“I don’t know. I feel like we’re breaking and entering. Who owns this place, anyway?”
“I’ve got no idea. We could check with the town clerk.”
“She’s only open on Wednesday afternoons. It’s not a full-time job, you know.”
“What do you say we do, then?” asked Harrison.
Nancy squinted at the door, her lips pursed in thought. Then she grinned mischievously, “Let’s get the jack handle.”
They turned from the building to start back down the hill. Harrison stopped short; there was a man watching them.
The stranger stood motionless upon the path between them and the car, making no attempt to conceal himself.
“That’s one of the men I told you about,” Nancy whispered. “That’s the one who came to school. Jabez.”
Jabez’s gaze was fixed on them. He acted as if he were uncertain whether to approach. His pale eyes were glassy and unblinking.
“Hello, Jabez,” Nancy called in a friendly tone, waving to him. “He’s harmless,” she whispered to Harrison. “He’s kind of simple.”
Jabez started toward them in his stumbling sort of way, lurching forward for a few quick steps, then proceeding slowly for the next few, as if he were occasionally shoved from behind by an invisible hand.
When all three stood facing each other in the shadow of the monastery, Nancy said, “Jabez, this is my friend Harry. Harry, this is Jabez; he visited me at school yesterday.”
“Hello, Jabez,” said Harrison, extending his right hand.
Jabez ignored it, never lowering his eyes from Nancy’s. “My sister…” said Jabez in a hollow tone.
They studied him, then looked at each other. Both waited for Jabez to say more.
“What about your sister?” Nancy coaxed.
“I’m worried,” he replied. “Maybe she needs help.”
“Where is she?” asked Harrison.
Jabez didn’t reply. He just walked past them and around to the front of the building, all the time gazing at the water. The wind whipped his strawlike hair, twisting it grotesquely, and tugged at the frayed tails of his long black coat. He looked like a stranded sailor watching for a rescue ship on an empty sea.
Harrison and Nancy moved to his side. Nancy asked, “Is your sister in some kind of trouble?”
“I’m… worried about her,” he replied to the lake and to the wind. Then he turned to them and asked, “You want to go in here?” He motioned toward the monastery with a flick of his head.
“We wanted to explore it, but it’s locked.”
“Come on,” he said, lurching past them. They followed Jabez as he hobbled over some rocks and quick-stepped down a little incline to a jagged, snow-covered path on the face of the steep cliff. The path descended straight down to the lake. A fall would be fatal.
When they were about a hundred feet below the foundation of the building, they came to a hollowed-out area in the face of the granite cliff. It looked like a cave, but it was the opening of a tunnel. Mortared stonework framed a rusted iron door. In spite of the corrosion, the heavy door swung freely — if noisily — on its hinges.
Jabez pointed at it. Harrison pulled it open all the way so he and Nancy could see the dark passageway beyond.
“Does it lead into the cellar?” asked Harrison, turning to Jabez. But when he turned around, Jabez was gone.
Chapter 16 - A Conspiracy of Shadows
1
Cliff and Stubby bounced along in the Scout, drunk and seventy-five dollars richer. They were shouting and singing country-and-western songs along with the radio. Most of the night had been spent on the interstate. They had driven all the way to Burlington, where they had bought gas before heading for home, giddy with fatigue.
Stubby was at the wheel when they got back to the island. He cursed savagely as he nearly ran into a silver Saab with Massachusetts plates.
“Fuckin’ flatlanders, think they own the fuckin’ road.”
“Yeah,” Cliff agreed. “Let’s go back to my place and get my fuckin’ shotgun.”
“Let’s go back to your place and get some more beer.”
“You get beer, I want my gun.”
“You serious? What you want it for?”
“Oh, I thought I might shoot me some cans.”
“Cans?”
“Afri-cans, Puerto Ri-cans, Mexi-cans.”
The men laughed raucously at Cliff’s joke. Beer splattered down the front of Stubby’s filthy parka.
