The Walker in Shadows

by Barbara Michaels

  "The rest of that entry is gone," Mark said. "II doesn't require much imagination to finish it, though."

  Pat leaned back in the chair, flexing stiff fingers. Josef bent over her.

  "Take a break," he urged. "You've been working loo hard."

  "Want me to type for a while?" Kathy asked.

  "That's okay. Let's all rest for a minute. Isn't it funny what a clear picture we're getting of these people? Mr. Turnbull sounds like an easygoing sort of man."

  "I don't think Mr. Bates was so bad either," Kathy said. "He must have relaxed his Puritan ideas as he got older, because Susan talks about pretty clothes and jewelry- and he went all the way to Philadelphia to get the doll she wanted for her birthday-"

  "And her mother made a complete wardrobe for it," Pat said. "A little fur muff, and bonnets, and everything."

  "They sound like a nice family," Josef agreed. He added sardonically, "Too nice to be poltergeists, is that the idea?"

  The others ignored this cynical question.

  "The really shadowy figure is Mrs. Turnbull," Pat said thoughtfully. "Susan only mentions her once or twice."

  "I guess the poor woman really was sickly," Kathy said. "I though, when we first read the references to her being ailing, that she was a professional hypochondriac." "Women were supposed to be fragile and fainting," Pat said. "The men loved it; it made them feel like heroes."

  "Mary Jane wasn't fragile," Kathy said. "No wonder she never caught a husband-as they said in those days."

  "She sounds like a tough lady," Pat agreed, smiling, as she recalled Susan's caustic comments about the big sister who spoiled so many of their games and scolded her for being unwomanly because she liked to go fishing with the boys. "But don't forget Mary Jane was already a grown woman when they were still children. She probably thought she was only doing her duty. She never did marry, did she? I wonder why."

  "Maybe she was homely," Josef suggested frivolously. "Ugly women don't catch husbands, even today." He smiled at Pat.

  "That shows how much you know," she said. "A well-dowered young lady could always get a husband. And I suspect the same thing is true today."

  "So, maybe she didn't have a dowry," Josef said. "I suspected Turnbull's financial position was shaky."

  Mark had fallen into a brown study, fingering the crumbling pages of the diary. Now he looked up at the others, scowling.

  "Do you guys want to hear the rest of this, or are you enjoying your historical gossip? I mean, my God, you sound like Mom and Mrs. Groft when they get started on the neighbors."

  "I guess we do at that," Pat said. "All right, Mark, I'm ready. Go ahead."

  "It gets worse from now on," Mark said. "The condition of the diary, I mean. Whole pages are stuck together. The next thing I can decipher comes in the middle of a sentence. It just says, '… away to school. I don't know how they found out. We were so careful. Someone must have seen us. I never saw Father so angry. Always before, when I cried, he, would soften; but not this time. He found the loose board in the wall and nailed it shut. But it doesn't matter. Nothing matters now because he is gone and…' "

  Mark's voice faded into silence as the writing faded out.

  "He being Peter, I gather," Josef said. "Mark, you've known this all along. Why didn't you tell us, instead of pretending to make wild guesses?"

  "I didn't know, though," Mark said. "She never mentions his name. Sure, I suspected-the way she talks about him, even when they were kids, like he was God or something… But I wasn't certain till I read Mary Jane's letters. Let me go on. There isn't much more."

  Unlike Mary Jane and the other literate ladies of the period, who had been conscious of history, Susan was not concerned with the great events of the succeeding years. She used her diary to express her private feelings, and as the remaining fragments showed, these were unre-lievedly doleful. Reiterated expressions of sorrow and loneliness appeared on the faded paper, whose condition deteriorated rapidly as the book neared its end. Mark, who knew the material practically by heart, skipped over the fragmentary passages and focused on one that had survived.

  "I must see him, though conscience says I should not. Yet how can I deny him, when he comes through such dangers, when any day may bring the news that he will never come again? If my kind parents knew…"

  " Through such dangers,' " Pat repeated. "Then he must have been in the army at that time. I suppose he sent her a message somehow, when his cavalry troop was in the area on one of those raids you told us about. How foolish to take such a risk!"

