good. My hunger overtakes my embarrassment and anger, and I find
myself turning away in silence and sitting down next to Pete at the table.
The bacon and eggs taste amazing. I don’t even really like to eat pigs;
they’re clever and cute and I’d actually like one for a pet, but on this
occasion I find myself digging in and mopping up the grease with bread
and butter and wishing for seconds.
“Wanna eat the plate, too?” Alice snarks from the other end of the
table. Ah. Great to know her concussion hasn’t had any long-lasting ill effects. I was going to offer to look at her head wound, but now I’ll let her fester. Thinking of which, we should really all check our wounds
today. Everything happened so fast yesterday there wasn’t exactly time
for that. I get a total recall of Pete’s skull tuft and my white leg bone, and instantly feel sick.
“So, plan of action,” says Pete importantly.
“Do we have one?” Smitty sits with his plate of food. I’m impressed
that he’s waited to serve himself last.
“I do.” Pete forges ahead before anyone can stop him. “When I woke
this morning, there was a break in the snow and I had a look outside.
Through the windows, of course,” he says quickly. “There’s a telephone
line. Definitely. One line in, appears undamaged.”
“I thought you said there were no phones here?” Lily says.
“We didn’t find any,” says Pete. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a
phone unplugged somewhere — in a drawer or a cabinet.”
“Why would anyone do that?” says Alice.
“Numerous reasons, potentially,” says Pete. “But all I’m saying is
there’s a line. And don’t forget there are more rooms through that locked
door.” He points in the direction of the tower we couldn’t get into last
night. “And there’s a stable block. Outbuildings, too. More to investigate.”
“Don’t forget the spooky basement!” Smitty spits through a mouth
of egg.
“I’ve got all the cell phones,” Alice says. “If we can get up into that
tower, we might get a signal. Or find the landline.”
I frown. “What do we do first?”
“Why don’t I stay in here with Cam and clean up and have a look for
the tower key?” Lily says in a cheerful voice. “It’ll be like a fun game.”
Yeah, what it’s like is that she’s pulling this whole domestic bliss thing so as not to freak Cam out: Any second now that kid is going to be asking for his “mummy.” Or maybe it’s so that she doesn’t get freaked out. “You guys go off and check out the other stuff. We’ll find the key” — she looks at Cam — “then maybe bake some cookies for later!”
“Oh, très marvelous,” Alice says.
“Just don’t use up too much food; we don’t know how long we have to
last here,” Pete says.
“Oh, please,” Alice says. “If I’m not out of here in twenty-four hours,
I’ll gladly starve to death.” She pulls a grotesque grinning face at Cam.
“Jokey-wokey!” Luckily Cam decides she’s hysterical, and the two of them
laugh, Alice rolling her eyes at the same time, the brain-damaged bitch.
I rise out of my seat and go to the window. “What about the juice?”
It’s still out there, for sure. The snow has almost covered it, but there’s a blue plastic bag handle sticking out of the white.
“It’ll be frozen solid.” Smitty burps loudly. “So unless anyone fancies
a toxic ice pop for breakfast, I think we’re safe to leave it be.” He jumps up and grabs me around the waist for a split second. “Race you to the basement!”
He does his best evil laugh and runs out of the kitchen.
Smitty has his dwarven ax, Pete his fencing sword. I saw Alice eyeing
up a carving knife in the kitchen, but thank heavens she’s chosen a golf
club. I think it’s a kid’s one; it’s kind of short. I could see Smitty burst-ing with the need to mess with her for choosing it, but I managed to shoot him evils just in time to stop him. Or maybe it was because I
distracted him by picking the poker from the fire for my weapon. I think
he’s saving himself up for the countless comedic opportunities me having
a poker could provide. Hey ho, something for us all to look forward to
should we survive the morning.
“So bring on the spooky basement,” says Smitty, savoring the words.
“After which, we could find a creepy attic and a shadowy graveyard to
wander through — then we’ll have the full set of scary movie clichés.”
We stand at the top of the stairs, looking down into the darkness.
Smitty flicks the light on and it’s a single bulb, swinging just above our heads, flickering and ominous. There’s a shelf on the wall just to my left; among the bric-a-brac I spy a flashlight. I pick it up and switch it on.
It works.
“Make sure the door stays open behind us,” Alice whispers. “I don’t
want to get stuck down here.”
“Yep, that would be textbook,” says Smitty.
Pete props the door open with a box of nails from the shelf, and we
slowly make our way downstairs.
1 8
The staircase is shorter than I thought it would be. I mean, for those
first few steps it really felt like we were descending into the bowels of
hell, or journeying to the center of the earth. I was kind of expecting
skeletons and ancient wall paintings, burning torches or scarab beetles
or something. But there is none of that: just a flight of stone steps and
then we emerge into a basement that smells of mold with garden fertil—
izer mixed in.