“You don’t really want your gun, do you?” Stubby asked, tears in his eyes, chest heaving from laughing too hard.
“Damn straight I do.”
“You tell me why.”
“They scared us, didn’t they? Let’s scare ’em back.”
“Who?”
“Them flatlanders.”
“Wha’ for?”
“For fun.”
“With a gun?”
“That’ll scare ’em, won’t it?”
“I dunno.”
“Pussy.”
2
Harrison’s right hand fumbled in the deep pocket of his coat, groping for his flashlight. Holding Nancy’s hand in his left, guiding her, he eased his way along the damp, cold passageway toward the interior of the building. He could hear water dripping somewhere deep within the bowels of the tunnel. The noise bounced around, amplified and unpleasant in the lightless depths.
Harrison flicked on the light.
Ahead of them, the beam swept past gray-green moss on the walls and rippled along the earthen floor. Harrison sought barriers, holes, and obstructions that might prove dangerous to them. Occasionally a partially rotted board on the ground — more mud now then wood — provided a crude bridge over some swampy depression where feculent brown water had collected. The whole place smelled like foul earth and decay.
Nancy gripped his hand tighter as they proceeded deeper and deeper into the tomblike cavern, inching their way toward the monastery itself. Now and then a dangling hairy root would tickle Harrison’s face. He’d swat at it irritably or spit if it touched his mouth.
Away from all sunlight now, the chill air seemed like a moist and living thing. It penetrated fabric and flesh, seeking its way to their bones. There was no warmth among the stark shadows; the cold white flashlight beam provided illumination without heat.
Eventually the passage opened into a vast stone dungeon. There two sets of slab rock stairways lead upward in different directions. Four wooden doors in the piled granite walls promised other areas to explore. Harrison tried the doors one at a time; they were all locked.
“Wow,” said Harrison, “all these locked doors really get my curiosity going.”
“What could be in there?” Nancy asked.
“Treasure. Priceless bottles of old wine. Maybe the Devil himself is a prisoner here.”
“Cut it out!” Nancy laughed nervously, the sound small and hollow in the stone cellar.
“Let’s go check upstairs.” Harrison led her toward the stairway to the right.
They climbed cautiously, studying each step in the pale flashlight beam. The wooden door at the top opened freely, and they found themselves in another long corridor. It ran the entire length of the first floor.
“This must be the center of the building,” Harrison whispered.
On the far end, very faintly, Harrison could detect what must have been the barred door to the outside. No light came in through any cracks around it. Except for the flashlight, no light at all found its way inside the ancient walls.
Perpetual night, he thought.
Along both sides of the corridor Harrison saw a series of doors, some open, some closed, according to no discernible pattern. Trying the nearest door, he found that it opened into a tiny room.
“These must have been the monks’ bedrooms,” said Nancy, peering over his shoulder.
“Really basic,” agreed Harrison. “Not even a window in this one. It’s more like a closet.”
“Or a cell. Brrrrr. This
is worse than my college dorm.” They walked along the corridor, shining the light into the small, barren cubicles. From time to time Harrison would lean into a room and sweep it with the light while Nancy held his upper arm, gazing around him.
“This is really something,” said Harrison. “Imagine living like this.”
“No, thank you.” Nancy shuddered. “I was hoping we’d find some things to poke through, books or old junk or something. The place is really empty.”
Double doors at the opposite end of the passage led to what, by comparison, seemed a massive room. It contained solid wooden tables in an area that might have been a kitchen. The huge stone fireplace was boarded up.
“Look at the ovens built into the fireplace,” said Harrison.
“I wonder how the little rooms were heated. Did you notice there weren’t any fireplaces in any of them?” Her voice was full of compassion for people long gone.
“Maybe warmth was not among their worldly comforts,” said Harrison.
“Maybe they froze to death.” She looked around and whispered, “God, it’s really quiet in here.”
3
Cliff and Stubby got out of the Scout and surveyed the grounds of the monastery.
