Top O' the Mournin'

by Maddy Hunter

  “I changed my mind. I’m coming with you. It’s too scary in there by myself.”

  “You’re sure you want to do this?” I insisted.

  “No, but it beats the alternative.” She danced from foot to foot and patted her arms for warmth. “Can we keep moving though? It’s freezing out here.”

  With Jackie in tow, I bypassed Etienne’s door and proceeded to the end of the corridor, where a sharp turn to the left led us down a short passageway that terminated in an arched door upon which were painted, in Old English script, the words: NO ENTRY. A metal hasp was attached to the door’s deeply scarred wood and was secured to a D ring on the wall with a padlock. “This must be the entrance to the dungeon,” I said, remembering what Etienne had said. I yanked on the padlock, but it was one of those heavy-duty kinds that looked like a miniature version of a Brink’s truck.

  “Tough break,” said Jackie. “All locked up. Guess we’ll have to go back to the room.” She wrapped her hand around my arm and tried to pull me away, but I shook her off.

  “You can go back if you want,” I said, poking at the padlock as I turned it upside down and right side up. “I’m staying. There must be some way to open this thing up without a key.”

  “How about a stick of dynamite?”

  I flashed a hopeful smile. “You have some on you?”

  “Jeez, Emily, you really want to get down there, don’t you?”

  I pressed my ear to the door. “There’s something in this dungeon that someone in Ballybantry Castle doesn’t want us to find out about. I want to know what.”

  Jackie heaved a huge sigh. “Oh, all right, but it’s going to cost you. How about you fork over that lipstick you were wearing today. It’s the perfect shade for the outfit I’m planning to wear tomorrow.”

  I stared at her doubtfully. “Are you telling me you can open this door?”

  She plucked a hairpin from the bun at the back of my head. “Piece of cake. Out of the way, please.” She inserted one arm of the hairpin into the plug at the bottom of the padlock and worked it up and down with the skill of a master jeweler. “When I was in high school, I was always losing the key to the padlock on my gym locker, so I got a lot of practice picking locks. My best friend used to tell me if I didn’t make it as an actor, I’d make a great petty thief.” The metal shackle sprang open. Jackie gave it a quarter twist, lifted it out of the D ring, and swung back the latch. “Is it a deal on the lipstick?”

  “I have the matching nail polish,” I said excitedly. “I’ll throw that in too.”

  We touched fists in agreement before Jackie depressed the tongue on the door handle and opened the door. Creeeeeeeeeeeeak.

  A blast of foul-smelling air rushed up from the bowels of the castle, sweeping over us like the fetid breath of some prehistoric beast. “Phew!” said Jackie. I pressed the back of my hand to my nose, but the odor had already settled in my nostrils. The dankness of moist earth and decay. The mustiness of unlit subterranean chambers. The stench of once-living things moldering in the darkness. I eyed the uneven stone steps, plunging downward into what looked like a pit of infinite blackness, and took a step backward, my courage wavering.

  “Where’s the light?” asked Jackie, searching the inner wall for a switch.

  “Umm…there’s no electricity down there.”

  She snapped her head around. Fire leaped from her eyes. “This gets better all the time. Two dead bodies, ghosts roaming the halls, and no lights in the dungeon. Anything else you forgot to mention?”

  I could have told her the ribbon binding on her babydoll nightie had ripped away and was dangling to her thighs, but that might have been a little too upsetting for her to cope with right now. “That’s all I can think of at the moment.”

  “HHHHRRRRRRRRHHHHH…HHHHRRRRRRRRHHHHH!”

  My mouth went dry. My heart leaped into my throat. I stared at Jackie. She stared at me. “Okay,” I said nervously. “We might as well get this over with.”

  “You carry the flashlight,” said Jackie. “Give me the Mace.”

  “It’s not exactly Mace.” I handed it over to her. She held it up to read the label.

  “Strawberry Shortcake room freshener?”

  “Air deodorizer can be a very effective weapon in the war on crime,” I defended. “It’s nonviolent, nontoxic, and causes no permanent damage, though it might leave you a little uncomfortable if you have allergies. It’ll work best if you can get off a sustained squirt to the eyes.”

  Jackie shook her head. “And women wonder why they put men in charge of the military. How about you hand over the matches too? I’m not going to be caught down there without a light source.”

  “Don’t drop them. It could be wet down there.” I gave up the matches reluctantly, turned on my Maglite, and with an intrepid gulp, stepped down onto the first riser.

  The damp coolness raised gooseflesh on my skin. The smell of mold, mildew, and stagnant water cloyed my nostrils. I shone the light before me to guide the way downward, and after descending more than a dozen ancient stairs that angled beyond the ring of light from the hall, I reached the floor of the dungeon, immersed in the kind of blackness that felt alive and crawling. Somewhere in the darkness I could hear the soft sounds of water trickling and plinking.

  “This is so gross,” said Jackie beside me. “My pedicure’s getting shot to hell. What are we looking for?”

