We walked to the back of the stores. I noticed that now there was just one car parked in the lot. We kind of wandered around, then, seeing no one, scooted to the suspect door. I fumbled the key ring out of my pocket and looked vainly for a key that would fit the alarm. Finally, I risked a quick look with my flashlight, and after a moment’s inspection I grunted and said, “It’s a phony. The damn thing is a phony.”
The padlock was a big Masterlock. I tried keys until one turned hard and the lock popped open. I laid it on the ground near the wall, but Priscilla shook her head and picked it up. Trembling a little, I tried key after key on the deadbolt. The last key turned the damn thing. Priscilla grunted and said softly, “So why didn’t you try that one first?”
Opening the door a crack, we slithered through and I eased it shut behind us. We stood, arms and legs touching, testing the dark, waiting for a noise… a light… a voice. My hair was wet and icy trickles of water snaked down my back. The air smelled of things old and musty. As I tried to see in that utter blackness I felt my teeth grinding and with effort opened my mouth a little. Priscilla clicked on her flashlight and swung the beam left to right.
We were at the top of a wide set of stairs enclosed with unpainted, rough cut boards. The stairs, wide planks coated with dust the color of baled hay, had a crude ramp nailed to their left side. Dust encrusted cobwebs clogged the corners, and mouse turds were everywhere.
“Okay, no alarms,” Priscilla said. “Score one for us.” She stooped, set the padlock against the wall, then poked me in the side and whispered, “Down we go.”
We crept down the stairs. At the bottom was a slate gray door secured with a bolt. I worked the bolt, twisting the knob while pushing outward, making loud metallic noises that rasped in my head like chalk on a blackboard. Finally, it slid back with a squeal and the door opened.
We entered a darkness that I could almost feel. I swept my light up and down the inside wall and found a bank of switches a few feet to my left. I moved toward them, stumbling over several shovels and mason hoes leaning against the wall. Before I could flip a switch, Priscilla grabbed my arm and said, “I think we best leave those puppies be, there may not be any windows down here, but then again we don’t know, and we don’t need anyone wondering what’s going on in the basement.”
Okay, no lights. Trying to point our flashlights everywhere at once, we crept along the dirt floor. We didn’t follow any plan or pattern, just wandered, poking our lights anywhere that looked promising. Widely spaced along the wall opposite the door were folding room dividers that reached to the ceiling and protruded into the basement like giant wings. Rows of thick, rusting support pillars stood tall and silent. Several cement block closets were built against the back wall, and pipes and thick clusters of insulated wires wormed out of their tops and spread across the ceiling like vines. The deep rumbling of a furnace came from several of them, creating a background noise as subtle as elevator music.
As we prowled around, we happened upon large patches of cement, some scarred and cracked where older furnaces used to sit. Other patches were scattered willy nilly, as if from time to time, someone decided to cement in the entire floor, but gave it up after a day or so, which explained the shovels and hoes. Scattered around the vast space were piles of debris that created shadows that hung in the air like malevolent phantoms when our lights swept over them.
The debris seemed to be the only things in the basement. We wandered from pile to pile, bathed them in light, and found nothing but mounds of decomposing cardboard that smelled like forest muck. The basement was so large that the dark swallowed our flashlight beams before they hit the far walls. I felt like I was wandering an alien landscape, hopelessly lost and doomed. A part of me enjoyed it, and for a moment I wished I were alone, treading this underworld while mere mortals pursued trivial tasks above. Then reality reasserted itself and I was back in a huge musty basement wishing to hell I was home.
Fifteen minutes of searching left no doubt, the basement was empty; no bodies here.
We stood in the dirt by a waist high stack of decaying cardboard. I cut the dark with my light, then pointed it at the floor and said, “Nothing but cardboard, it had to cost them dearly not to lease all this space, I wonder why?”
Priscilla gripped my arm, pulled me close and whispered fiercely, “Because that goddamn Special Place is here! It’s gotta be! Come on, we still got the utility closets.” And she turned me around and pushed me toward the back wall. “We’ll start with the one down at that end.”