A single room, about the size of the living room we’d slept in last
night. Pete finds another light switch and, after a couple of false tries, a fluorescent strip clicks on overhead. We look around. The room is lined with shelves that contain everything and nothing. Plant pots and garden
tools. Crates of books and piles of Country Life magazine. In the middle of the room are a couple of stools and a tarp-covered lawn mower. In one corner is a small wooden door with coal piled at the bottom. I stick my
head around the door; inside there’s a diagonal chute leading up to an
inch of bright sunlight above. I force the door closed again. On the far
wall hang sacks and dust cloths, aprons and netting.
“So this is it?” says Alice. “A whole load of rubbish? Nothing useful
at all?” She sticks out a hip and puts a hand on it. “I suppose I should be used to this by now. I mean, I could have trusted you lot to find the one building in this whole area — no, country — that doesn’t have a phone.”
“Mmm, you know what, Malice?” Smitty is walking up to her, his
ax swinging by his side. “We only came here because of you.” He points
his ax up at her head. “If you hadn’t brained yourself back at the Cheery
Chomper, we could have walked for miles and had our pick of tripped—
out castles.”
“That’s not strictly true,” Pete interrupts.
“How is that head, by the way?” Smitty smiles at Alice. “If it’s still
bothering you, we can take it clean off, if you like?” He raises his ax again.
“Get away from me, you bully!” Alice cries out, bringing her golf club
up to knock away the axe.
“Bully?” Smitty laughs. “You wrote the manual, Malice.”
“I’ve told you, don’t call me that!” Alice roars, flinging herself at
Smitty, golf club aloft
.
He dodges out of the way before she can land a blow. But she’s moving
with too much force to stop in midair. Instead of slamming into Smitty,
she’s going to slam into the wall. I brace myself for the tears.
They never come. Alice doesn’t hit the wall, she disappears. Completely.
Into the wall where the sacks are hanging. There’s a kind of muffled
scream, then nothing.
Smitty, Pete, and I stand there looking at each other, and the wall,
without words. I can’t help but wish that we’d tried to throw Alice into
a wall way before now if this is the result. We watch the place where she
vanished, and wait.
But it’s too good to be true. A few seconds later she’s back, her head
appearing between two of the big sacks, then a shoulder, an arm, and a
leg. The most surprising thing is, she’s smiling.
“Once again, I strike gold,” she says. “Without me, you losers would
be lost.” She steps out from the wall and holds up her arm. In the place
where her junior golf club had been is a large bottle of champagne. She
waggles it at us. “But, finders keepers,” she sings, disappearing back into the wall.
And we follow. It’s not a wall, of course. Behind the hanging sacks
there’s a floor-length, stone-colored curtain, with a slit down the middle. Through the curtain is a whole new room. There’s a lamp on the
wall under which Alice is standing, champagne in hand. Behind her are
racks upon racks of wine, dark and cobwebbed. The racks run around all
four walls of the room, from floor to ceiling.
“The mother lode,” whispers Smitty in awe. He pulls out a few bottles
and examines the labels.
Pete sighs. “And here I was thinking you’d actually found something
interesting.”
“She did,” I call from the far corner of the room. There’s a gap between
two of the racks, and in the gap is a door. I turn the handle and look
through. A long corridor disappears into darkness. I aim the flashlight
straight ahead and force myself to take a couple of steps forward into the black. The corridor is barely wider than the door, the stone walls dank and slippery on either side.
There’s a noise of a shot and something whizzes past my ear, stopping
me in my tracks.
I spin around, breath held. But it’s only Alice; she’s popped the cork
on the bubbly. She shakes the bottle and shrieks as all of the champagne
gushes into the air, soaking her and Smitty. Pete pushes past them,
sighing.
“Another passage?” he asks. “Could be an escape tunnel. A lot of castles
and manor houses have them. From the days when being attacked was a
fact of life and people needed to make a quick getaway.”
“The good old days in comparison.” Smitty grabs for my flashlight,
but I whip it away. “Touchy!” He grins at me. “Betcha there’s a light
around here anyway.”
He feels the wall and finds something. There’s a click, but no illumina-tion. I point the flashlight forward resolutely and start walking, Smitty, Pete, and Alice following me Scooby-style again.
The corridor widens out a little after a few feet, then a little more.
In the beam from my flashlight I can see something on the ground. It’s
Alice’s cork, lying where one side of the wall seems to end, with nothing
but darkness beyond.
I notice another switch on the wall. It works. Orange light reflects
weakly off the slimy walls. I stare at the space ahead.
Jail cells — three of them — along one side of the corridor, with thick
iron bars on the front.
“A castle has to have a dungeon, doesn’t it?” says Smitty. He walks
up to the first one and pulls the door toward him. He steps inside. “This
must be where they keep the really good stuff.”
I step up to the bars and look through. More racks, more bottles.
“Same here.” Pete has already checked out the second cell. He moves
on to the third, and stops.
“What is it?” I call to him.
“Nothing,” he calls back.
