by Kathy
The air was heavy with moisture and warm enough to make the sweatshirt unnecessary. She might be glad of it later, though, if the cellar was as damp and chilly as cellars often were.
Cameron had left the gate open. Not until she reached it did Karen realize the pillar of smoke she had seen came from the vicinity of the house. Apprehension dried her mouth as she pushed her car along the drive at a speed that endangered the muffler, the tail pipe and a few other important appendages. Had her premonition of fire been born of concern, not about the apartment but about the house? Subconsciously she must have noted its vulnerability—the time-dried wood, the paint cans and other flammable materials . . . Not the house, she prayed silently. Please, not the house. Not yet. I'm not through with it.
The fire was outside the house, not inside. A column of flame rose skyward from a blackened pile in the cleared space before the steps. Karen slammed on the brakes, and Cameron Hayes came around the corner of the house carrying an armful of broken branches. He stopped and stared, and then ran toward her. She was already backing away. When she stopped the car, at a safe distance from the blaze, he thrust his head in the open window.
His expression led her to expect a blistering reprimand. Instead he took a deep breath and said, "Sorry. I should have warned you I intended to burn trash."
"My fault, I was driving too fast. I was afraid the house had caught fire."
"And that you'd see me on the roof, screaming out curses, like the first Mrs. Rochester?"
Karen's face grew warm. She hadn't even considered danger to him, she had been too concerned about the house. Apparently he took the blush for maidenly confusion, for he went on, "Your lecture on Gothic novels aroused my curiosity. As you have probably deduced, I've been reading Jane Eyre."
So had she. In her present mood she was abnormally sensitive to coincidences—if that was what they were. "Why that book?" she asked.
"Because it was there, I suppose. In the bookshelf."
The answer was so obvious she was ashamed she hadn't thought of it. Bronte's masterpiece was a classic, often assigned reading for high school or college English courses. Cameron hadn't struck her as the sort of man who kept his old schoolbooks, but one never knew.
"I hope you enjoyed it."
"More than I expected," he admitted. "The first part was kind of boring, but it livens up after Rochester appears on the scene. Though what she saw in him—"
"He represented freedom, escape from the narrow confines of a woman's world, communion with an original, expanded mind—"
" 'Original' is right. He pretends he's in love with another woman, lies to her about his crazy wife—"
"Nobody's perfect."
He gave her a startled look; then his face dissolved in laughter. "That's an original, expanded way of looking at it, I suppose. Okay, I can take a hint. Ready to explore?"
Karen got out of the car. "Yours is an enlightened, liberated viewpoint, actually," she said demurely. "A lot of male critics consider Jane a prissy, priggish pain in the butt."
"I didn't say she wasn't." His eyes inspected her from the top of her head to her sneakered feet. "Didn't you bring boots? You're going to need them."
"They're in the car."
"Good. The water's gone down, but there's a lot of mud on the floor. And other things."
"I'm not afraid of snakes, if that's what you mean. Or mud."
"Snakes, spiders, rats. Very Gothic." He smiled. "I'm sure you could tackle a tiger single-handed, but I'd prefer to come with you. Can you wait half an hour or so? I want to let the fire die down before I leave it."
He had phrased it as a request, but he had every right to insist on her compliance. It was his house, and his liability, if she accidentally injured herself. She told herself that that was why she acquiesced—not because she was afraid to go alone. But only the need to search for what might be the final proof of her belief that Ferncliffe had been Ismene's home could have forced her to suggest the visit to the cellar. If an empty attic and a harmless woodland path had sent her imagination into overdrive, how would it react to a dank dark underground cavern, the quintessence of Gothic nightmare?
It wouldn't misbehave in his presence, she assured herself. Sheer pride would inhibit another expression of "womanly" squeamishness.
After Cameron had returned to his fire she leaned against the car and studied her notes. In passing, Ismene had mentioned a number of the features of the fictitious house. If they matched the features of the real house, the identification would be strengthened, even if she didn't find what she hoped to find in the cellar.
One difficulty was the question of how much had changed since the early nineteenth century. Karen decided she wouldn't worry about that now. It was a complicated question that might necessitate consulting an expert in architectural restoration. Some parts of the house were obviously relatively late in date; others, like the main block and the long wing jutting out behind it, were just as obviously very old. The house Ismene had described had two such wings. One might have been destroyed, in a fire or otherwise, but there ought to be some traces of it remaining . . .
She was stalling, and she knew it. Sooner or later she would have to face that cold hallway. Squaring her shoulders, she went to the door.
It wasn't as bad as she had feared. Knowing what to expect helped. So did her memory of the dreadful blast in the attic. By comparison, this was like a balmy afternoon in Bermuda.
Still, her fingers were stiff and clumsy with cold when she heard the front door open and Cameron called to her. "Ready when you are."
He studied her clipboard curiously, but said only, "You'd better leave that and your purse in the kitchen. You'll need both hands."
"For climbing the walls in case I'm attacked by a tiger?" Karen inquired. She followed him through the maze of corridors that ended in the kitchen. No question about it, the temperature in this part of the house was a lot more comfortable. "What on earth have you got down there?"