  "Not necessarily." Kathy's eyes were shining; and Pat thought, uncharitably, that the young of all centuries seemed to prefer romance to common sense. "He'd be safe at home-in the Turnbull house-if he could get there without being seen. I'm surprised the Federal government didn't hassle the Turnbulls."

  "Why should they?" Josef said. "Two women alone, one of them an invalid? I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Bates's influence kept them from being bothered. It sounds as if his bark was worse than his bite."

  "Let's finish this," Pat said. "Go on, Mark."

  "Huh?" Absorbed in some dark, deep thought of his own, Mark started. "Oh. There isn't any more, Mom. The rest of the book is illegible. Except for this."

  He held up a sheet of paper. It had been folded several times. The damp that had ruined the remainder of the diary had stained the outside of the sheet, but the message, though badly faded, had survived. The handwriting, now so familiar, needed no identification. But it was not Peter Turnbull's writing that made the hairs on Pat's neck prickle. It was the message-the same message, word for word, that she had read only a few days earlier, written to Kathy by her son. "Meet me at midnight, the same place. Love…" At the bottom of the sheet, in a smaller, more even hand, was the addition, "His last letter."

  Pat looked up from the page and met her son's troubled eyes.

  "Had you read this, before…?" She couldn't finish the sentence.

  "No," Mark said. "I found this book after I wrote the note to Kathy. It was the same place for them that it was for us. That's probably why Susan left her diary there, after… Mom. Let's try the automatic writing thing again."

  "No!"

  "Then," Mark said resignedly, "there's only one thing left to do. Mr. Friedrichs-"

  "What?" Josef asked, visibly bracing himself.

  "We'll have to tear down your basement walls."

  IV

  As she descended the steep wooden stairs, Pat was again struck with a fact she kept forgetting-that the two houses had originally been identical. The upper regions were so altered by structural changes and by differences in decor that the similarities were less apparent, but here, in the utilitarian regions belowstairs, the resemblance was so striking as to be rather unnerving. The same whitewashed walls, the same low ceiling, the same impressing atmosphere. The floor of her basement was of concrete, this one was brick. Otherwise they were the same.

  After his initial apoplectic objection, Josef had shrugged and agreed to let Mark go ahead. Mark was as irritating as only he could be, refusing coyly to explain what he hoped to find. One of his bright ideas had backfired. He had insisted on bringing Jud with them- with, Pat surmised, some notion of using the unfortunate animal as a sort of psychic bloodhound. Jud, not the brightest of dogs, had welcomed the excursion with gambols and waggings of tail, and the others trailed along, watching, while Mark escorted the animal through the entire house. But at the top of the basement stairs Jud had come to a sudden halt and refused to budge. When Mark took his collar and dragged him, he howled and produced a puddle-his invariable habit when deeply angry or disturbed.

  "I suppose that proves something," Josef remarked with restraint, eyeing the mess on his polished floor.

  "It confirms something I had suspected," Mark replied austerely. "Kath, you better take Jud home."

  "Or vice versa," Pat said, as the dog retreated at full speed, towing the girl with him.

  "We'll need tools," Mark said. "Something heavy, like a
sledgehammer."

  "All the tools I own are on the workbench," Josef said. He sat down on the bottom step, pulled Pat down beside him, and put his arm around her. Mark paid no attention. Flashlight in hand, he surveyed the walls, mumbling to himself.

  "… mirror image… has to be here. Or changed, for the sake of security? Psychologically…"

  A door upstairs banged and Kathy came to the top of the stairs.

  "Mark? Any luck?"

  "Not yet. Come on down."

  Kathy obeyed. Her father rose to let her pass. He sat down again, and the two young people retreated into a corner, where they stood whispering.

  "Time," Pat said suddenly. "What time is it?"

  Josef glanced at his watch. "A little after nine. Do you realize that boy hasn't asked for his dinner? He must be on to something big."

  Mark walked along the far wall, giving it an occasional thump with the hammer he held. When he reached the corner he stopped, his nose inches from the neighboring wall surface, and stood still so long that his mother, whose nerves were already twitching, said sharply, "Mark, if you are going into another trance, this whole deal is off, do you hear?"

