Thinking specifically of what her parents might say about her brush with ghosts and witchcraft, Karo could only agree that silence was the best option.
Though it called for some willpower, Tristam and Karo went to their separate beds just after ten o’clock and stayed apart that night. Hugh did not trouble them with dreams, perhaps because neither of them slept much.
They rose early the next morning and, after coffee and toast, Tristam went down to the basement with the Campions to ascertain what might be done to shed some light in that heretofore unilluminated netherworld. Karo did the dishes while the men talked wiring, and then she tried her best to find Hugh by wandering through the house and waiting for a hot flash that never came. Was the ghost evading her? Maybe they actually were on the right track. Or perhaps—and this was a horrible thought—he was hiding in her shadow, a shade within a shade. Watching but not helping.
Time limped slowly and then dropped to its knees and began to crawl. Still Tristam didn’t appear. Hugh remained invisible, too, and Karo began to feel guilty about their proposed endeavor. She returned to the kitchen because it was the sanest room in the house. Her sudden three-sixty, her internal defense of Hugh Vellacourt was impossible to explain, especially as she didn’t understand her own feelings. The whole thing, from beginning to end, sounded like the silliest gothic romance, which no one would believe—assuming she ever breathed a word of it to anyone, which wasn’t likely. So, didn’t she want this ghost out of her life? Why was she flip-flopping every time she thought of him?
Karo’s brain worked in secret, her internal logic a language no one else spoke. Until Tristam. He did have the knack for following her unspoken thoughts. Great minds and all that.
But not this time. Hugh had clearly crossed a line with Tristam, and her boss was not going to be deterred from attempting to rid himself of the ghost. What was the last thing he’d said before they’d gone to bed? I don’t approve of you and Hugh.
“There is no ‘Hugh and I,’ and don’t couple our names please,” she had answered with a shudder. But she was lying. Just a little, she did actually feel some kind of a connection to the ghost.
Would using the book work? Assuming they lit up the basement like the surface of the sun and actually found the Malleus Maleficarum in one piece, could it really be used to banish Hugh? Vellacourt was no fragile ghost to be run off by light, however bright. Nor did remorse seem to be his weakness. He had lived his life as he wanted and the world be damned. He might not even believe in God. She didn’t see how a book would help, unless there was really some sort of connection to his remains.
“Karo?” Tristam interrupted her thoughts. She saw at once that he had a small digital camera in his hands; he was enough of a historian to want to keep a record of what they were doing. “The lights are up, but look, there’s no need for you to go down there. It’s pretty foul. One of the Campions already threw up because of the stench.”
“I don’t care. You don’t really think I would leave you to face this alone, do you?” Also, this could be history in the making. She had to be there.
“Okay. But I hope you aren’t attached to those shoes. They’ll be ruined.”
“They’re my grubbies,” Karo answered.
The basement might have had an egress from within the house at one time, but they had not discovered it in their search. Likely the door had been plastered over at some point. The only known entrance was through an outside bulkhead, which had been overgrown with thorny vines whose sap bled a strange brownish red and smelled a bit like rotten meat and raised blisters on the skin.
Piled near the door were a sledgehammer, crowbar, shovel and a claw-foot hammer. And two familiar masks. They wouldn’t keep out odors, but they would help with dust and mold.
“Give me the camera,” Karo said. “I have deep pockets on these pants. It’ll be safe.”
Tristam went first. It took a surprising amount of will to enter the basement, even with the Campions’ spotlights illuminating the old stair and the space beyond. The darkness soon returned after that. The spots might have been adequate to fight off night along the drive, but they were no match for the miasma beneath the mansion.
Karo paused to take a picture of the opening. There was no sign saying ABANDON ALL HOPE, but there didn’t need to be. This wasn’t a basement. It was more like a dungeon. No one in their sane mind would go inside with hope.
