Cam - 04 - Nightwalkers

by P. T. Deutermann

  Oka-a-a-y.

  Was someone else in the house? The shepherds would have noticed another human lurking about. I looked around again. I hadn't been gone two minutes, but there was no getting around it--the damned candlestick was gone.

  I went over to the trapdoor, which was still upright, the way I'd left it. I pointed the flashlight down the steps, looking for tracks in the dust, but there weren't any, possibly because there wasn't any dust. That, too, was a bit strange. The steps were made of rough-cut planks, smoothed and even hollowed out slightly in the center by generations of foot traffic. I went down the steps, wondering if I should go back out and get my SIG.

  The basement was large, with almost ten-foot ceilings, a hard-packed dirt floor, and heavy, mortared stone foundation walls. It smelled of dust, mildew, and old dirt in equal proportions. There was an expansive but unfortunately empty wine rack down one wall and floor-to-ceiling bare shelves on all the others. There was no plumbing or wiring in evidence, which made sense since the next floor up was itself partially underground. The basement seemed to match the footprint of the main house, and as I swung my light around, I saw what looked like an open grave in the floor, except that it was only three feet deep. I tried to think of what they might have used that for. The shelves would have contained provisions, perhaps, and possibly weapons. There were meat hooks hanging from some of the joists above, which might have accounted for the unusual height. The temperature was cool, and the place seemed to be perfectly dry. The shelves were empty except for a single item: my AWOL candleholder.

  I stopped and stared. That candleholder. The one I'd left up in the kitchen when I went out to get a flashlight.

  Curiouser and curiouser, I thought. This is about the point where the trapdoor goes bang up there at the top of the steps and I start to hear rattling chains and ghostly cackling. Except nothing happened. No cold vapors, no violins. Just the candlestick sitting there on that shelf, the one that apparently had grown legs.

  Obviously someone had been watching me in the kitchen and had moved the candlestick down here while I was outside. The dogs hadn't sensed anyone in the house, which implied that he'd been down here the whole time I'd been in on the lower floor. So he'd been listening or watching from the top of the stairs, heard me go out, went into the kitchen, grabbed the candlestick, and then--what?

  All right. Now: why? He'd grabbed it and moved it down here. Logically, he'd wanted me to know that I wasn't alone in the house. Then he had gone--where? Back upstairs? I didn't think so, unless he was really light on his feet, because I think I would have run into him, or at least heard him. There were back stairs from the lowerlevel kitchens up to the main, public rooms floor, but they changed direction twice before coming out in the central hallway above.

  I decided to test all my theorizing. I went back up the stairs and lowered the trapdoor while standing on the steps. Instant black darkness, with a tiny crack of light around the door edges. I then knelt down on the topmost step, hunched over underneath the door, and scanned the wall between me and the kitchen, using the flashlight. Nothing.

  I turned off the flashlight and looked again. There: a tiny, pencil-sized hole between two studs. I peered through it and could see most of the kitchen. That solved the watching problem. I pushed the trapdoor back open and latched it back. The tiny peephole was under the counter, visible only if you knew where to look.

  If he hadn't gone back upstairs, then he was down in the basement somewhere. Since the basement was empty, there had to be another way out of the basement. I went back down the wooden stairs and began to walk along the four stone walls, probing with my hands and the flashlight, looking through the empty shelves for signs of a secret doorway. There seemed to be nothing but solid stone. I checked the pit, but it was just hard-packed dirt and still about three feet deep.

  I went back out into the middle of the basement, swinging the light every which way, looking for anything different about the walls, or, for that matter, the ceiling and the dirt floor. The only thing I noticed was that one set of shelves, at right angles to a corner of the wine rack, had a wooden backing. All the rest of the shelves were open at the back, built right up against the bare stones. I went over to that set of shelves and got down on the ground. Sure enough, there was a quarter-inch space between the bottom shelf and the cementlike dirt.