  "Mom, for God's sake." Mark turned and glared at her. "You make it sound like I didn't clean up my room or something." He transferred his attention to Kathy, who stood close by him, watching him expectantly. "It's here, Kath. Down below. Must be in the floor somewhere."

  He squatted, examining the bricks, and then looked accusingly at Josef. "You had this fixed. It's new mortar."

  "Oh, God, give me patience," Josef said, to nobody in particular. "Forgive me, Mark. I had meant to have the bricks taken up and concrete poured, but someone convinced me that would be a sin against history. These bricks are of the Civil War period, I was told, so…"

  He paused, forgetting his annoyance as he realized what he had just said. "Civil War… Do you suppose-"

  Mark was already at the workbench, throwing hammers and screwdrivers aside, as he searched for what he wanted. He returned to the corner with a chisel and mallet. Kathy moved back out of range as chips of mortar began to fly.

  Josef looked at Pat. She moved a little closer to him, and his arm tightened around her shoulders.

  It took Mark almost an hour to remove a section of floor two feet square. He rejected Kathy's offer of help. No our else offered. Despite the damp coolness of the cellar, perspiration was pouring down his neck by the time he finished. He then uttered a word his mother had forbidden him to use in her presence.

  "Watch your mouth, bud," she said.

  "Sorry. I thought I'd find… But it's dirt. Packed, beaten earth."

  "Ha," said Josef, leaning back.

  "Well, but naturally," Kathy said. Squatting on her haunches, she leaned forward to inspect the site of Mark's labors. "She'd have to put something over it, to hide it, before she had the slaves lay the bricks."

  "What are you talking about?" Pat asked.

  The others ignored her.

  "Hey, that's right," Mark said. "Kathy. Shovel."

  "In the garage," said Josef. He slid to one side so that Kathy could pass him. Again he and Pat exchanged eloquent glances.

  "We've got to watch the time," she whispered.

  "Almost three hours yet. Don't worry, I'll keep track."

  Kathy returned with the demanded implement and handed it to Mark. He began to dig. The earth was hard-packed, but it was damp and-as it turned out-only about eight inches thick. Pat and Josef, abandoning their pretense of disinterest, watched as Mark gradually uncovered a flat wooden surface. The rusted iron ring made its function clear.

  "Trapdoor," Josef muttered. "I'll be damned."

  But for a moment no one moved. Mark leaned picturesquely on his shovel, mopping his damp forehead with his sleeve; and Josef, too fascinated to resist any longer, came to his assistance. He tugged at the ring, his face reddening with effort.

  "Stuck," he grunted. "We need a chisel, Mark. On the workbench."

  Mark pried and Josef pulled. At first it seemed that they were making no progress. The hinges gave way all at once, sending Josef sprawling. A dark, square hole gaped. From it came a breath of air as stale as death itself.

  Mark turned on the flashlight. Its beam showed sagging wooden steps descending into darkness.

  "Wait," Josef said, as Mark turned preparatory to descending. "Those steps don't look very solid."

  Mark put his foot on the top step and pressed. The whole structure collapsed in a shower of splinters.

  "Termites," Mark said. "Or damp. The floor is only about six feet down. Here, hold the flashlight."

  He handed it to Josef and lowered himself, disregarding his mother's groan of protest. Josef kept the flashlight steady. It illumined Mark's sweating face as he stared up, but showed nothing else.

  "I'm standing on the floor," Mark said. "Come on down."

  "At the risk of sounding like a coward, I'd like to be sure I can get up again," Josef said. "Wait till I get a stepladder."

  He lowered it to Mark, who held it steady while first Pat and then Kathy went down. Pat had caught the fever. Forbidding as the dark hole appeared, she would have fought anyone who suggested she remain above. Josef was the last to descend. He brought the flashlight with him, and handed it to Mark. Not until then did Pat see the nature of the place into which they had descended.

  The room had once been virtually airtight, every crack carefully sealed. It was so no longer. The insidious damp of Maryland soil had crumbled the mortar between the stones; water had seeped in and dried and seeped again, so that the lichen-stained walls bulged ominously in places. The damp had affected the objects in the room too. There was nothing left of the bed except a low, irregular platform, and even less remained of what had lain upon the bed. Its shape was due more to suggestion than to actual form; but enough was there to bring a suppressed cry from Kathy.