The ground was slimy with some kind of algae and the air was unpleasantly cold and filled with a smell she was reluctant to take into her lungs despite it being filtered through a mask. She also saw, almost immediately, that to call the place a basement was to use massive understatement. This was not a basement in the singular. It was actually a series of subterranean rooms, half a cellar and half a swamp, and completely unhealthy for humans.
The stairs were steep and slippery. There was a railing but—
“Don’t depend on it to save you,” Tristam said without turning. “The wood is rotten, as soft as a sponge.”
Thirteen steps, deep ones. Karo counted, her heart pounding all the way. Then the horrible stair with its uneven treads finally came to an end.
Tristam handed her the shovel as they reached the floor and took the rest of the tools himself. The ground continued to be slimy, but the sludge was thicker now and deeper. It came up over the toes of her shoes. It was also gritty with what Karo realized was plaster and crumbled mortar, which was peeling off the walls.
“Is there a sump pump?” she asked.
“Yes, but it doesn’t work. I think the basement settled and has breached the water table. It is below the water line now. And it floods. Look at the walls.” They were wet to the ceiling and growing mold.
“Ugh.”
“Indeed. Let’s get started.”
They were methodical in their search at the beginning. They began at the left wall and traveled in a clockwise direction. The basement had been compartmentalized. Some walls were unmortared stone, some brick. Near the doorway of the first room were rotten shelves whose brackets had rusted and pulled away from the wall. The shelves had held some kind of jars that were mostly broken, though there was one that seemed to be intact. Karo photographed it. The flash showed the glass to be purpled. That suggested great age. They should retrieve it later.
“Best to be thorough,” Tristam agreed as she took a second picture. His voice was muffled, perhaps by the mask but also by the still air that ate all sound. The acoustics were odd, allowing no normal reverberation, and Karo wondered with growing paranoia if the pillars and walls had been placed deliberately to cause this effect.
“I think the Campions cleared out all the snakes,” Tristam said, “but have a care where you step—and keep that shovel handy.”
The warning was unnecessary. Alarm and paranoia had Karo’s eyes opened to their widest.
They skirted a wall made of brick, which had clearly been added at a later time. The rest of the foundation and support pillars in that part of the basement were built from stone that had been plastered and painted, though little of either remained on the damp walls.
The stench on the far side of the brick wall was greater and reached out to them even before they ducked through the low arch and entered what might have been a wine cellar. There were no bottles left, only some scraps of rotten wood, but along with the smell of rot there remained the trace odor of something rather vinegary. Again, Karo fished out the camera and photographed the room. The camera’s flash briefly drove back the thick shadows, but it showed them nothing except the bones of a giant rat and more spiders than Karo cared to count.
What the hell were these spiders eating? Each other?
Another arch, another room. By Karo’s reckoning, they had traveled almost a hundred feet now. They would have passed beyond the foundation of the present house. Had there perhaps been some older building? The floor was angling down and the sludge was getting thicker. Karo began using the shovel as a walking stick.
The third room
held the remains of a wooden staircase, and with the aid of the camera flash they could see where a door had been bricked in high up the wall. It barely looked large enough to accommodate a child and Karo pitied whoever had been forced to use it. At the fourth area, the Campions’ light was conquered completely, and Tristam fished a flashlight out of his pocket. It was a strong light but did little to drive back the gloom and growing cold gathering around them.
“I am not an imaginative man, but this feels like a very bad place,” he said.
“This is it,” Karo whispered. Her words were all but swallowed by the stench and darkness.
“Look at the walls,” Tristam remarked, ducking under the low arch. He paused almost at once as something—perhaps some loosened plaster—fell from the wall and splashed into the mud. The sludge burped, sounding almost human.
“Is it safe?” Karo asked, forcing herself to go on. Her gorge was rising along with fear and the tiny blonde hairs on her arms.
“I think so.” But Tristam sounded dubious. How did one judge safety when their potential attackers were ghosts and mold spores that might evade their simple masks?