  I looked for a hidden latch or activating mechanism, but I couldn't find a thing. I pulled on the whole assembly. It seemed to be firmly anchored. I also was wondering, if there was a hidden passage, where would it lead? The lower level of the house was already partially underground, maybe some four feet, which meant that this basement floor was about fifteen feet underground. I tried to visualize where the nearest outbuilding was at the back of the house. I thought it was the smokehouse, but I'd have to go out and see. Maybe I could find the way into the basement from its exit point.

  "Anyone down there?" a woman's voice called from above. It sounded like Carol Pollard.

  "Yeah, it's me, Cam Richter," I called. A moment later, a shapely pair of stockinged legs in a knee-length skirt came down the steps into the cone of my flashlight.

  "What in the world are you doing down in this black hole?" she asked as she stepped onto the dirt floor.

  "Just looking," I said, deciding to keep the mystery of the moving candlestick to myself for the moment. She joined me and blinked in the light from my Maglite.

  "Checking out the woodwork?" she asked, indicating the hand-hewn floor joists above our heads. Then I realized they were whole tree trunks.

  "Yes, and the general layout of the house. I didn't expect a basement with that lower floor halfway underground. Certainly not this deep, either."

  "You're right," she said. "The whole point of the lower floor was 'coolth' in the hot summers. That's why the kitchens and the main dining room are down there. Look at that wine rack!"

  "Missing one important commodity," I said.

  "Can't have everything," she said with a bright smile. "I saw the front gates open and decided to come in to see who's here. Your shepherds are waiting at the front door, by the way."

  We decided to go back upstairs into the daylight. I followed Carol up, exercising as much chivalry as I could with the Maglite. When I dropped the trapdoor into the basement, I saw an external latch, which I discreetly slid into the locked position.

  In the light of the kitchen I noticed that she seemed to be dressed for a party, with a lot more makeup than I'd seen before. She caught me checking her out.

  "A retirement party for Judge Corey," she said. "He's a kindly old gentleman who's been very nice to the library in town. Oh, and I have a lease for you to sign in my briefcase outside. David Oatley asked me to get it to you."

  "Great," I said. "Does that mean I can move in across the way?"

  "I think so," she said as we went up the front stairs and then to the front door. There were two sets of shepherd ears silhouetted against the wavy glass of the door's side windows. We went outside, and I executed the lease agreement.

  "I was thinking," she said. "When you get settled in next door, perhaps you'd like to take a ride around the property. I've got a husband-horse I could bring for you, and it really is a great way to see the whole property."

  "A husband-horse?"

  She laughed. "That's a horse-world term for a perfectly docile horse that even the nonriding husband can ride. You would be riding on, as opposed to actually riding."

  "Got it," I said. "Sure, why not? What could go wrong?"

  She laughed again, and I found myself warming to her sunny personality, among other attributes. "Not much, actually, not on Goober, anyway."

  "Goober."

  "You'll see," she said. "I'll call you."

  After she left, I considered the possibility that the stop-by had been dual-purposed. Get the lease signed, and give me a look at Carol when she cleaned up and invested in a little powder and paint. I also considered the possibility that the entire female universe might not actual
ly revolve around me. God, I hoped that wasn't so.

  I went back into the house with the mutts to pursue the matter of the light-footed candlestick. The first problem I encountered was that it was back on its table in the kitchen.

  The trapdoor was still down and latched. I didn't remember bringing it back up, and nor had Carol.

  No way, I thought. I went over and tugged at the handle of the door; it did not move. The latch held. So no one who could have been hiding in that basement could have moved the candlestick.

  "C'mon, you guys," I said. "We're going exploring."

  We went through the house, starting with another quick look down in the basement and then through every floor right up to the attic, which was accessed through a ceiling hatch at the back of the upstairs main hall. I'd found an antique wooden ladder stored in the hall closet, which allowed me to get up into the attic.