  "It's okay," Mark said-but his own voice was not quite steady. "Could be worse."

  He turned the flashlight beam full on the bed.

  The rotted remains of a sheet or blanket covered the shape below, but things protruded here and I here:.1 rounded curve of skull, the end of a long bone-a femur, probably, Pat guessed.

  "Human," she said softly.

  "Oh, yes." Mark said, turning the light away from the pitiful remains. It illumined smaller piles of decay and stopped at one. There was little to distinguish this heap from the others-once pieces of furniture-but Mark stepped to it and fumbled in the debris for a few minutes before producing a handful of metal disks.

  "Buttons," he said. "Stamped 'CSA.' He put his uniform on the chair before…"

  "A Confederate soldier," Josef muttered. "Then this room was something like a priest's hole. The Trumbulls concealed fugitives-"

  "And spies," Mark said. "You guys are really dense. Didn't you understand all those hints in Mary Jane's letters? She couldn't be explicit, not at the time she was writing, but her friend knew what she meant. This was one of the stations on the Confederate spy circuit. The location is perfect-isolated, only a few Billet from the river-"

  "With the Bateses right next door?"

  "There was a wall," Mark said. "Remember? The houses aren't that close. On a moonless night one man, creeping through the underbrush, wouldn't be seen or heard. The very fact that it was so close to the Bateses would disarm suspicion. People would think they wouldn't dare. But it was typical of the Turnbulls-that damn-your-eyes bravado."

  "This man was no spy," Josef said. "He was in uniform. A fugitive from one of the nearby battles, perhaps. Wounded, hidden by the Turnbulls… Come on, Kathy, stop sniveling; it's only bones."

  Kathy gulped and wiped her face with her fingers.

  "She's got more sense than you have," Mark said in disgust. "You still don't get it, do you? Not just anybody's old bones. They're his."

  "You don't mean-"

  "Yes, I do mean. They're his. That's Peter Turnbull- what's left of him."

  Ten

  I


  Prove it," Pat said. Then, as Mark took a step toward the rotted bed, she exclaimed, "No, don't… don't."

  "I bet I could prove it," Mark said. "He was probably carrying identification. A watch, a locket with his dear old mother's hair… Or, speaking of hair, maybe some of his-"

  "For God's sake, Mark." Even Josef was shaken by this callous speech. "You are without a doubt the most ghoulish-"

  "What's ghoulish about this?" Mark demanded, in tones of honest surprise. "This is just leftovers, like old clothes. Compared to what we've seen lately, this is clean and normal."

  "You have a point," Josef admitted. "And, since you have been right about everything else, I suppose you're right about this. Would you care to explain to us idiots why Peter Turnbull's bones are lying here, unburied and unconsecrated, in the cellar of his own home?"

  "Not exactly unconsecrated," Mark said. "She covered him up. And… there were flowers."

  From the tatters of the blanket he lifted a cobwebby coil, a fragile ghost of vegetation. It crumbled into dust as he touched it, but a hundred years ago it might have been a wreath.

  "She covered him?" Josef repeated, sounding like the idiot he had called himself. "No, it's no use; I cannot possibly follow your… Mark. This is where it comes from, isn't it?"

  "Yes," Mark said. "This is where, and this is why. If you'll just wait a minute-"

  "Wait? Here? When that cursed thing may… Or does it only come at one a.m.?"

  "Well, now, I wouldn't swear to that," Mark said. "We're getting awfully close. In fact, I've got most of it figured out. That's what this is all about-figuring out what really happened. It didn't want-"

  Mark's sentence ended in a choked gurgle as Josef grabbed him by the collar.

  "Are you telling me, you unprintable delinquent, that you want the thing to come? That you deliberately, with malice aforethought, brought us down here so that it would… Let's get out of here."

  He released his grip and turned to Pat.

  "No, wait," Mark gasped. "It's all right. I can handle it. We've got to have a confrontation, right here, where it happened, that's the only way… Ah. Here we go." He pointed; his voice shook with an uncomfortable blend of triumph and revulsion. " 'Look, here it comes again.' "