“It’s supposed to smell like this. Now take off that blanket, I’m going to rub your chest down with it.”
Casey gave her a lopsided grin due to the thermometer and said, “Now I like the sound of that.”
An hour later, reeking of eucalyptus oil, Pamela covered up a blissfully slumbering Casey and quietly took her leave of the house.
Pat, as promised, was waiting at the top of the road, car engine idling.
“Christ, it’s about time,” he said as she slid into the car. “I half froze out here—good Lord, what’s that smell?”
“Eucalyptus, and don’t ask,” she said. “Come on, let’s get out of here before either Casey or Lawrence wakes up.”
The house was lying in utter darkness as they approached. The car they’d abandoned far back, tucking it in to a road overgrown with rhododendrons. The rest of the way they covered on foot. Both were shivering by the time they came up on the back yard, a large luxuriant stretch of grass, surrounded by well-groomed cedars. They paused for a minute, the gravity of what they were about to do weighing in rather heavily.
The weather, however, was on their side, the fog so thick that the house, even at such a close proximity, was a vague shape with only glimpses of chimney and long casement windows. This was where William Bright’s scrap of paper had led them. Suddenly Pamela wasn’t sure she wanted to know what secrets were hidden behind the thick stone walls. She had a strange shivery feeling that had nothing to do with the cold, that tonight they might well find answers that were going to prove very hard to live with.
“Christ.” Pat breathed out, breath condensing onto his skin instantly. “Is it possible that we’ve completely lost our minds? I mean, what if we get caught?”
“We can’t,” she said. “Casey will kill me.”
“Me as well.” Pat laughed, a sharp sound of nervousness. Somewhere in the distance a dog howled, and the two of them clutched at each other.
Pat snorted. “Fine pair the two of us are. We’re like to scare each other to death, never mind if we actually run into someone else. Tell me again what the note says.”
“Just the address and the information that the house would be empty for the next week. Nothing else.”
“Right.” Pat blew on his hands, face grim. “We’re completely insane to be here on so little. Let’s go inside.”
The grass, stiff with icy dew, crunched under their feet as they stole across the lawn.
Pamela slid a narrow leather box out of her pocket and flipped it open. The picks, gold-colored, glowed in the fog like the proverbial needles in a haystack. She pulled out the most likely looking one and fit it to the lock. It slid in easily enough, and only took a minute to catch the tumblers and turn them. Lawrence had made her practice blindfold until she could do each lock in the house in under a minute. The practice served her well now, even though her hands were shaking and her heart was pounding fit to burst from her chest.
“Yer very good at that,” Pat said, looking slightly disconcerted.
“I taught Lawrence how to play backgammon and he taught me how to pick locks.”
“Oh, good to see ye do things as a family,” Pat said, sarcasm in good form despite the chattering of his teeth.
“Come on.” She slipped through the door onto a heavy carpet. She moved into the room so that Pat could get inside. He shut the door behind him with a soft click that, to their overly tuned ears, sounded like a gunshot.
They stood completely still for a long moment, letting their vision adjust to the dark and listening carefully to the silence that surrounded them. There were only the normal sounds of an empty house whose owners are on holiday—the hum of electrical appliances, the creaking boards responding to their intrusion, and the low level prickling that all houses seemed to contain, as if they were living, sentient beings.
“Where should we start?” Pamela asked.
They stood in the dining room, a long wooden table glowing like ebony in the darkness, the dim glow of crystal lighting the far wall.
“This way,” Pat said, moving off on cat feet. She followed in his footsteps, knowing he shared his brother’s instincts in darkness. Both men had the night sense of a cat, whereas she was likely to trip over the edge of a carpet she wasn’t anticipating, and was currently hampered by an ankle that was still swathed in a thin cast.
Pat rejected the kitchen, two downstairs powder rooms, and a guestroom as being a waste of their limited time.
“Study, I’m betting,” he whispered back over his shoulder as he jiggled the heavy latch of a door at the far east end of the house. “Door’s locked. Where’s yer wee picks?”