  There was nothing up there but cold air, lots of spiderwebs, and a great look at the original construction timbers, which were, for the most part, more whole trees that had been squared off where needed and then fit into a roof truss structure with wooden dowels. There were no lights in the attic, but some light came in through air vents at the eaves, and it was fully floored. There were no chained trunks of hidden treasure, no wardrobes full of antique clothes, and absolutely no place for anyone to hide. The inside walls of the massive brick chimneys were exposed on four sides, and the mortar actually looked to be in pretty good shape. There were no water stains on the floor, so the roof was intact as well.

  I climbed back down the ladder to where the shepherds were waiting and reset the hatch cover as I came down. We explored each of the main rooms, the few remaining armoires upstairs, and even the single bathroom grafted onto the drawing room downstairs. I'd taken some time going through the reception room on the main floor, which the old lady had converted to her bedroom in her declining days. As was customary in nineteenth-century homes, freestanding wardrobes and armoires were used in place of closets. There was a smallish canopied bed, two armoires, a ratty-looking oriental rug, and some chairs and tables.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed.

  I listened once again for rattling chains, low moans in the walls, or other ghostly noises, but mostly what I heard was the sound of two shepherds panting.

  Someone had moved the frigging candlestick. Someone had been in the house when Carol and I had gone out to her car. That same someone had done his or her poltergeist thing and still managed to get out of the house, unseen and unheard, before I came back in and started looking around in earnest. The shepherds were relaxed, which told me that said someone wasn't here anymore. Ergo, no point in us sitting here waiting for something to happen.

  We went back outside and walked around to the back of the house, which faced generally northwest. Here the bricks were in less good shape, and I could discern a definite starboard list on the back wall chimney structure. There was a set of stone steps leading up from the semisubmerged kitchen area, but they were covered in a thin film of moss and didn't bear signs of recent use. The backyard was actually a pebbled driveway area, surrounded by some ancient outbuildings. I reconsidered my mystery. There was one way it could have been done.

  Someone hidden in the basement walls could have heard us go upstairs and then out the front door, grabbed the candlestick, come out into this back drive area through some secret passage, gone down those steps into the kitchen, replaced the candlestick, and then beat feet back outside to a hidey-hole before I got back inside. I had not looked outside once I started my tour, and I also had gone back down into the basement. If my mystery guest had heard me down there, he could have had time to get out of the secret passage and simply depart the premises.

  So: Secret passage, where are you? It had to have something to do with that one set of shelves down there that had the solid wooden back. I decided to look through the old outbuildings to see if I could find any indications of foot traffic.

  Thirty minutes later I'd discovered nothing useful. One building was indeed a smokehouse, a second looked like it had been a blacksmith shop of some kind, and the third was a long, low springhouse, complete with a pool of icy water laced with watercress. All of the buildings were made of the same handmade, oversized brick as the main house. All the fittings were wrought iron and looked original. A tiny brook headed downhill from the springhouse, but nothing else moved on the grounds except for an occasional and now respectfully distant squirrel.

  Still and all, I thought, that had to be how it was done, excluding the duty ghostly spirit. Some kind of subterranean access had to be behind that set of shelves. The real question was why someone was screwing around in the first place. Was I supposed to be scared off? I decided to wait for further exploration until I had a crew here working, and then we'd disassemble that wooden shelf structure, with a backhoe if necessary, and find out where the secrets lay. In the meantime, I might still have a real ghost to deal with, back in Summerfield, if the demise of his hired killer failed to deter him. On that dismal possibility, I needed to get going on my move to the country. That meant a second visit to the stone cottage, and then a U-Haul operation.

