The Haunted Martyr

by Kenneth Cameron

She came after him with her candles. They found the far wall and began to search along it. Her candles were low, one of them starting to gutter, and she replaced them with two from a pocket. He told her she was wonderful and she said she was only practical, and she’d lived with candles for a long time. DiNapoli stayed within the glow of her light. The little puppeteer was somewhere back in the void, for a little time a faint sob, then a whispered prayer, then silence.

  That side of the cellar had rubbish from the centuries stacked and pushed against the wall. They found old barrels and kegs, a few pieces of furniture rotting into dust; broken glass, most of it once bottles; crockery, broken and whole, most of it thick, heavy stuff; broken tools, many for digging; indeterminate objects of wood, one perhaps a coffin but probably not. Denton went once the length of the wall and then started back. Two-thirds of the way along, he thought he heard a sound and stopped. Teetered on his toes, listening: a sound like a cat. He aimed his light down. Under his feet, a thin arc was scratched in the soft tufa floor.

  He shone his light on the wall. There was a ceiling-high set of shelves loaded with wine bottles there, dust and cobwebs thick on them. Still, the arc started at the right-hand side of the shelves. And the sound came again—maybe, now that he saw the shelves, from behind them.

  ‘What do you see?’ Janet said.

  Denton pulled at the shelves. Nothing happened. He pulled harder.

  ‘Watch the bottles.’

  ‘To hell with the bottles.’ He tried to see past them to the wall behind, then took the necks of two in one hand and made as if to lift them. They stayed where they were. ‘The bastards are glued down!’ He tried others, then bottles up and down the whole rank of shelves. ‘All of them!’ He moved his light up and down the shelves. ‘Hell of a lot of work somebody went to.’ He tried the bottom shelf again. Something gave.

  ‘Mmmp.’

  He bent his knees, took a bottle in each hand and lifted. The shelf pivoted on its left-hand end, and the right-hand end rose eight inches and stopped. DiNapoli said that maybe they should let things be.

  ‘If you let things be, you never get anywhere.’ He pulled on the right-hand side of the set of shelves and it swung outward to follow the scratched arc in the cellar floor. ‘See?’ Behind the shelves was new wood framing a doorway and, within it, a solid door with a U-shaped handle. He laid his ear against the heavy door, listened, and said, ‘Uh-huh.’ When Denton put his hand into the handle, it opened a few inches.

  ‘Oh, Dio,’ DiNapoli said. ‘We better stop.’

  ‘Stop my arse.’

  Denton pulled the door wide, the scraping on the floor like an angry hiss. Cooler, mustier air swept out, and with it a sound that went from soprano to baritone, part of it like something a cat might make, all of it like an emptying drain with the gurgle at the end. All three froze; the sound came again, then a rasping breath and then silence.

  ‘La mal’ombra!’ Di Napoli whispered. ‘La donna morta!’

  Denton aimed the flash-light into the abyss beyond the open door. Feeble as the light was, it picked out the gleam of glass rising from the tufa floor to the faint lines of brickwork in a vaulted ceiling, and, on the floor, a crouching animal with horrified eyes that reflected the light like brilliants.

  Denton’s first thought was that it was some kind of reptile, its posture was so grotesque; then that it was rearing up at him, and he swayed back; then, as Janet lifted the candles, the thing resolved itself into the head of a human being, eyes wide, below it the torso but no arms or legs. The mouth was open, the tongue out. The sound came again, the gurgle, then some attempt at words. The tongue moved.

  Janet said, ‘My God—’ and stepped back. DiNapoli sucked his breath in and backed into the cellar. Denton leaned forward and poked the thing with the iron rod and it wailed.

  Denton went through the doorway and got close and saw arms and legs then, pulled behind and bent so that the ankles met the pulled-back elbows. Wire glittered in the light as it passed from the ankles up around the throat and back again so that the more the creature tried to move, the tighter became the garrotte. The wire was tight now.

  It was a man. A young man. The eyes appealed for release. The mouth tried to make words. Denton shone the light full on the face, and he and DiNapoli recognised it at the same time.

  It was the flash kid who’d tried to steal Denton’s wallet.

  ‘Oh, Dio!’ DiNapoli wailed.