I stride down to the cell.
“As in there’s nothing in this one.”
Nothing apart from a chair, a bucket, and a bundle of rags in
the corner.
“Weird,” I say.
“You called?” Smitty bounces up. “Hey, this must be the hangover
room. Where you sit and throw up after you’ve drunk your bodyweight
in Chateau Nerve du Plop, or whatever.”
“You’d do well to bear that in mind,” Pete says.
Alice has sloped up the corridor and is laughing with Smitty at the
sight of the bucket through the bars. Suddenly those two are best buds.
“The corridor ends here.” Pete is frowning.
“Are you sure?” I walk past the cell to where Pete is feeling the wall.
“Solid stone.” He pats the wall. “No obvious switches or levers.” He
scrubs at the stone floor with his foot. “It’s possible that if it was a tunnel, they bricked it up sometime in the last century. No need to escape anymore.”
“That’s probably a good thing,” I say. “We don’t want anyone creeping
up on us while we’re upstairs sleeping.”
“Boo!” Smitty cries, creeping up behind me, because clearly that’s
the joke.
“Brilliant, Smitty,” I say. I notice something sticking out of the lock
of the last cell. A small, modern, metal key. Odd that it should look
new. In fact, now that I look closer, this lock looks different from the
others, like it’s been replaced. I turn the key, open the door, and beckon Smitty in. “Would you like me to make a reservation for you while we’re down here?”
“Only if you can be the Dungeon Mistress.” He leans in, and I will
myself not to blink. “Got your whip?”
“Ew! Perve alert!” shouts Alice, and pretends to retch toward the
bucket.
As I flush scarlet in the orange light, Smitty dashes in toward the
back of the cell, beyond the single chair to the bundle of rags. He turns to face us, pulling up his T-shirt to reveal his bare torso; his legs are akimbo and his arms shoot out to the sides. “Beat me for my sins, Mistress!
Beat me!”
“Oh, gross!” Alice cries, propping herself up on the bars.
Smitty waggles his tongue at her, turns away from us, drops his
pants, bends over, and moons. Before I know what I’m doing, I shine the
flashlight on his behind. As if I needed a better look. Now I think I may
have blinded the three of us for life.
“Sick!” screams Alice. “I seriously am going to puke my guts up!”
And then Smitty does just that. Pukes his guts up, with full ferocity and surround-sound echoing off the walls. Bacon and eggs in a
waterfall of ewwww. I grab my mouth, feeling my own stomach clench in complaint. Alice squeals, and Pete just stands there, transfixed.
Smitty pulls up his jeans and staggers toward us, a look of sheer horror
on his face.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I shout at him.
He’s throwing out swearwords like a celebrity chef.
“That . . . !” He points to the back of the cell, at the bundle of rags.
“What is it?” I enter the cell gingerly.
“Look and see!” He splutters at me. I move toward the rags. “No, wait!
Bobby, don’t! You don’t want to look!”
> But it’s too late. I’ve seen something poking out of the rags. It’s a foot.
A socked foot, with the bump of an ankle bone, and the tiniest amount
of pink skin with black leg hairs, too. Now that I’m looking, I can see the shape of a leg and a hip of a person who is lying on their side . . . and the rise of the place where arms and shoulders are. And then it stops.
Where the head should be, there is nothing, just a bloodied stump.
This is not my first bloodied stump, nor is it Smitty’s, but I understand why he felt the need to unload.
Maggots squirm in the well of flesh that used to be a throat.
I feel the blood rushing from my head, and the next thing I know I
am running, back down the corridor into the wine cellar, through the
slit in the curtain and into the basement. The others are close behind,
Alice and Pete not requiring any immediate explanation beyond my
fleeing feet.
As I near the top of the steps to the hall, the door opens. Lily stands
in the light, with Cam in her arms.
She turns and shuts the door behind her, barring our escape.
“We have to get out!” I put my hand on her arm and try to force it off
the door. “There’s a dead body down there!”
“There is?” Alice cries from a few steps below. “Oh my god!” She
scrambles up and tries to push Lily aside.
Lily bars the way. “Dead? Like one of those things?”
“Not anymore.” Smitty pushes past me and Alice. “Headless and rotting, but if you’re happy keeping him company, then be our guest.” He
goes for the door handle but Lily knocks his hand away.
She shakes her head. “We can’t go out there.”
“Why not?” Pete is panting and exasperated.
Lily fixes him with a steely glare. “Because whoever lives here just
came home.”
1 9
“There are three of them,” Lily whispers.
We are sitting in the purgatory of the steps in between Maggotty
Man Basement and The Strangers Who Came in from the Cold.
“Two men and a woman, I think. They must have come in the back
way. Cam and I were in the downstairs bathroom, and I could hear their
voices in the kitchen.”
“Did you get a look at them?” I ask.
Lily shrugs. “I peeped through the gap in the door, but I couldn’t
Undead (ARC) Page 16