Unhonored

by Tracy Hickman

  Jonas turned to where Alicia lay shaking on the bier, the scalpel still in his hand. “You’ve been bound, Alicia. Just hold still and I’ll cut you free. Who did this to you? Who left you here?”

  “I … I don’t know,” Alicia said through quivering lips. “There was a fluttering sound like someone shaking a heavy curtain. There were shadows … lots of shadows … all coming toward me at once. I must have passed out … then I was here … and Ellis had that knife and … and…”

  “That’s enough, Alicia,” Jonas said, his words soothing and reassuring. “Hold still. I’m about finished.”

  “Jonas,” Ellis said. “Are we through the garden?”

  “Yes,” Jonas answered. “You’re through.”

  “Will the Ruins be easier?” Ellis whispered.

  Jonas did not answer.

  10

  RUINS OF THE PAST

  Ellis stood at the threshold on the far side of the folly. She gazed between the columns across an unkempt patch of lawn surrounded by a hedge that had evidently not been tended to in a very long time. At the far edge of the lawn, she could see the dark, forbidding mass of the old section of the house veiled by the continuing rain.

  The architecture struck her as a hodgepodge of styles, with little attempt at concern regarding the aesthetics of which might complement the other. On the main, it followed a combination of Georgian and Victorian shapes created out of brownstone but here and there were definite oddities. There was a classical Greek façade with Doric influence, its pediment broken with columns fallen on one side. Behind it rose a broken Gothic tower that leaned precariously to the left. The strange exterior extended seemingly forever in both directions, its ends fading into the torrential rain.

  She could hear Jonas and Alicia stepping up behind her.

  “Is that what they call ‘the Ruins’?” Ellis asked.

  “Yes,” Jonas answered. “It’s the old part of the house. The part you made once that has long since been abandoned.”

  “Merrick hates the place,” Alicia added. “It reminds him too much of you.”

  Ellis turned toward Alicia.

  You have to learn the rules before you can break them …

  “And how is it that you were bound like a tragic gift so conveniently in my path?” Ellis asked, her eyes fixed on Alicia. “The last time I saw you was at Merrick’s side. As I recall, you found my performance onstage rather amusing at the time.”

  “What choice did I have, Ellis?” Alicia looked down at the rain-slick stones of the folly’s floor. “What choice do any of us have?”

  “And so you just happened to be tied up on the bier?” Ellis’s tone was both one of disbelief and accusation.

  “Of course not!” Alicia’s voice quivered as she spoke. “Merrick sent me into the maze after you. He said for me to follow you and find out what direction you were going in the Ruins. But I got lost … I don’t know what happened. I got tangled up somehow trying to push through a trellis choked with vines. They grabbed me, wound around me … it was … it was…”

  “It was the garden,” Jonas said. “It was just trying to protect you, Ellis.”

  “Protect me?” Ellis scoffed.

  “It was your garden.” Jonas shrugged.

  “Well, I don’t much care for how it protects me!” Ellis snapped. A chill ran through her as she turned back to look across the lawn. She saw a set of stairs up to a small patio. The interior beyond the door was dark, their glass apparently broken. She could see the faint flutter of shredded curtains beyond the rusting panes. “Go back, Alicia. Be a good lapdog and tell your master that you found me and where we are—for all the good it will do him.”

  “No, Ellis,” Alicia begged. “Please, don’t make me go back. You left here once before … you can show us the way out again. I helped you … remember? Remember what I did for you?”

  Ellis looked again at Alicia Van der Meer. She looked ridiculous in her Egyptian costume. The rain had smeared her makeup. She had lost her ornate headpiece and now her golden hair lay wet and heavy about her shoulders. Ellis remembered her in her stained, torn party dress running away from her on that street in Gamin a seeming eternity ago, giving Ellis time to flee while the hellish beast stalking them fell on Alicia with terrible fury.

  Ellis turned to Jonas. “You know the way out of here?”

  “I know someone who knows the way out.” Jonas nodded. “But we have to find Jenny first. Without her, it’s pointless.”

