittering sound started within.
‘What is that?’ asked Patience, her voice trembling with obvious fear.
Whatever it was, I didn’t like it and even Big Ben chose to hesitate at the door rather than go inside. Peering into the dark, the fluttering, chittering noise grew in volume and suddenly I knew what we were hearing.
; Screaming, ‘Get down!’ I turned and threw myself against Patience, Mary and Michael, pushing them to the edge of the passageway as thousands of bats burst from the doorway. All around us, the dinner guests were screaming their surprise and horror, ducking to the floor to avoid being hit or entangled in the flying menace. The flock continued to swoop over us for five or six seconds before it began to trail off. I risked a glance just as the last few flew past and gingerly stood up again, offering Patience my hand to get her back on her feet.
She wasn’t happy. ‘I hate bats. Horrible little flappy mice that turn into vampires.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ said Frank looking pleased. ‘Although, in actuality, recorded instances of vampires turning into bats are a myth, something dreamed up by the…’
I held up a finger of warning. ‘Stop talking, Frank.’ Over my shoulder I called, ‘Ben, what’s in there?’
He had his phone out to shine around. ‘It’s a library. Doesn’t look like anyone has been in here for decades, but there are books and scrolls and things everywhere.’
‘Scrolls?’ Gina piped up.
‘Old books?’ asked Professor Larkin. I looked back to find Frank rubbing his hands together and the academics peering around me to see what Big Ben had found.
Big Ben’s voice echoed from the dark room, ‘I lost my lighter somewhere, anyone got a match? I think I found some old lamps we can use.’
People started pushing around me, even Patience wanted to be out of the passageway and into somewhere a little roomier. Or maybe she just wanted to be near Big Ben. Soon I was the last one in the corridor, standing outside and looking in as I watched the group dynamics at play. There was something amiss, that was for sure and there had been since we arrived.
For starters, a house this size could not be maintained with four staff, especially given that the butler was so ancient and decrepit. Then the caterers had provided dinner but none of us had seen them at any point. Also, this place had a high-tech elevator, but it didn’t have a router to provide basic internet and phone services? That wasn’t right. Three of the group had gone missing now: the paranormal detective, Crouch, the wizard and now Tempest. Plus Lady Emily the vampire if you could believe that. The monster had shown itself before we even got started with dinner and since then, Dr Parrish or the wizard had been trying to control where the dinner guests were going and how we should get there. Now we find ourselves in a library and I was willing to bet someone would find a clue to the Incan connection his family had.