“Less than a minute,” she said some fifty-odd seconds later. “Lawrence would be proud.”
“Aye, well,” Pat said dryly, “that’s up for debate, all things considered.”
The study smelled of leather, old paper, and disuse. It was much colder than the rest of the house, which was saying something.
“It’s like the devil’s meat locker in here.” Pat breathed out, teeth audibly chattering. Heavy curtains hung on the long casement windows, and they felt safe to turn their torches on. The first impression was that the room was rather cluttered. A desk sat in the center, an enormous antique with dozens of small bird-nest holes, filled to overflowing with bits of paper. Scattered around the desk were a bizarre variety of ottomans, chaise lounges and dozens and dozens of large cushions, islands of color on the dark rugs that scrolled out to the edges of the room.
“It looks like some sort of pasha’s den in here,” Pat said, flicking the torch from one velvet-covered atrocity to the next. “Come on, let’s get started with the desk.”
She knelt down, Lawrence’s set of picks glinting like wicked sharp needles. The desk was a bit of a challenge, being that a larger barreled key was needed for the ornate locks. She chose the largest of the picks, which had a barrel roughly half the diameter of a screwdriver, and slid it into the top lock, which should, she hoped, unlock the entire set of drawers. The drawer popped open a few seconds later and she sighed with relief.
“Here, you check the desk while I get the filing cabinet.” Pamela said.
Pat nodded, already riffling through the top drawer, where a series of manila envelopes with dates on them were stacked a foot deep.
The file cabinet wasn’t much of a challenge. The second smallest pick and twenty seconds were all that were needed before the lock popped and the heavy drawers rolled outward.
The top drawer held business documents, as well as the normal run of bills, household expenses, insurance documents etc. Pamela flicked through it quickly, her hands stiffening even with the protection of the gloves. The room was so cold it was akin to standing inside a refrigerator with the door shut.
The second drawer held a disgusting array of racist tracts and religious dogma—pamphlets and books that made her feel soiled just for touching them. Hatred was something she had firsthand experience with; hated for merely being of a certain religion, or more particularly in her case, for being female. But hate on an organized scale—the Third Reich or the KKK, or any of the narrow fundamentalist sects whose foundations rested heavily upon hatred of the Other— was something, even after time in Belfast with its firmly entrenched and ancient tribal schisms, she found much harder to comprehend.
There was nothing of particular interest, though, and nothing to tell her why William Bright had put this address in her hands. Given his reputation, he was no stranger to organized hatred himself. She flicked over the last file, and then understood just where he’d been leading her that day.
The photos were poorly lit amateur shots and yet their impact was not lessened by these qualities. Pictures of boys; boys who had a few things in common, they were all young, all naked, and all posed in a variety of perverse sexual tableaux that made her close her eyes in horror.
“What is it?”
“I—I—just come look.”
Pat took the file out and the pictures spilled across t
he floor. He made an inarticulate, half-choked noise and then quickly shoved them back in the dark brown folder they had been hidden inside.
“Desk is full of film strips, negative an’ reels. I imagine they’d be the same as these.” He put a gloved fist to his forehead and breathed hard through his nose. And then put his hand out to open the bottom drawer of the file cabinet.
Ropes, handcuffs, leather hoods, whips, and other devices that didn’t bear a closer scrutiny, filled the bottom drawer. Pat cursed under his breath and turned abruptly away. Pamela stepped back, wanting distance between herself and what they were seeing. In doing so, she stumbled over one of the low tables and caught up hard on her elbow against the solid shelves built into the wall.
“Ye alright?” Pat whispered, breath a chill fog in front of him.
“I’m okay. But I could swear that bookshelf just gave when I hit it.”
Pat frowned, and stepped over the velvet-tasseled ottoman. His skin was stark white against the dark wool of his hat and sweater; his eyes indiscernible from the shadows that clustered about them. He looked the shelf over, pushing on the edge, where it seemingly dovetailed with the one next to it.