"You'll see. Here." He handed her a flashlight and took another from the same drawer before leading her back toward the front of the house.
She had not noticed the narrow wooden door. It was in a deep alcove under a staircase—not the one in the front hall, another, even narrower, flight that might have been the servants' stairs of the original house. The hinges shrieked when Cameron pulled the door open. Reaching inside, he pressed a light switch.
Why the flashlights? Karen wondered. She started down the steps. They were only boards nailed onto a support, with no risers between. She took hold of the railing and felt it give; Cameron's hand closed firmly over her arm. "It would be a grave error to depend on that," he said. "I haven't got around to replacing it yet."
He held her arm until they reached the bottom of the steps. She was beginning to see why he had told her she would need both hands free. The floor was slimy with a mixture of mud and the crumbled mortar that had fallen from the stone wall. The roughly shaped stones had once been painted. Little of the paint or the mortar remained; the latter substance wasn't modern cement, but a pale-brown, crumbling mixture. It must be part of the original foundations, but only one wall was old. The others looked like partitions of wood or plasterboard. A single bare bulb dangled from the ceiling, which was crisscrossed with a maze of pipes. The only objects visible were an oil tank and a huge antique furnace.
"Where are the tigers?" she asked. "This is no worse than my parents' basement before they installed a sump pump."
"That was one of the useful items Uncle Josiah refused to buy," Cameron said dryly. "He decided it was cheaper to seal this room off and let the rest of the place rot. I presume it's the picturesque part you want to see."
Without waiting for an answer he headed for a door opposite the stairs. It screeched horribly across the floor as he wrenched it open. Karen stepped carefully across a hole in the floor that must act as a drain, and went to Cameron's side.
The stench that issued from the open door, compounded of mold, damp, a
nd other elements she did not want to identify, was so strong it made her gag. Her companion gave her a sardonic look. "Sure you don't want to change your mind? Come on, then. Mind the steps."
He took her arm again and turned on his flashlight. Karen followed suit. The pale-yellow beams were lost in the cavern of darkness ahead. There were three steps, rickety and slippery with wet. Cameron hadn't exaggerated about the mud. It squelched disgustingly under Karen's booted feet when she stepped down onto the floor.
Cameron's voice was eerily magnified by echoes as they moved slowly forward. "This part of the cellars was never electrified. When they installed central heating—around the turn of the century, it must have been—they raised the floor of that one section in order to make the furnace more accessible. I suppose the old boy's decision to shut the rest of it off makes some sense; there was ample storage space, in outbuildings and in the house, and it would cost a fortune to renovate this area. It should be of interest to historians, though; some parts are original, and over two hundred years old."
Karen was becoming accustomed to the odor now; it was nothing worse than damp and decay. She was relieved to find that her discomfort was entirely physical. The air was no colder than that of any other underground region, and although she would have preferred to be elsewhere she had no feeling of mindless panic.
"Stop a minute and have a look around," Cameron said.
It was sensible advice. She had had to concentrate on keeping her footing; the mud was as slippery as ice, and the idea of falling into it, getting the noxious stuff on her clothes and skin, was not attractive. Settling her feet firmly, she sent the beam of her flashlight slowly around the room.
The image of the cave was irresistible—limitless caverns, natural prisons of windowless stone, deep in the bowels of the earth, lightless and inescapable—the classic metaphor of confinement and burial alive. The stone walls shone greasily green with lichen. The indescribable substance underfoot covered her feet; pools of sickly iridescence marked its surface. Somewhere, under the slime, was a solid surface. Stone, brick? She was not tempted to investigate.
The wall on the right was blank except for a barred opening high against the rough wooden boards of the ceiling. A window well, she thought, but not the one into which she had fallen; this one was dark, its covering still intact. On the walls ahead and to her left, some of the stones had been shaped into arches. If there had been doors, they were gone; darkness as solid as wooden paneling filled the openings.
"There are two more rooms like this straight ahead," Cameron said. "One opening out of the other. The arch on the left leads to a passageway with two rooms on either side and another at its end. I made a rough plan; if you'll accept a copy of that in lieu of further exploration, you will do me and yourself a favor. The rest of the place is just like this, only worse."
He was trying to control his voice, but she heard the strain in it. "Are you claustrophobic?" she asked, without stopping to think that it might not be a tactful question.
"Doesn't it affect you that way?"
He wouldn't admit it, of course. "I'm not a happy person," Karen said frankly. "But the smell and the slime and the mud bother me more than the sense of enclosure. We can go. I'm sorry to have inflicted this on you.
"Not at all." But his movement was a little too abrupt; turning, he slipped and had to take a few quick running steps to keep from falling. The mud sloshed and splashed. Viscous drops struck Karen's hand and clung like glue.
"Sorry," Cameron said breathlessly.
"Oh, stop apologizing!" Karen resisted the impulse to scrub her hand against the seat of her jeans. The mud stank horribly. It would be easier to wash her hands than her pants.