“Wonder what they’re doing here?” mused Stubby, tugging on his earlobe.
“Prob’ly lookin’ for local color.” Cliff pulled his shotgun from the rear seat of the Scout.
“What you got against them anyways, Cliff?.”
“I jes’ wanna make friends with ’em, that’s all.”
“You ain’t got no shells in that thing, do ya?”
“They’re in my pocket.”
“Well, you see to it you keep ’em there. What are we gonna do to ’em anyways?”
“Nothin’ they wouldn’t get done to ’em if they was back in the city.”
“Well, Jesus, let’s make a plan or somethin’. I feel like I’m jes’ taggin’ along.”
“Okay. Let’s plan to show that little squack that her boyfriend ain’t too much of a man.”
“That shouldn’t be hard to do,” said Stubby, and then he laughed a little too loudly.
Cliff walked quickly in the direction of the secret entrance, with Stubby right behind him, scampering to keep up.
4
Nearly half of the monastery’s top floor was devoted to an expansive room with a high, peaked ceiling and exposed beams. At the room’s far end, a huge stone fireplace atop an elevated platform covered the entire wall.
This must have been their chapel, Nancy thought. She looked at the gabled windows. If they had not been boarded up, they would have provided magnificent views of the island and the lake. The remainder of the top floor, like the floor below, was comprised of a series of smaller rooms, each containing a heavy wooden table. These must have been writing or study rooms.
Harrison looked puzzled. “This is really odd,” he whispered. “It’s as if the living area was downstairs and the work area up here.”
“The chapel is closer to Heaven,” Nancy said, smiling, “So they must have been Christian monks after all. But if Professor Hathaway was right about them, you’d think the chapel would be in the cellar!”
The whole place had an unshakable feeling of isolation about it. Nancy shivered, realizing they were cut off from the warmth of daylight by the tightly sealed windows, and from the elements by the thick stone walls which seemed to radiate a damp chill. It wasn’t so much like viewing a relic from the past as it was like actually being a part of another era. As she stood in the chapel room, she felt as if she could be in any century. The only reference to modern times was the flashlight in Harrison’s hand.
It was spooky, but it was wonderful.
“I have to find out more about this place,” she said. “It’s so fantastic, I’ve never seen anything like it. They ought to turn it into a museum or something.”
Harrison’s eyes were wide, following the light beam around the room. “Imagine spending your whole life in this place, sleeping in those tiny cold rooms, working the land, worshipping whoever at night by firelight in this drafty hall.”
“You sound like a gothic novel.”
“I feel like I’m in one.”
Harrison swept the flashlight beam around the chapel one last time. The bright circle rippled along the masonry and across the massive hand-hewn beams that supported the walls and ceiling.
“Listen,” Nancy whispered.
“Wh… what?”
“It’s so quiet.”
She giggled, then strained her ears to hear sounds from the outside: the wind, birds, the splashing of the lake.
Nothing.
The place was impervious to sound. She couldn’t even detect the predictable noises of an ancient building — no floorboards creaking, no groans of the structure settling, no wind whistling through the cracks in the walls. They were all alone in the tomblike darkness, engulfed in a silence undisturbed for more than half a century.
Moving hand in hand through the chapel, she let Harrison lead her cautiously along the white pathway of their light.
“Listen,” Nancy said again. Then with more alarm, “LISTEN!”
Now there really was a sound — a low moaning, a shattered, suffering sound from somewhere beyond the shadows and the darkness.
Harrison’s light darted wildly across the stone walls, trying to locate the source of the eerie keening. Nancy tightened her grip on his arm.
The moan continued, rising in tone and volume until it was joined by a second moan, louder and more shrill.
Both sounds stopped abruptly.
Before the silence became complete, Nancy heard a slow, deliberate knocking. It grew louder and louder until it sounded like someone pounding rhythmically on one of the wooden doors.
BAM! — BAM! — BAM!
“Holy shit,” said Harrison.
The pounding echoed in the empty halls.