  CHAPTER

  7

  ‘The wire, we’ve got to cut the wire,’ Denton shouted. He was scrabbling in a pocket for his own knife, but it was too small and too polite. Janet produced a heavy clasp knife from the Army and Navy Stores, military in its size and practicality, a conglomeration of cleverly nested tools on a single handle. The blade was thick at its spine and looked strong enough to cut through nails.

  ‘Roll him on his side—his side, so we can cut the wire—’

  DiNapoli was shocked. ‘Leave him—just close the door and leave him—’

  Denton was out the door into the cellar, then back with a half-rotten piece of board and a forearm-thick log that might once have been intended for firewood. He slipped the board under the wire. ‘Tip him more—more, more, goddamit, don’t be squeamish! It’s better to hurt him than let him choke to death!’ He pulled on the wire. The young man groaned and gurgled; Janet was panting, trying to roll him into position; DiNapoli, not sure what Denton was doing, was pushing when she pulled, pulling when she pushed. Denton put a knee on the boy’s hip, rolling him still farther, then pushed down on the wire with the knife blade to force it against the board and swung the log. Three blows, and there was a low-pitched vibration and the wire snapped, and the bent legs tried to straighten and the boy screamed.

  ‘Going to hurt like hell for a while,’ Denton was saying. ‘Get me some light over here—!’ He was trying to pull the wire away from the young man’s throat, where it had cut into the flesh. ‘Now down here—no, on the hands—good!’

  The hands were purple with backed-up blood. The wire had bitten deeply into the wrists; blood oozed. Denton shook his head at the deliberate cruelty. He unwrapped the wire, following its path around a wrist and an ankle and back, then the other wrist and around, then the ankle. When he got it all off and the young man was free, he lay and wept, unable yet to straighten his legs or move his hands.

  ‘Must hurt like hell,’ Denton said.

  Janet bent and signalled DiNapoli to help her turn the man on his back, his knees bent. She raised his arms above his torso, and he screamed.

  Denton said, ‘It’s one of the kids I licked for trying to take my wallet.’

  Janet, trying to massage the man’s arms, said, ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘It’s worse,’ DiNapoli said. ‘He’s the grandson of Doro Scuttini, the compare. They call him Doro o bufalo. He’s big. He ain’t nice!’

  Denton tried to straighten one of the legs and the young man screamed again. Denton began to massage the thigh and the calf, squeezing the muscles and then relaxing. He motioned to DiNapoli to do the other leg. ‘You acted funny when I described him after we’d been in the Galleria. You knew who it was then, didn’t you.’

  ‘I t’ought maybe it don’t matter, maybe the capo don’t care if you push the kid around some, because he’s a punk, what you call a guappo, he behaves like he isn’t part of the compare’s family but he’s some kind of show-off, some little street shit, pardon me, signora. But this—!’ DiNapoli shook his head. ‘Dio mio, they don’t forget this. For this, they kill people!’

  ‘But not us,’ Janet said. She was moving one of the guappo’s arms like the handle of a pump. ‘We’re the ones who found him; we didn’t put him here or tie him up.’

  ‘You t’ink they gonna believe that, signora?’

  ‘We’ll find out.’ Denton stood. ‘Grab his legs. We’ll carry him out.’

  ‘Mist’ Denton, take my advice, leave him here.’

  ‘If we do, it’s murder. That’s what this was, at
tempted murder. And the other one who was with the puppeteer, he’s part of it, because he knew how to get out of the cellar this way. Do as I tell you.’

  Janet was already lifting one leg. Denton took the shoulders; DiNapoli, protesting, took the other leg near the hip, and, grunting, they carried the young man into the cellar, Denton’s flash-light, pressed between his left arm and his ribs, the only light. DiNapoli would have put him down but Denton kept on, scuttling forward with little steps, until they’d returned to the chute where they’d left the little man. He was gone.

  Denton climbed into the opening and shone his light upward, then passed it to Janet and whacked the jammed bar. It was bigger around than a broom handle. Rust, he thought, old rust made the jam worse. He leaned on the metal doors and felt them bulge outward and the bar came free and he lifted it out of its supports. When he pushed again on the doors, they swung a little outward and the rain-washed air of the night swept in.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ Janet said, ‘I’d forgotten how stuffy it is in here. You get used to anything, don’t you.’