  “And Jenny is in the Ruins?” Ellis urged.

  “Yes, I have no doubt,” Jonas affirmed.

  “Why don’t you doubt?” Ellis asked, her eyes fixed on Jonas. “Merrick hates the Ruins. Why would he hide her here?”

  “I’m not convinced it was Merrick who hid her,” Jonas answered. “I think he wants to find her as much as we do.”

  “Then the sooner we find her, the sooner this nightmare will end,” Ellis said. She glanced at her ugly traveling suit and determined it could not become wetter than it was now. The sky was turning somewhat lighter under a rainy dawn. She stepped quickly into the rain, rushing toward the jagged, dark panes of the broken patio doors beyond the lawn.

  Jonas glanced at Alicia and then followed quickly in Ellis’s footsteps.

  Alicia stood shivering at the edge of the folly.

  “If you’re coming, Alicia,” Ellis called over her shoulder, “then come.”

  Alicia ran to follow after them.

  * * *

  Only the sound of glass crunching beneath the hard soles of her shoes greeted Ellis as she stepped cautiously through the open, rusting frame of one of the patio doors. Shards from the doors and the arched frames above it were everywhere on the floor, glinting in the gray light of the morning outside.

  The rain had lightened up considerably and the dull light penetrating the clouds illuminated the long room. There were only the vestiges of curtains remaining in long, tattered rags on either side of the patio doors. The doors exiting the far side of the room were missing, the remaining hinges either twisted or missing altogether.

  “What happened here?” Alicia asked from the patio doors, her eyes wide.

  “Take care, Alicia,” Jonas called quietly back to the young woman. “There is glass everywhere and I suspect those slippers you’re wearing aren’t terribly practical in this case.”

  “Well, could you please help me?” Alicia asked. “Just across the floor, I mean.”

  Jonas gave Ellis a questioning glance.

  “Well, your costume isn’t much better,” Ellis observed. “Exploring ruins in servant’s livery. At least your shoes are more sensible. You might as well carry her across.”

  Jonas nodded, stepping back to rescue the still-shivering woman standing in the rain just short of entering the room.

  “It’s odd that all the glass is broken. All of it is inside the room,” Ellis muttered more to herself than to anyone else as she crossed to one of the oak doors. “Jonas, come take a look at this!”

  Jonas stepped back into the room with Alicia draped across his arms. “What is it?”

  “This door … and all along the wall,” Ellis said as she leaned closer for a better look. “There’s glass here, too. How would the glass from those outside doors get embedded all the way over here?”

  “Wind, perhaps,” Jonas offered.

  “With this much force?” Ellis shook her head. “Some of these shards are embedded nearly the length of my thumb and almost to the ceiling. What kind of wind would do that?”

  It was then that Ellis noticed several dark stains against the wall, beginning at about her shoulder height and widening toward the floor.

  “Perhaps we had better move on,” Jonas said quietly.

  Ellis only nodded. She stepped through the broken doorframe into a long hall. The oak doors that should have been in the frame lay against the opposite side of the hall, their finish dusty and weathered. The hall had sets of double marble columns on both sides rising up to support arches
that extended down the hall nearly a hundred feet. The patterns of French blue and white tiles could barely be seen beneath the layer of dust under her feet. Dull light from the morning gave scarce illumination through the dirty, round windows set on the far side. The bottom of a wide, marble staircase rose up from the hallway to Ellis’s left while the hall ended in a closed door at the far end and a crossing hall behind her.

  Jonas stepped through the door, lowering Alicia’s feet so that she might stand on her own. He spoke with some assurance. “I remember this hall.”

  “Which way, then?” Ellis asked.

  “The stairs, I think,” Jonas answered.

  “You think?” Ellis looked sharply at the man with the paisley-shaped blemish across his right eye and face. “Aren’t you sure?”

  “It’s the Tween, Ellis,” Jonas replied, hurt coloring his tone. “It’s always changing and being changed. One can never be sure about anything, but I do know how to find Jenny.”