The shelf was full of books on the occult, both titles she recognized and some far more obscure that appeared ancient, with cracked leather bindings. Between the books were a variety of macabre stone figures—gargoyles, goblins, harpies, bird heads with long knife-blade beaks, gorgons and some particularly hideous sheela-na-gigs—scarred faces leering out from amidst the dark bindings and mildewed pages.
“It’s here.” Pat cocked his head toward the wall, listening for the telltale click. He pressed here and there against the wood, pulling out various books, and the macabre ornaments.
It was the tiny gargoyle that glared out from the middle shelf, its eyes two rubies that glowed like spots of blood in the dim. Pat pressed against the monstrous wee face and there was an audible click and the shelf came away from the wall.
He took a deep breath. “Right then, let’s see what we have here.”
He stepped through the bookshelf opening and disappeared. A cold hand gripped her nerve endings, and she knew whatever was behind that wall was neither benign nor without ghosts.
She gritted her teeth and followed Pat through the wall.
It was a small, stone-lined chamber, damp and smelling of things that only grew in the dark. It was roughly twelve feet long and five feet wide.
She squinted against the dust, suppressing the urge to sneeze. The torch lit up the entire small, dungeon-like room, the dust so thick in the air that it seemed as if the entire space was filled with a brilliant golden snowfall. A series of cubbyholes were built into the wall, the heavy oak shelving rising all the way to the ceiling. Most of the cubbyholes held long, flat iron lockboxes, though some higher up had wooden boxes, roughly the shape and size of the boxes florists used to send long-stemmed roses. On the end of each box was a small plate engraved with fine print. She peered close, shining her torch on one box in particular.
‘Michael’ it read. She flicked the torch over to the next box, ‘Sean’. The cold hand moved higher up her spine, and the chill spread into her very blood.
Pat slid one of the boxes off the shelf and noted that despite the general dustiness of the room the boxes were clean, as though they were polished on a regular basis.
He laid the box on the floor, clicking his own torch off.
“Shine yer light here,” he said, and opened the box. The lid slid back with a well-oiled silence.
“Oh dear Jaysus,” Pat breathed out. Pamela put a gloved hand to her mouth. The light picked out the delicate fibula, and she had one single second to think he must have been a long-legged boy this Sean, before the full and horrifying truth hit her.
Pat reached up and took box after box off the shelves, his silence grim. Lid after lid, opening in noiseless terror, held the same story. Small skeletons, all terribly clean and free of the soft flesh that had once clung to them. The name on every box that of a boy—boys that had been abandoned by society, and seemingly by God as well. Boys that no one would notice if they simply disappeared off the face of the planet one day. Boys like Lawrence.
Pamela pushed herself back out of the closet, the urge to scream beating like a frantic bird in her chest. She thought she was going to throw up if she didn’t get out of the house immediately.
She crawled to a small hassock, sweat starting to bead under her hair and slick her palms. From inside the stone room she heard the scrape of each box coming down until finally a long and dread silence filled the very motes of the air, and Pamela felt as though her breath was tainted with the blood this house contained.
What seemed a very long time later, Pat emerged with one of the white wooden boxes in his hands. His face was expressionless, his movements slightly jerky, the body’s reaction to shock. Pamela looked at him in the dim and dusty torchlight, dreading the words she knew must surely come.
“I think I know what happened to Robin’s sister,” he said in a voice drained of all emotion.
In reflex she crossed herself.
“Dear God, what do we do now?”
PAMELA WAS RELIEVED TO SEE that the house was still dark, other than the small light over the kitchen sink she had left burning. She crept gratefully through the back door, still shaking with nerves and cold.
She locked the door firmly behind her, standing silent for a moment to listen to the small house noises. The refrigerator hummed happily to itself, and the soft pad of Finbar’s feet sounded at the kitchen entryway. The dog blinked sleepily at her, loping across the expanse of shining floor for a pat.
She sighed with relief; her absence seemed to have gone unnoticed.