  “I’m not sure yet.” I panned the light across the floor. The hard-packed earth was worn smooth, dipping and rising in places where ancient feet had strode. Small piles of avalanched rock were scattered about like cemetery stones, waiting to stub the toes of the unwary. Shallow pools of water lay like open wounds along the way, crusted with scum that gleamed slimy and yellow in the light. The walls were constructed of rough-edged stones cemented together with mortar, but water seeping in from the outside had caused the mortar to erode and dozens of stones to fall away, leaving the walls looking like a mouth full of crumbling teeth.

  Pssssst. Pssssst.

  I shone the light on Jackie. “What are you doing?”

  “Spraying your air freshener. It stinks down here.”

  “Cut it out! You’ll use it all up.”

  “Not my fault. You should have bought the large economy size. Hey”—she sniffed the air—“this stuff isn’t bad.”

  “Well, stop wasting it.”

  I inched my way forward and directed my Maglite at a small barred window cut into a door whose hinges were dark with rust. Cobwebs hung from the corners like bridal netting and formed a gauzy tapestry over the window, making it impossible to see into the chamber beyond.

  “Bet this is one door that hasn’t been opened in a while,” said Jackie.

  “Can you get rid of the spiderwebs?” I asked.

  She stepped in front of me. PSSSSSSSSST! She stepped back and squinted at the impenetrable mesh that still crosshatched the window. “Looks like air freshener doesn’t work on cobwebs. You think Eloise would consider that a helpful household hint?”

  “You could use your hands.”

  “Oh, sure. Like that’s gonna happen.”

  We forged ahead into the blackness, me in the lead, Jackie following close behind. A multitude of doors studded both sides of the passageway, each one pockmarked and grimy and looking as if it hadn’t been opened for centuries. “How far do you think this thing goes?” asked Jackie. “You think there’s a torture chamber behind one of these doors? Remember that old Vincent Price movie, The Pit and the Pendulum? He had some pretty cool instruments of torture in—”

  Blackness enveloped us.

  I stopped dead in my tracks and slapped my Maglite against my palm. “Shoot!”

  Pssssst! went Jackie’s trigger finger.

  “Not you!” I yelled, choking on the cloud of strawberry spray that surrounded my head. I waved my hands in front of my face, gasping when my flashlight escaped my grip and went flying into the air. It smashed into the stone wall with a kind of tinny sound and thunked onto the gro
und.

  “What was that?” wailed Jackie.

  “Don’t ask. You still have those matches?”

  After a few moments I heard a sharp phttttt and saw Jackie hold up a solitary match that blazed eerily bright in the blackness. I searched the ground at my feet. “Do you see anything that resembles a flashlight?”

  “Maybe it’s up ahead of you,” she said, cursing when the flame burned out.

  I inched my way forward in the dark. Phtttt! Jackie struck another match. I hunkered down on my haunches, my eyes roving the shadows, and in a pocket of darkness close to the wall, I spied an object that was shaped like my Maglite. “I see something.”

  The light faded to blackness again.

  “It’s over this way,” I said, scuttling in the direction of the object. “Right about here.”

  Phtttt! Jackie held another match up and tiptoed toward me, hunkering down and angling the light above the place I indicated. I hunkered beside her, ready to snap up my flashlight, until I saw what I was about to grab. “Ooh!” I snatched my hand back. “A mouse.”

  Jackie cocked her head, observing the dead rodent from another viewpoint. “It does kinda look like a flashlight though. Must be the rigor mortis.” She hoisted herself to her feet. “Okay, I say we forget the Maglite and blow this joint before we run out of matches. There’s nothing down here except puddles and cob—Ouch!” Blackness blanketed us once again as the match burned out. “That hurts,” she spat. I heard soft, slurpy sounds as she sucked her fingertips.

  She was probably right. Even if there was something suspicious down here, we’d never find it without a flashlight. I stood up, discouraged, but secretly happy not to have to spend another minute in this place. “Did you burn your fingers very badly?” I asked.

  “I’ll live.”

  “You want me to take over the matches?”

  She groped for my hand in the darkness and slapped the matchbook into my palm. “Be my guest.”

  I fingered the matchbook, flipped open the cover, ripped off a solitary match, and struck it against the friction strip on the back. Phtttt! I pivoted in a slow half-circle to get my bearings, then nodded hesitantly to my left. “That’s the way we go back, isn’t it?” Where was George Farkas when you needed him?

  Jackie seized my arm, her voice a high vibrato, her eyes riveted on something behind me. “Emily? You’d better turn around.”

  Alarmed, I spun around to face another dungeon door, but this one was vastly different from the others along the passageway. There was no barred window, no cobwebs, no scarred wood, no rusty hinges. Forget The Pit and the Pendulum. This puppy was classic Home Depot, with an added charge for the arch. “This is our door,” I said in excitement. “It has to be.” I tried the knob.

  Locked.

  The backplate for the knob was designed with an old-fashioned keyhole. “How are you with keyholes?” I asked Jackie, flicking the match to the ground before it burned my fingers.

  “Not my speciality.”

  I lit another. “I’ll buy a new flashlight tomorrow. And maybe we can find a hardware store that sells skeleton keys.”

  “This stuff is weirding me out, Emily. Can we leave now?”