This part of the basement was older; the stone walls had not been plastered except in one area where a closet-sized enclosure had been built out. The stone was as wet as it was everywhere else in the basement, but in this room it supported a strange gray-green lichen that seemed to glow whenever the flashlight left it. The patches appeared suggestively body-sized.
Karo noticed this unusual phenomenon but was immediately taken with the thing that Tristam had captured in the flashlight beam. Ugly mushrooms and mold were doing their best to obscure the mural painted on the coffin-sized cyst protruding from the wall, but the image was still clear enough to cause hesitation: A dark angel—probably a fallen one—spread its somber wings over the enclosure and out along the wall. The painting was crude, perhaps done in charcoal.
And blood. That was the usual fixative.
This was a sinner’s grave if ever there was one.
Simple it might have been in terms of execution, but the image still had the power to repel. Karo found it hard to breathe, and her hands were clumsy as she took out the camera and took several shots of the disintegrating mural. More of the rotting plaster dropped from the wall as she worked, suggesting to her lurid imagination that something was trying to get out.
“We’ll have to destroy it to get inside,” Tristam said. There wasn’t much regret in his voice.
“I know.” And she did, but she didn’t like it. The plaster wasn’t just keeping them out—it was also keeping something in. “I just hope the book isn’t rotten.”
Tristam looked back at her. In the poor light with his face half covered, she couldn’t read his expression. “Take the flashlight,” he said. “And stand back.”
Karo did as asked. The light wavered a bit because her hands were shaking. She would have liked to brace herself against the wall, but the lichen was repulsive. Not just unhealthy but actually evil. She didn’t want it on her sweater or in her hair. As it was, she was going to have to throw away her shoes and pants.
Tristam’s hand curled around the sledge’s handle. In the wavering light his long fingers looked like something on a marble statue. He swung the sledge with shocking force, and suddenly the room was full of sound and heat. There was also a fearful clap of thunder, and behind them the Campions’s string of lights went out. Nature—or something more sinister—had pulled the plug.
Left only with the flashlight, it was difficult to see what happened to the wall. One moment the plaster and its sinister angel were there and then both were gone, shattered like a mirror. Tristam said something obscene as he stepped back from the cyst, and Karo fumbled for the camera with her right hand. She let the shovel fall against the wall.
The electronic strobe showed more clearly what was fixed in the wall. She was allowed time for one flash and then the skeleton embedded in the decaying plaster freed itself and fell to the floor where it started to submerge in the sludge.
“Get the bones! Don’t let them sink,” she ordered, pulling off her sweater. This was difficult to do while holding the flashlight. “Put them in here.”
Tristam had already pulled out two handfuls of what were probably leg bones. The ribs came next. They were not intact. This was not some classroom specimen that had been wired together.
Karo didn’t offer to help. One of them had to keep their hands clean to operate the camera. Also, it was beyond her capability to actually reach into that horrible goo and touch those browned bones. It was all she could go not to retch.
The room remained hot while they worked, but Hugh did not appear.
“Shine the light on the wall,” Tristam ordered. “Do you see the book anywhere?”
“No. Nothing. Just…just the imprint from the skeleton.” The plaster retained the marks where the bones had been placed, but it wouldn’t for long. As Tristam worked, more of the rotting plaster slid off the wall. Some of it fell in his hair and he shook like a dog to remove it.
Karo took another photo, and just in time. The flash hadn’t died away when the whole thing slithered to the floor revealing bare rock wall. There was also a square package of leather resting just above the sludge on a pile of displaced stone.
“Look!” Karo rushed forward and snatched up the parcel. She was careful not to step on the bones or to drop the light; being down there in the dark would be unendurable.
“She must have had lizards in her brain,” Karo said. “How could she do this to him? How long did it take her to wall him up, down here in this horrible place?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she ordered a slave to help. Don’t open that package down here,” Tristam cautioned.