She moved cautiously toward the steps, where Cameron joined her. His breathing was too quick and too loud, though he was obviously fighting to control it. Men, she thought contemptuously. Why hadn't he admitted he suffered from claustrophobia? An impulse she was soon to regret prompted her to say cockily, "No tigers, no snakes."
She heard his breath catch. The beam of his flashlight swung to one side. Greenish black, thick as her wrist, scales shimmering with wet, it was framed clearly in the light before it slithered out of sight, with a wet sucking sound.
As she stumbled back, feeling her feet sliding out from under her, Cameron's arm caught her and pulled her against him with a force that drove the breath from her lungs.
"Just a water snake," he said. "Perfectly harmless. There are copperheads in the woods, though, so if you go exploring watch where you put your feet and hands."
He did that on purpose, Karen thought furiously. He knew the damned thing was there; he must have heard or seen something I missed. Of all the silly, childish tricks—getting back at me because I witnessed his moment of weakness . . .
"You can let go of me now," she said through clenched teeth.
"As soon as you get up those stairs safely."
"Thank you so much."
"Not at all."
Karen made no attempt to free herself. She had found what she wanted. Every detail matched Ismene's description of the cellars—including one particular detail that gave the final proof of her hypothesis. The capstone of the arch that opened into the passageway had been shaped, by nature or a sculptor's hand, into the shape of a monstrous head.
Chapter Seven
Alas! A woman that attempts the pen Such an intruder on the rights of men, Such a presumptuous Creature is esteem'd The fault can by no vertue be redeem'd.
Anne Finch,
Countess of Winchelsea, 1713
It IS whispered, by those whose memories (though dimmed by the passage of time and warped by the influence of pagan superstition) extend into the distant past, that the stone was discovered by workers clearing the fields for cultivation. It was one among many such boulders; but it alone had the appearance of having been shaped by deliberate intent. The poor ignorant workers fled, screaming in terror, when this diabolic countenance glared up at them from the soil from which they had freed it; and threats (and worse—for those were harsher times than ours) were required to induce them to carry it to the site where the mansion was even then in the process of construction-Its builder was a man of grim and sardonic humor, yet not unlearned; it suited his fancy to incorporate the grimly visage into the foundations of his home. The "genus loci," he called it; the demon of the house.
"Yet," Edmund went on reflectively, "no sensible individual could credit the wild legends that attribute this stone to an abandoned and forsaken temple: the site of frightful pagan rites. Old Obadiah may have intensified its features by design; but surely the original face was accidental: the work of nature, which as we know sometimes produces such anomalies."
"I have no doubt you are right," Ismene replied, studying the carven surface. Its sunken eye pits and gaping mouth, the suggestion of fangs rimming that scream and the stony protuberances on the brow were hideous in the extreme; but the shiver that ran through her body was not produced by superstitious terror. What sort of mind, she wondered, could admire, much less preserve, such a horrid travesty? "The aborigines of this region," she continued, "did not, I believe, build in stone, or carve graven images of their gods. Moreover, the features recall to mind the demonic visages sometimes found in medieval cathedrals, or even the rude local godlings of the ancient Greeks. "
"Your reaction is as reasonable as I had hoped and expected," Edmund said approvingly. "You do not fear the task I ask you to assume, then! The keys to storage vaults and wine cellar should be in the hands of the mistress of the house, but my sweet sister will not come here; it resembles too closely the haunted monasteries and demon-ridden caverns featured in her favorite novels; and she swears sheeted forms gibbered and rattled chains at her on the sole occasion when she ventured here. She is of a sensitive nature and reads too much.
It was not difficult to understand why a sensitive nature would shrink from that ambience, lsmene thought. The smell of mold and damp, the rough-hewn stones of the enclosi
ng walls, the darkness that filled the passageway ahead and the chambers beside and behind her did indeed conjure up the worst excesses of sensational fiction. The candelabrum held by the silent servant only intensified the shadows beyond the reach of the light. The man stood rigid as an ebon statue, as bereft of animation as the object of furniture whose function he served.
Karen closed the manuscript. Ismene must have seen that carved stone, there could not be two such unusual ornaments in old American mansions. And what woman other than a member of the household would have the opportunity to see it? Delicate lady visitors were not taken on tours of the cellar.
She had come straight back to the apartment, leaving Cameron to his labors—and thankful, probably, to see the last of her. Though she had rinsed her boots and her hands before leaving, the smell of the dank cellar filled the car like a fog of poisonous gas. She could almost believe a faint whiff of it still lingered, though she had changed and showered.
Perhaps Ismene's description of the cellar had prompted the impression. She had felt compelled to reread that part of the manuscript, even though she knew her memory was accurate. Picking up a spoon she began to eat the soup she had heated. No wonder she was hungry; it was later than she had realized. Leaning back in her chair she savored the pleasure of self-congratulation. She could hardly wait to tell Peggy of her discovery. That detail clinched the identification. Peggy would probably insist on finishing the job of comparing the actual house to Ismene's description, but there was no longer any doubt in her mind.