  I lowered my eyes to the ground to see where I was stepping, and it was then I saw the footprints—footprints tracked onto the dirt floor in an intricate pattern of slashes and dots. Footprints that were still dark with wetness. They trailed off in a direction that led deeper into the dungeon, but they originated from behind me. From the door with the new hinges and the old-fashioned keyhole. “Uff da,” I said. “Look at this.”

  Jackie followed my gaze. “Is it the ghost? Do you think those belong to the guy they found floating in the moat?”

  I scratched my nose, catching a whiff of something that teased my senses with familiarity. “It’s not a ghost,” I said with sudden awareness. Despite the potent fetor of must, mildew, and damp earth that hung in the air, no smell could mask the overpowering reek of Michael Malooley’s cologne.

  Chapter 11

  Nana and Tilly were exiting the dining room as I headed in for breakfast the next morning. “You’re runnin’ late, dear,” Nana said, checking her watch. “You look a little groggy. Were you up late last night?”

  I stared at Nana’s hair, trying not to look as horrified as I felt. “New hairdo,” I said, nonplussed. Her cap of tidy white fingerwaves was sticking straight out in mutilated tufts all over her head, like cottonballs that had been attacked by dull lawn shears and finished off by a pack of wild dogs. I’d been on the receiving end of a few bad haircuts, but this haircut wasn’t bad. It was criminal.

  “It’s the latest in Hollywood ultrachic,” said Nana, primping like a schoolgirl. “I think it makes me look twenty years younger. Don’t you love it?”

  “Love it,” I repeated numbly. I was in no hurry to witness my mother’s reaction when my grandmother returned home looking like a French poodle.

  “It’s called a choppy cut,” Nana continued. “That nice Tom Thum person has some a his stylin’ equipment along and gave a few of us makeovers last night after the power went out and they shut down the entertainment.”

  I guess that explained the ragged clumps and bald spots. He’d cut her hair in the dark. I gave her head a quick once-over to make sure her ears were still attached. “Funny he could see anything with the lights out,” I commented.

  “On the contrary,” said Tilly, “we weren’t lacking for light. We gathered all the candles from our collective rooms and used those for illumination. It was very New Age. Tonsorial artistry by candlelight.”

  He’d actually been able to see what he was doing? I wondered if you could sue a hair designer for malpractice. And to think Jackie suggested I consult him about my problem hair. Huh! I’d rather have problem hair than no hair at all.

  “Tom and his bride had a little spat last night,” Nana said under her breath, “so he didn’t have nothin’ better to do. You should a seen him work, Emily. He’d stretch out a hunk a hair and whack it off with his razor so quick, it made you wonder if he knew what he was doin’, but I shouldn’t a fretted. That young man has vision. If his wife is still mad at him tonight, he says he’ll have time to add color.”

  Eh! That settled it. I didn’t care how good Jackie was at picking locks. She was going to spend this evening with her husband. I hadn’t reached the age of twenty-nine without learning a few lessons in life, the most basic of which was: It’s a lot more desirable to live with a malevolent ghost than a bad dye job.

  “I don’t want to be a bother, dear, but did you happen to notice if I left my bathrobe in your room?” Nana asked. “I thought I packed it in my grip with the rest a my stuff, but I can’t seem to find it.”

  “I don’t remember seeing it, but I’ll double-check for you.” Nana’s age must be catching up to her. It wasn’t like her to misplace anything.

  I said my good-byes to Nana and Tilly, and proceeded into the dining room, standing on the periphery for a moment to scope out the diners. Jackie had headed back to her room about an hour ago, but I saw neither her nor Tom at any of the tables. I hoped their absence meant they were taking the time to iron out their differences. Michael Malooley was seated by himself at a table in the far corner, reading a paper. Shocking he was up so early after his covert operation last night. He had to be tired. I sure was. I was surprised he wasn’t sitting with Ethel Minch, or maybe that would have been too obvious. They probably needed to keep their distance from each other to disguise the fact that they were in cahoots. I was sure the two of them were a team. Ethel Minch was the brains of the outfit, and Michael Malooley was her henchman. But how had they connected up with each other? What kind of sickos got a thrill out of scaring people to death? And what exactly did they think was in store for them, other than a lengthy jail sentence? I had a lot of questions that needed answering.

  Putting a bead on an unoccupied seat, I wove my way through the maze of tables in the dining room, greeting members of the Iowa co
ntingent as I passed. “Top o’ the morning,” I said, noting the plates everyone had heaped with fried eggs, scrambled eggs, omelettes, bacon, sausage, and potatoes. I didn’t know about the rest of the country, but from the size of some of the girths around here, Iowans were definitely winning the war on bulimia.

  “Mind if I join you?” I asked the Minches and Kuppelmans when I reached their table.

  “Glad to have you, doll,” said Ernie Minch.

  I seated myself next to Ethel and surveyed the bowls of cold cereal sitting in front of everyone. Ethel, Ernie, and Gladys were taking their cereal with water. Ira was eating his dry, which looked only a little less appealing than eating a cardboard box. “How did everyone sleep last night?” I asked cheerfully.