We walked to the last utility closet. Priscilla shined her light on the door, revealing a tarnished knob above a keyway. I put my hand on the knob, whispered, “Let us hope,” and turned the knob and pulled. The door silently opened. We crept into a space about half the size of a one car garage. It contained a large water heater and furnace, which sat on cement blocks to keep them out off the dirt floor. Two big electrical boxes with metal handles like slot machines were fixed to the wall. We examined the walls and floor, then exited and went to the next one. It was much the same as the first one, as was the third and forth. Just cement boxes containing the utilities needed by the stores above.
We trudged to the last closet and shined our lights on a door with a heavy metal plate and eyebolt secured with a combination padlock. “Now this is a bit different,” I whispered.
“And I don’t think we’re gonna find the combination written on the wall,” Priscilla said.
I handed Priscilla my light, grabbed the lock with both hands, and while pulling down, slowly turned the dial clockwise. After about a quarter turn I felt something and stopped. I hesitated a moment, yanked, and the lock popped open. Priscilla punched my shoulder and said, “Ha! I used to do the same thing in junior high. Spin in the first couple of numbers so all I had to do was turn it a bit and pull when I had to open it again. Let’s see what goodies are behind door number five.”
I opened the door and we crept in.
And found a large waterheater, a furnace, and two big electrical boxes with slot machines handles. After a careful search we stood by the waterheater and shined our lights in each other’s faces. “I thought that since this one was locked we might find something,” I said. “But obviously it’s just another utility closet. And now we’ve run out of places to look.”
After a time, Priscilla lowered her head, gave a heartfelt sigh and muttered, “Shit. Fuck. Damn it to hell!”
I waited, letting the disappointment fade a bit from Priscilla’s mind before I broke the silence. “Come on, we’ll go to Gretchen’s. I’ll treat.”
Her flashlight beam cutting erratic arcs through the rank black air, Priscilla waved her arms and hissed, “Damn it! This has to be the place. Three blocks from the funeral home? All this space? Those creeps couldn’t have carted bodies around like they were groceries, and why all this empty space? Why didn’t they rent it out?”
Her harsh whispers echoed loudly in that tight space and I imagined we could be heard by a crowd of curious people standing above us staring down at the floor. “Why not?” I said, “They ran a funeral home, had a hearse, and that’s part of what they did, haul bodies around. They could cart one anywhere anytime and who would blink? And judging from the ramp on the stairs and the piles of cardboard, they did use this for storage at one time, although I admit it’s a hell of a lot of space.”
“All right, maybe they could haul them anywhere, but the Special Place has to be near town. Why would they want to go a bunch of miles when it would be easier to stick close?”
“If it’s a bunch of miles away and it’s discovered, the police would be less likely to connect them. Now what say we depart, I’ll buy us a mug of wine, then we can head back to the farm.”
After a long silence she sputtered, “Goddamn it!… Shit!… All right, at least I’ll get in a good night with the game.” We started to move, but she suddenly grabbed my arm and pointed with her light. “Hey check it out, it’s Mickey Mouse.”
A small mouse d
arted between us and disappeared into a hole in the dirt. “Probably looking for Minnie,” she said. “Probably wants a little action. Mice are like men, when they aren’t looking for something to eat or a beer, they’re looking for something to screw.”
I gave her a look, decided not to comment, and led us out of the closet. We padded through the dirt to the basement door and started up the stairs. Halfway up I stopped. Priscilla stopped two steps further up and waited. Finally she said, “What?”
“Let’s go back down, I want to see where that mouse went.”
She looked at me. Finally she said softly, “Harry, it ran into that little hole. The thing probably has a burrow down there, like a prairie dog.”
“I’m not so sure those kind of mice burrow, I think they prefer to build nests.”
“Maybe it’s retarded, maybe it doesn’t know it’s suppose to prefer nests. Jesus Harry, it’s a damn mouse. It’s got a brain the size of a … ” She stopped, sighed dramatically, waved a hand in my face and said, “Okay, we’ll check it out. If we don’t, you’ll obsess and come three A.M., you’re gonna wanna toot on back here. You didn’t put that lock back on did you?”