She put the kettle on before changing out of her damp clothes into her warmest pyjamas—an outfit that consisted of an old thermal undershirt of Casey’s, red flannel bottoms and an ancient rugby jersey that half swallowed her. She checked on Casey and found him still sleeping, breath wheezing in and out of his mouth. His forehead was clammy and considerably cooler than it had been earlier in the evening.
Downstairs she replenished the fire in the sitting room, building it from slumbering coals to a high, hot blaze that began to thaw her face and fingers. With great effort, she pulled the vast Victorian armchair close to the fire and then curled up in it with a cup of hot, sugary tea. The Irish cure for shock and pretty much every other ailment known to mankind.
She took a large mouthful of tea, holding it against her tongue for a second before swallowing, allowing the delicate scent to warm her nose. Finbar came and settled himself by the chair with a sleepy wumpf. She took a deep breath and felt some of the horrible tension of the evening begin to give way to shaky gratitude that she was no longer inside the walls of that horrible house.
“Where have ye been?” asked an accusatory voice that seemed to issue forth from the tall cabinet behind her.
She started, slopping tea onto the worn jumper. “Jesus, Lawrence,” she said sharply, “you scared me.”
Lawrence, wrapped in her Star of David quilt, came around the chair and plunked himself onto the floor beside the fire. His eyes were still glassy with fever, though they looked more accusatory at present than anything else.
“When did you wake up?” she asked, deciding it was of little use to dodge the child’s question.
“Just as ye were leavin’.” He coughed, and she winced at the heavy sound of his fluid-filled lungs. “Saw ye go up the drive an’ get in a car. Looked a bit like a blue Cortina.” Here he added a significant sniff.
“Did Casey wake up at all?” she asked, feeling slightly sick. She’d no wish to explain her way out of this particular corner; Casey wouldn’t take kindly to the reasons nor the outcome of this night.
“Just the once, but I told him ye’d stepped out for a walk an’ he went right back to bed.”
“Thank you for that,” she said, wondering why he’d kept it secret while being completely grateful that he had.
“Didn’t want to upset him when I’d no idea where ye’d gone,” he said, in response to her unspoken question. “Where did ye go?” He tried to glare accusingly, an effort somewhat marred by another fit of coughing.
“Before I answer any questions,” she said sternly, “I’m going to get you a hot drink and tuck you up in bed.”
“I’m fine here by the fire,” he said weakly. “Ye’ll not make me drink the garlic stuff again, will ye?”
“No, you can have a cup of regular tea.”
This statement was greeted with a small upturn of his lips. “With sugar an’ cream?”
“Yes. But only if you get in bed first.”
She helped him back to his bedroom, his skin hot to the touch, body shaking with fever chill.
“Your shirt is soaked,” she said. “Take it off, I’ll get you a dry one. You can’t go back to bed that way.”
He clutched his shirt to his thin chest, a look of panic passing over his face. “I’ll change when ye go to get my tea.”
She turned from the bureau, handing him fresh pyjamas. “Alright, Mr. Modesty. I’ll be back in a minute.”
She dashed up the stairs to get a pair of Casey’s heavy wool socks. It was part of an old remedy that her father had used on her when she’d had a particularly bad cold. The other part required raw garlic being rubbed on the soles of the afflicted’s feet.
She retrieved the socks, Casey’s snores echoing around the room like the sound of a congested swarm of bees. She dashed back downstairs to the kitchen for some garlic. Garlic, socks and the jar of eucalyptus oil in hand, she nudged Lawrence’s door open with one hip.
She froze, riveted to the spot by shock.
The boy’s back was to her. The bedside lamp was on and Lawrence stood in the pool of light, struggling his way into the fresh pyjamas. Despite regular and copious feeding, he was still so thin that the knobs of his spine stood out sharply against his fair skin. Pyjama bottoms clung precariously to his thin hips, riding low enough to expose the top of one milky buttock. It was the sight of this that had arrested her, for there were deep weals in the fair skin, the scarring thick and shiny as twisted wire.
Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series Book 2) Page 77