  “And we’ll never get out without her,” Ellis repeated as though the refrain had become wearily familiar. She absently took her hat off her head and started down the hall with Alicia at her heels following a pace behind Jonas.

  They were nearly halfway up the stairs before Ellis noticed them. Two young men in clean dark suits, their collars stiff and starched, tripping down the stairs and engaged in quiet, intense conversation. Their slicked hair gleamed in the light from a broken section of the ceiling overhead. One of them turned his dark eyes to Ellis, half raising his hand in acknowledgment as he smiled.

  “Good morning, Ellis!” the young man said in a clear voice.

  “Good morning, Murray,” Ellis answered easily, and then stopped on the stairs.

  Murray turned again to continue his conversation with his companion as they reached the bottom of the stairs and turned to the left, vanishing from view.

  “Who was that?” Alicia asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen them before.”

  “Murray Abramowitz,” Ellis said. “He was a fellow student of mine at Boston Medical College.”

  “Do you think he can help us?” Alicia started down the stairs.

  Ellis gripped her shoulder and held her back. “I don’t think so, Alicia.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “Because he died in 1914,” Ellis said, her brows furrowed as she tried to consider the event. “He was in France at the time.”

  “War casualty, then?” Jonas asked.

  “No,” Ellis continued, her voice thoughtful as she spoke. “He was a medical corpsman and was going to war, but it was the flu that took him.”

  Ellis realized that Jonas was staring at her.

  “What is it, Jonas?” Ellis asked.

  “You remembered him,” Jonas said.

  “Yes, I suppose I did,” Ellis realized. “But why him? Why Murray Abramowitz? I barely knew the man’s name. He was a fellow medical student and I remember the sad irony of his death but he was nothing special to me. Why remember him of all people?”

  “Maybe it’s easier to remember people who aren’t important,” Alicia suggested. “They can’t hurt you.”

  Ellis caught her breath before she spoke. “I’m not all that sure I want to remember now.”

  “Let’s keep moving,” Jonas urged.

  They came to the top of the stairs. The landing there was absent of any furniture or ornamentation. There was a pair of doors opposite the staircase with more doors to the right and left. The ceiling was a dome of stained glass through which scant light shone down.

  Ellis looked at Jonas.

  “To the right,” he said, “I think.”

  “Aren’t you sure?”

  “A great many of the corridors are duplicates,” Jonas replied. “Knowing where you are isn’t a question of which corridor you’re in, so much as which similar corridor is connected to which other similar corridor and in what order. Let me take a quick look around a couple of corners to be certain. Wait here.”

  Jonas moved to the corridor to their right, slipping quickly out of view.

  “Corridors on top of corridors,” Alicia huffed. “I’m sure I don’t know why he insists on using the passageways. The larger rooms should afford us faster progress and they are all connecting.”

  “I take it you’ve been in this part of the house, too?” Ellis asked.

  “Oh, certainly! Although I’ll admit to it being such a very long time ago. Since before you left, in fact. Merrick was so determined to be rid of any remembrance of you that he sealed this Book and had vowed never to open it again. Of course, that was before you…” Alicia paused, looking around her in alarm. “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “That sound,” Alicia whispered. “Listen!”

  Soft sobbing. It echoed slightly but sounded quite nearby.

  “Through there,” Alicia murmured, her hand pointing toward one of the doors opposite the stairs leading to the landing.

  Ellis stepped toward one of the doors. It was slightly ajar. She gave it a gentle push and it opened onto a large assembly room, towering nearly two stories high to a recessed ceiling. The paint was fading but Ellis could see that the walls had been decorated to look as though they had Roman columns with ornamental garlands between them. Plaques with Roman inscriptions were also painted onto the walls and the ceiling featured Baroque paintings as well. There were arched doors leading out of the room on both sides and a second set of arched doors at the far end of the assembly room. The far doors were open to a dark crossing corridor beyond.

  A small face peered back at Ellis through the left-hand door at the far opposite side of the room. It was the face of a girl—perhaps eight or so years old. Her hair was carefully braided with bright red bows matching her dress.