I hadn’t. We returned to the basement and reentered the last closet. We moved toward the back and aimed our lights at the hole where Mickey disappeared. We gazed at it for a time, then Priscilla nudged me, and in a loud hollow voice said, “There, a hole in the dirt. Happy?”
I got down on my hand and knees and shined my light directly on the small, irregular shaped hole. It was just large enough for the mouse to dart into. I stared at it a moment, then got into a squat and stared at it some more. “So what’s the deal?” Priscilla said. “Hickory Dickory Dock, the mouse ran down the hole. Maybe it’s got a nest down there. Maybe it’s a… Burrowing Nester! I mean… .”
“Why build a nest at the bottom of a small hole when it has so much more space up here to choose from?”
“Harry, this place is over a hundred years old. There’s bound to be a zillion holes in the dirt floor and everywhere else, and that’s where critters like Mickey like to hang out. They like dirt. Like it’s kinda hard to burrow into cement.”
I got back down on my hands and knees and leaned down until my nose was a couple of inches or so from the hole. After a moment I rubbed my gloved hand back and forth on the dirt floor, held it up just to the left of the hole and gently shook it. Dirt fell from the glove to the floor.
Most of it.
“Priscilla, put your light on the hole and watch closely.” She sighed again, muttered something indistinguishable, and got down on her hands and knees and put her head close to mine. I put my hand by the hole and shook it. Dirt fell. After a moment, Priscilla raised her head and stared into my eyes. “Some of that dirt was sucked into Mickey’s front door,” she whispered.
I nodded. “Something is pulling air into the hole.”
We stood up. Priscilla looked at me. I looked back. I went to the front of the closet and jumped stiff legged toward her. The first three jumps were normal. The last one sounded a little hollow. I did it again. “The last time you jumped it sounded different,” Priscilla whispered.
We stared at each other. After a time I said, “To quote Shakespeare: ‘I smell a device.’ Would you be so kind as to get one of those shovels that’s by the basement door?” For once she kept quiet and scurried out the door. She was back in seconds and handed me an ancient thing with a twisted, dried out handle and a blade completely coated with rust.
Doesn’t anyone know the value of a good shovel anymore?
I stepped back, mentally cut lines with my light, then handed Priscilla the light and began digging. “Just what device do you expect to find at the bottom of Mickey’s hole?” She asked.
I didn’t answer, just kept digging, and about two feet down I struck wood. I dug for several minutes and handed the shovel to Priscilla, saying, “No reason not to share the wealth.” She took the shovel and handed me her light. Her eyes gleamed with excitement, but she kept quiet and attacked the dirt with a methodical fervor
It took a scant ten minutes. We stood at the edge of our labors and stared at the result. It was a door. About three by five feet, heavy looking, and obviously very old. On its left side, in the middle, was a thick, heavily corroded iron ring.
“A door,” Priscilla whispered. “A goddamn door under two of feet of dirt.”
With my light I pointed at a mouse size gap by the ring. “And that’s where Mickey went. The question is, where the hell did he go?”
“That, Old Man, is what we’re gonna find out right now.” Her smile a thing of cold joy, she squatted, brushed dirt away from the ring, gripped it with both hands, and straightened.
Groaning, squealing, the door slowly surrendered to Priscilla’s strength. Small avalanches of dirt cascaded into the opening. Gray dust billowed out like steam. Priscilla eased the door against the furnace and we aimed our lights into a deep, grim hole filled with cobwebs, dust, and chilled silence. As the dust settled we saw steep, ladder like stairs.
“A room,” I whispered. “And look at that support beam, the damn thing has bark on it. It has to be over a hundred and fifty years old. I wonder what it was. I’ll have to go to the library and… ”
Priscilla rapped me on the shoulder and said, “Hellooo! What say we do a little of that primary research you were yapping about. Leave the secondary type for later.”
We eased down stairs that were little more than slabs of raw wood nailed together. A long plank formed a crude ramp that went down the left side. Everything was covered with an ultrafine granite colored dust that rose like smoke as we descended. The frigid air smelled heavy, nasty, and old. We reached the bottom and stood in black silence. I dug into the floor with the toe of my shoe. “This stuff is like dirty powdered sugar.”