  ‘Get used to hanging if you hang long enough, my grandmother used to say.’ He stepped down into the cellar. ‘DiNapoli, get a carriage.’

  DiNapoli stared at him. His eyes seemed to be bulging from his head. ‘Where do I get a carriage? It’s two, t’ree in the morning!’

  Denton put a hand on his chest. ‘We’re going to take this kid to his grandfather. Go get a carriage.’

  ‘You crazy!’

  ‘Yes or no? You don’t want to be part of it—’ He jerked his head towards the source of the sweet night air. ‘Go. No hard feelings. But don’t come back.’

  ‘Aw, jeez—signora, tell him he’s crazy.’

  ‘There’s no telling him, Mr DiNapoli. And usually, he’s right.’

  ‘Aw, jeez—’ DiNapoli sagged. ‘Well—’ He sighed. ‘You don’ know what these peoples are like.’ He put a foot on the chute. ‘I do. So who’s crazy, you or me?’ He climbed another step up the chute. ‘I be a while.’ He sighed. ‘But I come back. For you, signora. And you, too, o’ course, Mist’ Denton.’ He disappeared into the darkness.

  Denton and Janet looked at each other in the watery light. ‘Will he really come back?’ he said.

  ‘If he doesn’t—’ She shrugged. ‘It’s almost morning.’ She looked down at the young man on the floor. He was breathing more evenly but he was still groaning, his limbs moving slowly as if he were trying to swim. ‘We might be better to go for a doctor.’

  ‘No. DiNapoli’s half right—if we don’t get him to the compare right quick, we’re the ones it will come down on. I’ll get some wine for him. You stay here. You don’t mind? I’ll be quick.’

  He crossed the cellar, more sure of its layout now, barking his shins only twice on ancient objects in the dark. The flashlight had gone out again; he thought he might have one more battery in his overcoat. Surely it wasn’t yet morning, more like half past one. He was tired, though. How much wine had he drunk? Something made him feel used up—maybe the hits to the head. Still, it was only a matter of going on.

  He came out on the piano nobile and made his way to the red room. Something moved in the corridor; he flashed his light, which went out at once but showed the little puppeteer like a rabbit frozen by an owl’s shriek. Denton said, ‘Good morning,’ and the man howled. It must be hell for him up here in the dark, he thought. Very much like a rabbit. But he was surviving it; the light of morning would come.

  Denton went back down with several candles and the remaining bottle of red wine and a glass and held it to the young man’s mouth. He tried to drink but let most of it go down his neck. He tried to speak, managed only a rattle and a growl and sank back down.

  ‘We don’t want him to die on us,’ Janet said. She massaged his legs.

  Denton lit the new candles and glued them to the floor with their own melted wax, then took one and went back to the doorway through which they’d carried the young man. Holding the light high, he went in and examined the space. It was simple curiosity, yes; Janet would say so. But he did these things for the excitement of them, too: the idea of the Camorra, of the capo, titillated him. And there was writing about it later, too, for surely he would write about this, use it to cap the opening chapter of the book, and a different excitement would come with the writing. In Maine they said that the man who cuts his own firewood is warmed twice; well, the writer who seeks out experience is excited twice over. If he does both things right, he thought, and smiled at himself.

  The chamber was less than twenty feet long, only half as wide. Shelves on each side had shallow cut-outs to keep bottles from rolling: it was a wine cellar. Empty bottles lay in the racks near the door—the glass that had glinted when he had first opened the door. Where the young man had lain, the stone floor was clear, but beyond was a raised stone square with a wood platform capping it, and beyond that boxes of dark bottles that proved to be Scotch whisky. Bell’s Best 12 Years Old, the labels said. He counted twenty-two boxes, none dusty. Not something that had been put in here years ago and forgotten. And not something that had passed through the customs and picked up a revenue stamp, either.

  He walked around the raised platform, no more than three feet on a side, and saw big strap hinges. He raised the opposite edge: it was a trapdoor, the wood new, like that of the doorway. Under it was darkness. Denton leaned down, then got to his knees and lowered the candle through and put his head as low as he dared. He smelled damp and earth and the sea. He could see the underside of a curved ceiling carved from the rock. He dropped a bit of broken stone; it seemed to hit almost immediately. He squirmed to his side and got his flash-light from his pocket and leaned down again, and below he could see a stone floor and a wooden ladder laid on its side, and in each direction a tunnel vanishing into blackness. This was the way the other man had got out.