  The girl stepped quickly back, her visage vanishing from the open doorway.

  “Hello?” Ellis offered, her voice echoing between the fading, stained walls of the assembly room.

  “What is it, Ellis?” Alicia asked behind her.

  The face of the little girl appeared again. She stepped out to stand in the archway. She didn’t move, just stared back at Ellis, wet streaks of tears running down both of her cheeks.

  “I don’t know,” Ellis said to Alicia. She turned her attention to the girl. “Don’t be afraid, little one. I’ll help you. Are you lost?”

  Ellis stepped into the room, her quick strides carrying her across the floor. The floor groaned with every step. She could feel the soft boards, spongy and weak, giving beneath her footfalls.

  “Ellis!” Jonas had appeared at the door behind her, calling out. “Wait!”

  She took another step toward the little girl.

  A great crack resounded through the room as the floorboards gave way beneath her.

  Ellis fell through the rotted floor.

  11

  HIDE & SEEK

  A mold-ridden couch collapsed beneath Ellis, breaking her fall as she crashed down onto it from the room above. Instinctively, she held her forearms in front of her face, her eyes held tightly shut. She felt the floorboards, strips of wooden lathe slats and a cloud of crumbling plaster rain down about her.

  “Ellis!” She could hear Jonas call desperately down for her from somewhere above. “Are you all right?”

  She held her breath, daring not to move until the debris had settled.

  “Ellis!” Jonas called more anxiously. “Please! Answer me! Are you hurt?”

  “Only my pride, I think,” Ellis responded.

  Ellis tentatively shifted her arms, venturing to open one eye. The plaster dust still hung in the air but there was sufficient light from the hole in the ceiling to see the extent of the room. It was nearly a match in size to the one above it although in this case its walls were wainscoted with dull, gilded edges. There were a number of furniture pieces in the room, a second couch and several chairs. The upholstery on each was swollen and the stuffing bulging outward from tears in the fabric. It appeared to Ellis to be some kind of sitti
ng room or antechamber, although to what she could not guess. The arrangement of the rooms in this place was still baffling and without any reason that she could fathom.

  Ellis moved with deliberate caution as she sat up. She looked up and was surprised to see that the ceiling was over fifteen feet above her. The anxious faces of Alicia and Jonas were staring back at her, silhouetted against the light from the dome of the room above.

  Ellis brushed the splintered wood off of her traveling suit, her legs still slightly uncertain as she stood up. “What about the girl? Is she still there?”

  “What girl?” Jonas asked.

  “There was a little girl on the far side of the … oh, never mind.” Ellis could see from the expression on Jonas’s face that if there were any little girl in the doorway before she was most certainly not there now. “I seem to have taken a detour.”

  “We’ll get you out in a minute, Ellis,” Alicia said, her voice wavering slightly, betraying her uncertainty.

  “I don’t see how.” Ellis shook her head. “Unless either of you have been carrying a ladder or even just a good length of rope that I don’t know about.”

  “Listen. I’ve found a long gallery up here that should keep us ahead of Merrick,” Jonas called down to her from the ruined ceiling above her.

  “And what happens if he catches up with us?” Ellis asked.

  “Just stay where you are”—Jonas had already vanished from the hole, his voice distant and echoing—“and I’ll find a way to get you out.”

  “Don’t worry, Ellis,” her father said to her. “It’s just a game.”

  Ellis shivered. The memories of her past kept bubbling up into her conscious mind. They were not complete: only phrases or lines from people whom she suddenly cared for deeply and yet, at the same time, still felt removed from. It was like a badly scratched phonograph record that would play a few notes of a familiar song and then skip entirely to a completely different tune.

  She concentrated on the room, trying to keep the memories at bay for the time being. Like the room above, there were six exits from the room—one at each side of the end walls and one in the center of each of the longer sides—although here the oak doors with the dull finish were all shut. There were paintings mounted to the walls above the wainscot in a patchwork of frames that encircled the room. Each lay in shadow with no light shining directly on their canvases.