Priscilla handed me one of the masks. “Here, put this thing on or you’ll be coughing for a week.” I slipped the mask over my head and adjusted it over my nose and mouth. I put my light on Priscilla. Above her mask, her eyes glowed like green coals.
We shined our lights around. We were in a small room with a low ceiling supported by thick beams held in place by tree trunks that some long dead carpenter had cut to height. The walls were large dirt encrusted stones held together with pressure and hope. We crept along the room to an open doorway in the stones. It was obvious that the door in the ceiling had come from the opening. Arms and shoulders touching, we walked through and entered a tunnel. It was narrow with a downward slope, and at the end, imbedded in a stone wall, was a door with a thick wood handle. In the middle of the door was a small opening plugged with an ancient wood plug. Attached to it was a dried piece of string. I pulled the string and the plug fell out of the hole. I shined my light through the opening and peered in, but saw nothing.
I handed Priscilla my light, gripped the handle with both hands and pulled… and pulled. After watching me struggle for a time, she tapped me on the shoulder and said, “There’s no hinges out here, push in.” I did, and squawking like an angry bird, the door opened inward, hitting the wall and creating a cloud of dust that hung in the air like dirty smoke.
“Look,” Priscilla said, and pointed with her light. Beyond the door a pair of wrought iron ice tongs hung from a hook sunk in a cracked, twisted beam wrapped in cobwebs. The tongs were large and ornate, with unnecessary twists and curves, something an antique dealer would trade his virgin daughter for.
With our lights slashing back and forth, we crept into the ancient room. The ceiling was a maze of roughly squared beams that crisscrossed the ceiling in a tight pattern. They were held in place by thick upright timbers that were caked with that powdered grit that fell with the slightest vibration. Dust heavy cobwebs choked the open space between the supports, and broken chunks of wood stuck out of the dirt floor like the arms of drowning men.
Like a scene from an old Tarzan movie, where the doomed safari hacks its way through the jungle, we hacked our way through the darkness and cobwebs, usin
g our arms as blades. Heads bent, we inched along, probing ever deeper into the huge room, our lights reflecting off cobwebs, dust, and black space. Support pillars densely laced with cobwebs would materialize out of the gloom, then melt back into that utter darkness as we drifted pass.
Our clothes became wrapped with cobwebs and I could feel the dust settle on my exposed skin. I brushed a hand through my hair and sent a shower of the stuff down my neck.
“Where the hell are we?” Priscilla said.
I thought about it, visualizing the steps we’d taken. “I’d say we’re at least ten feet below the parking lot that’s behind the Chapman Building. This chamber runs parallel to the basement, about twenty feet further out and a bit deeper.”
“Jesus,” she whispered fervently, “So what the hell is this place? It’s like some kind of dungeon.”
“Nothing so exotic,” I said. “These were actually fairly common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and even the twentieth. This was an ice house. We’re a block west of the river and during the winter they would cut ice from it and store it here. Almost two centuries ago, someone had a good business selling ice in the summer. They probably stored meat and other perishables down here also, and perhaps the townspeople were drinking iced tea in July”
“Don’t think I’d want to eat that meat,” she said.
“Nor drink the tea,” I said. “They had stronger stomachs back then.” We reached the other end, encountering a wall built from large stones weighing as much as a heavy man. Scrolling up and down with our lights, we walked along the wall. The fetid darkness beyond our lights was a malevolent presence that seeped into my mind and sent trickles of fear worming through my brain. Silently we crept along. Even within the narrow beams of our lights, color was nonexistent. Everything was varying shades of muted gray, and it felt like we were crawling through a vast, poisonous darkness that was going to engulf us when our small, pitiful lights failed. We came to a corner and turned, heading back toward the door we came through. So far, all we had encountered was gloom and cobwebs.
Bentley Dadmun - Harry Neal and Cat 09 - Dead Dead Dead, the Little Girl Said Page 20