  By Tuesday of the following week, I was all moved in and now a semipermanent resident of Rockwell County. Cubby Johnson, the Lees' outside man, helped me move my stuff into the cottage and get my new digs up and running. Cubby was in his late fifties, maybe early sixties, and, except for a stint in the army, he had never really left Rockwell County. He and his wife, Patience, had worked for the Lees for most of their lives. He was a powerfully built black man, five-eight, with a fringe of graying hair around an otherwise bald pate, a round, intelligent face, and the handshake of a blacksmith. He had a low, mellifluous voice, and I assumed he was as curious about me as I was about the Lee family. It became clear during our first real meeting that we were going to observe a tacit agreement to let further details of our respective backgrounds unfold in the due course of time so as to maintain southern civility. It was also clear that he felt a certain responsibility to protect the Lees in their eccentricities in return for what had become absolute, lifetime job security for him and his wife. I let it be known that I was cool with the Lees' lifestyle, having seen far stranger things than Hester and Valeria Lee in my law enforcement career.

  Cubby told me Ms. Hester was ailing, which meant that Ms. Valeria was attending, so I didn't see either of them in the course of moving in. Carol Pollard brought by a proposed restoration plan, and we agreed to get the thing going as soon as I closed the real estate transaction. David Oatley had hinted that closing could happen the following week if I was willing to forgo the due diligence. He'd shown me the four stone boundary markers, which looked like they'd been there since Washington was a surveyor. Being a stranger to these parts, however, I elected to go through the paper drill just to be sure.

  The shooting investigation had faded to black, which often happened when the perpetrator got himself killed, thereby solving the major mystery. The sheriff's office had not been able to pin anything on Billie Ray, although he remained the logical suspect. The parole office forced him into a minimum wage job and then made him report what he did with his money, such as it was. The woman he was living with was a supposedly reformed crack queen, who, in the opinion of the detectives, was barely able to get herself from one end of their mobile home to the other. All of which left me with the lingering suspicion that my ghost problem might not be over.

  In order to stay as far off the grid as possible in my new lodgings, I did not set up a landline telephone. I left the electricity and propane accounts with the Lees. I told the local post office in Summerfield to send all mail to my office as I was going to be in Europe for the next year. It was admittedly thin cover, but it might fool an ex-con for a while. I contacted a local Summerfield Realtor and made arrangements to rent my house, but not until after I'd closed on Glory's End. In the meantime, I needed to get some more folks on my side in Rockwell County.

  Carol brought the
first contractor out to Glory's End that Tuesday afternoon. He was the electrical guy, and he gave me a tour of the house's electrical system, such as it was. The wiring was from the 1950s and was the fabric-covered copper variety. There were only eight fuses for the whole house, and four of those had copper pennies underneath blown fuses. The only thing that had saved the house from a fire was that the old lady hadn't used much more than a few lights, an electric hot plate, and the furnace fan.

  "So," I said. "A complete rewire?"

  He nodded. "That's the safe way to go," he said. "This stuff hasn't met code for forty years, and the woodwork through which it's routed has zero moisture content. Plus, if you're going to live here, you're probably going to put a much bigger electrical load on the system."

  He explained that he would disconnect the old wiring but leave much of it in place in order to avoid damaging the plaster and run all new, modern, meaning grounded, conductors. In some cases he could use the old wiring to fish the new cable up through walls and floors. "The good news is that there aren't any fire-stops in these walls," he said. "The bad news . . ."

  He agreed to leave the current system operational until he was ready to proceed with the rip-out and the new installation. He then set about surveying the system so he could work up a bid, while Carol and I talked about the first few major steps to a renovation. As casually as I could, I asked her about the possibility of an underground passage in or around the house.

  "Well, I guess it's possible," she said, "but what purpose would it serve? You've seen the covered walkways back to the service buildings, and it wasn't the plantation owners who would have to go out in the snow to fetch the firewood."

  "The war, maybe? A place to hide themselves or their valuables if the Yankee hordes arrived?"

  She nodded but pointed out that the Yanks had not come through this part of the South until the very end and that, beyond the house itself, the countryside was so impoverished by then that there'd been nothing much to hide or protect.