“I won’t.” Karo didn’t add that she wouldn’t willingly open it ever. The book repulsed her as much as anything in the entire world. “She must have had help. That wasn’t an intact body she bricked up.” Karo swallowed. “She had to wait until the flesh had…” She trailed off, unable to discuss the logistics of the crime.
“Well, at least we know what happened to Hugh’s grave. She must have somehow destroyed the stone when she had him disinterred.” Tristam stood. The bundle he lifted was awkward, and not all the longer bones were fully contained by the sweater.
“I don’t blame him for haunting her. What a horrible thing to do.”
Tristam nodded. Sweat ran down his brow.
“You go first,” he said. “And go nice and slow. Don’t drop the book. I think we’re going to need it.”
Karo didn’t rush, since she had no desire to fall in the horrible mud that clutched at her feet like rubber cement, but she did not stop to take any pictures of their retreat. If more photos were needed, then they would come back at another time. It was a huge relief to finally reach the bulkhead and see daylight beyond. A part of her had feared that she would be trapped in the Stygian darkness forever.
“Wait by the door. I don’t want to leave the bones unattended,” Tristam said, lowering his burden to the ground at the base of the stairs. Her sweater sank an inch into the mud. “We’ll get the tools later.”
Karo started to protest the abuse of her clothing, but her sweater was ruined anyway. There was no way that she would ever wear it again.
“I need to go get a box to put these in. We can’t just…” Tristam shrugged.
“No.” She could only imagine the Campions’ reaction if they came out of the basement carrying slimy bones. At the very least they would gossip in town, and it was far more likely that they would call the police.
Of course there was no question of either Tristam or herself being accused of murder if that happened, the bones were clearly old and eventually the police would call in archaeologists and discover that the skeleton was ancient; but who knew what would happen with the ghost in the meantime? Hugh deserved a decent burial.
And there was the matter of the media that would cover such a sensational story. It might be good for Belle Ange, bu
t it would likely destroy what was left of Karo’s professional credibility. Who knew what it would do to Tristam’s business. People paid for discretion as much as anything.
“We’ll have the funeral this afternoon after the Campions leave,” Tristam decided. He went to pat Karo on the shoulder, but then seeing the filthy state of his hand he let it drop. Both of them were dripping with sweat. The heat had dissipated a bit, but it was still unbearably hot and the smell of ozone was thick in the air. There would be a storm soon.
“I’ll cut some flowers later.” Karo pulled off her mask as she reached the top of the stairs and stepped into the light. The clean air and sun felt like a benediction. “Shall we put him back in the same place as before?”
“As close as we can get. I don’t want to shift those stones.”
“Do you think…Did she put Eustacie down there, too?”
“I don’t think so. I looked around on the way out but didn’t see any other oddities.” Tristam’s expression was wry. “I’ll look when I go back for the tools, but I think we have to accept that she is buried somewhere else. Maybe in the slave cemetery.”
Karo nodded. “Take the book,” she said, thrusting it at Tristam. “I don’t want the damned thing.”
“My hands are filthy,” he protested. “Hang on to it for a moment more. In fact, open it up and see what we have. If you can, take a picture. Whatever is left of it, I doubt it’s intact.”
“So, you think we should bury it with Hugh?”
“Yes. I know that thing is worth a fortune but…” He shuddered. Obviously he had also sensed the pure evil of that place.
“Yeah.”
Tristam went to collect a box. Karo delayed a moment and then scolded herself for being cowardly. She set the parcel on the ground and went about unwrapping it. The task was not easy. The leather had hardened, and it cracked when opened. The book beneath was likewise in horrible shape. She picked up a stick and prodded. The vellum pages had fused into a solid block that refused to open. If the leather cover had been illustrated, no trace of it remained. There was no way to prove what the thing was. It could have been a Bible, though she doubted it.
The Ghost and Miss Demure Page 20