  When he rejoined Janet, he said, ‘Somebody’s smuggling whisky.’

  She was rubbing the young man’s arms and his neck. ‘Take a turn, will you? We need to get his blood going, then get him on his feet.’ She stood and stretched. ‘Smuggling. One isn’t precisely surprised.’ Nor did she sound it. ‘Smuggling, a sham ghost, a boy trussed up to die—what does Hawkshaw the Detective say?’

  ‘Hawkshaw says he’s too tired to think just now.’

  DiNapoli showed up at half past two. They heard him first as the slow clop of horse hooves and the rolling, grinding sound of wheels. When Denton put his head out of the doors at the top of the chute, he saw that he was in a cul-de-sac, a carriage just visible where it opened on a narrow street. DiNapoli came towards him warily and whispered, ‘I done the best I could. I had to go to the Rettifilo.’

  ‘Let’s get him into the carriage.’

  The driver looked down as they put the boy on one of the seats. DiNapoli said, ‘I tole him he’s a drunk.’ They tucked the boy’s feet in. DiNapoli said, ‘I tell you where you gotta go. I t’ink it’s better you go to the neighbourhood guy under the compare, let him break the news. Maybe the compare decides to hit the messenger with whatever he got in his hand. Better the neighbourhood guy than you.’

  ‘Than you, you mean.’

  ‘Me!’

  ‘And me,’ Janet said. She was looking up at the sky, at a star caught between the buildings of the narrow street. ‘I’ll go as your bona fides. We’ll go together, Mr DiNapoli.’ She and Denton had talked it over as they had walked the boy around the cellar. Denton had started outlining his objections—she had been ill; she was a woman; it was his responsibility—but she had said simply that she would go, and she didn’t think an irate grandfather would take his revenge on a woman, probably a foreign woman least of all. ‘It’s an errand of mercy, after all.’

  ‘Mercy’s not a regular caller on the Camorra.’

  ‘All the more reason for me to go, then. I’ll go, and I’ll drag Mr DiNapoli along to translate for me, and you’ll sit up with the ghost and prove to that dreadful old woman who let us in that you’re sti
ll here.’

  ‘As if it mattered now,’ he said.

  ‘To the contrary, it matters a great deal! I like the house. I quite love the camera rossa, which I shall make my own. I want the house, and I want you to be here at dawn to tell the old harridan so.’

  He had reminded her again that she’d been ill, and she had told him to shut up.

  Now, Denton told them both to come back as quickly as they could to tell him that they had delivered the young man. He was whispering, he wasn’t sure why.

  ‘If the old woman finds out you know a way out of the cellar, she’ll say the ghost frightened you and you ran out of the house.’

  ‘Then I’ll come back again tonight. Or is it tomorrow night?’ He kissed her. ‘For God’s sake, be careful.’ She made an impatient sound and he helped her into the carriage. To DiNapoli he said, ‘Take care of her.’

  ‘I t’ink I got in over my head wit’ you two peoples, is what I t’ink.’

  ‘We’ll make it up to you.’ He held on to DiNapoli’s arm. ‘What’s the word you used for “ghost”? In case I see the old woman—how do I say we saw the ghost?’

  ‘Mal’ombra. La mal’ombra. Just say that a few times and say “finito”. She get the message you not scared away. Laugh when you say it. “La mal’ombra e finita.”’ He got into the carriage. ‘What a night.’

  Denton went back through the iron doors and down the chute into the cellar, where he rooted around until he came up with a splinter of board that would hold the doors closed but could be easily broken from the outside. He closed the door to the wine cellar but first piled cases of the Scotch on top of the trapdoor, hoping it was enough to keep anyone from climbing in from the tunnel below. Propping a decayed piece of heavy furniture against the door, he turned away and again made his way up through the house. He was saying to himself, mal’ombra, mal’ombra. Bad something-or-other. Shadow? Or was ombra like hombre? Out West they’d said ‘a bad hombre’, a badman. No, he liked ‘bad shadow’ for ghost. An expression that was a picture of itself.