“The door!” he whispered as his light locked on the door from which the knocking seemed to come.
“Oh God…” Nancy knew her voice was trembling as much as her hands.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the heavy wooden door began to open inward. Toward them. Screeching in agony on its rusty hinges.
As the crack widened, they saw nothing but cavernous blackness beyond.
Then the low, painful moaning resumed, tremulant, rising in volume and fervor until it exploded into wild laughter. Nancy watched a dull metal cylinder slide through the door’s opening.
A masculine voice that sounded almost familiar commanded, “Point that fuckin’ light at yer feet or I’ll blow your fuckin’ hand off.”
Two men stepped into the room, their dark forms barely visible in the stray light that bounced around inside. The taller, thinner shadow held the shotgun. The shorter, fatter one flapped his arms at his sides. Neither man was laughing now.
“Now you jes’ leave that fuckin’ light pointin’ at the floor,” said the gunman as he began to pace in a wide circle around them, talking as he moved. “You two hadn’t ought to be pokin’ aroun’ these ol’ buildin’s like this. They ain’t safe. People come in here, get theirselves hurt or lost, maybe never come out again. Ain’t that right, Stub?”
“Yes, sir, Cliff, you can’t get no righter’n that.”
“Damn straight. An’ I don’t know if you folks heard the stories about this ol’ place, have ya?”
Nancy felt Harrison clinging to her. It was as if her right side were cemented to him. Neither answered.
“Well, have ya?” Cliff demanded, louder.
“You better answer him,” encouraged Stubby.
“We haven’t heard any stories,” Harrison said flatly.
“Well, I guess that means you don’t come from this island, ’cause if you came from this island you’d a heard lots of stories. You from outa state, are you?”
“You better answer him,” said Stubby.
“Yes, we’re from out of state.”
“And you fuckin’ march right in here as i
f you own the goddamn place! Shit — nobody from the island comes in here, no! But you, Mr. La-dee-dah Flatlander, you fuckin’ march right in like you own the Christly premises. Now that jes’ ain’t right. An’ it ain’t polite, I’ll tell ya that. Fact is, it’s damn impolite, you ask me. Ain’t it, Stub?”
“It surely is.”
“Don’t you think so, mister? Don’t you think you’re bein’ just a damn bit impolite?”
“You better answer him, mister.”
“Well, we didn’t know the place was off limits—”
“Off limits! Son of a bitch! I didn’t ask you if it was off limits. I asked you if you wasn’t bein’ impolite!”
Nancy dug her fingertips into Harrison’s arm. She could feel him trembling. She could sense his fear and indecision.
“Look,” he finally said, “just what is it you guys want?”
“We want to know if you’re fuckin’ impolite or not. And you ain’t answerin’ my question. An’ I’d say that’s pretty fuckin’ impolite, too. Wouldn’t you, Stub?”
“Damn rude, I’d say. Damn rude.”
“Tell ya somethin’, if I’da ever been as rude as you, mister, my daddy woulda whopped me within an inch a my life.”
Cliff continued to pace in a wide circle around the cowering couple. Harrison squinted, as if trying to make out the features of the boisterous man and his little fat companion. In the semidarkness they were nothing more than black forms gliding through the shadows.
Maybe if he’d just flash the light in their eyes, Nancy thought, it would blind them long enough so she and Harrison could make a run for it.
But there was the shotgun. Oh, God…
“You know, mister, when I was a kid I come up here once, me an’ another kid. An’ I’ll tell you, when my daddy found out, he slapped me aroun’ somethin’ fierce. He give me a wicked welpin’. Course he done it for my own good, you understand. I shouldn’t a been up here in the first place; it weren’t my property. So now I’m gonna do somethin’ for your own good, mister, ’cause you shouldn’t be up here neither. An’ worse yet, you went right ahead and drug this pretty little city girl right up here with you. Don’t know what you had in mind, but whatever it was, I’ll jes’ bet her daddy wouldn’t be too goddamn happy about it.”
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