Greely's Cove

by Gideon, John

  As he approached the house, dodging among trees and islands of shrubs, he saw that the grounds were in even worse shape than had been apparent from the drive. Vast invasions of morning glory and thistle had laid waste to the rolling lawn. The once-graceful madronas had become twisted skeletons, and the towering native pines were spires of yellow death, punky with rot. The breeze sighed forlornly through the lifeless shrubbery and rattled the dead trees as though to moum their passing. Even the weeds were dead, and not a single bird flitted overhead.

  He crouched against the shadowed foundation of the east porch, feeling the coarse bite of cinnamon-colored brick through his thin jacket. He pondered tactics.

  Going in through the front door seemed ill-advised, and he would have bet that it was locked anyway. Even if it was not locked, the warped old hinges were far too noisy to chance. He decided to try the rear door, which unfortunately was also locked. As were the glass-plated and curtained doors that gave onto the sun parlor in the southeast corner.

  Carl crept down the rear again and ducked between the dead shrubbery and the foundation wall, needing a few moments to sort through his knowledge of the mansion and its grounds. His boyhood came back to him in gusts of mental wind—vivid memories of this house and the games that he had played within and near its walls.

  He and Renzy and Stu are U.S. Army Rangers on the beach at Normandy, cowering under the Nazis’ withering machine- j gun fire from the cliffs above. The order comes from the Headquarters of Operation Overload: Scale the cliffs and take out the machine guns, no matter what the cost. “The success of the whole goddamn Allied invasion depends on you grunts, so move out!”

  With the fate of a hundred thousand Allied troops riding on their shoulders, Renzy and Stu and Carl scaled the “cliffs,” their toy weapons strapped to their backs, their official U.S. Army canteens banging against their hips. They pulled themselves ever higher into the branches of the madrona that stood near the porch of Whiteleather Place, up and up toward the balustraded balcony of Mrs. Dawkins’s sewing room, where an elite battalion of Hitler’s dreaded Schutzstaffel was dug in behind sandbags and concrete. Carl reached out from his perch on a creaking branch and gripped the old wooden railing, to hoist himself onto the balcony, selflessly braving a blizzard of hot lead. He and his buddies poured fire onto the German positions until their throats were sore from making shooting noises. But today—

  “Good job, men! It’s all over now, so you can take it easy for a while. We won!”

  Carl was breathing hard, his heartbeats thundering in his neck and temples, his head moist with sweat. Climbing madronas was a job for nine-year-old boys, not for lawyers in their late thirties. His hands were fiery and raw from the rough bark, and his muscles ached from unaccustomed stretching, bending, levering. But the lifeless tree had borne up under his weight, and he was still in one piece.

  His spirits sank when he found that the French doors of the sewing room were locked. The thought of descending the way he had come caused him to try the old brass knob again. Locked, true, but there was give in the latching mechanism, a hint that just enough pressure might defeat the aged tumblers.

  Carl wrapped both fists around the knob and twisted. It gave a little. He upped the pressure, feeling his face turn red, watching his hands turn bloodless white. The lock gave way with a clank that startled him, and he pulled back from the door to press his body against the flanking wall. He listened a full minute for the sound of investigating footsteps within, but heard only the wind wheezing around the terra-cotta inserts on the gables above his head.

  He pushed open the doors and slipped inside. The room was dim—thanks to heavy drapes over the windows—and only sparsely furnished. Something in the air spoke to him of Alita Dawkins, the kindly woman who had done charity work in and around Greely’s Cove, who had hovered over Lorna during her pregnancy with Jeremy. Alita had brought some much-needed cheer into the Trosper household during those final, difficult weeks before Jeremy came into the world, helping with housework and cooking, giving Lorna charming little figurines that she had fashioned herself in a handicrafts class, and generally being on hand for comfort and good company.

  He went deeper into the house, pausing before every door in the corridor to listen for life on the other side. He heard nothing. He came to a rear stairway, which offered an ascent to the third floor or a descent to a main-floor vestibule, which in turn gave onto the kitchen and a corridor leading to the front of the house. He crept lightly down the stairs to the vestibule, straining his ears for the slightest sound.

  The huge kitchen, with its islands of countertops and cabinets, its gleaming pots and pans hanging from the ceiling, was empty of life, so he passed it by after quickly poking his head through the door. He went farther down the corridor and checked the dining room, which was a showcase of cherry antiques, but also deserted.

  Next was the music room, where Renzy’s sister, Diana, had practiced her lessons on the Steinway concert grand that Ted had bought for her. The piano was silent and alone now, an ebony orphan.

  Carl turned right into a branch of the corridor hung with placid, overly romantic landscapes—originals, no doubt, set in heavy gilt frames and probably valuable. He halted again and listened hard to the silence, since only a few steps more would bring him to the rear parlor, the room Hadrian Craslowe used as a personal office and the one in which Ted and Alita Dawkins had ended their lives with rat poison. This was likely where Jeremy’s therapy session was taking place. After glancing behind him to ensure that Mrs. Pauling was nowhere in sight, he moved forward and pressed his ear against the wooden door.

  No sound. No droning, hypnotic voice, which he had expected to hear. No sound of Jeremy talking or answering questions, as would have seemed appropriate to “therapy.” Carl pressed his ear still harder to the wood, waited, put his hand to the tarnished brass knob, twisted it, and pushed. The door opened an inch, then wider, and Carl stared into dusky silence. He swept his gaze over the massive desk littered with ancient books, at the empty chairs, the cold fireplace, the tapestries of melancholy brocade, the porphyry busts and the thin rails of stained sunlight from the Dawkinses’ “prayer corner.”

  Where the hell is everybody?

  A glance at his watch told him that it was almost 1:25—scarcely twenty-five minutes since he had dropped his son here. He mulled the possibility that Dr. Craslowe and Mrs. Pauling might have taken Jeremy away from Whiteleather Place, where and for what reason he could not guess. But they could only have done so during the few minutes since he had entered the house, because Carl would have seen or heard their departure when he was outside. More likely they had taken Jeremy to another room in the house. Daunting a task as it was, he decided to search the entire mansion, from the basement to the third floor, if necessary, until he found his son.

  As he turned to withdraw from Dr. Craslowe’s personal office, he caught a fleeting impression of movement out of the corner of his eye, down the dusky corridor and to his left, back toward the kitchen. He halted, waiting for the accompanying sound, footfalls, breathing, or the rustle of clothing. The house remained silent as a tomb. He went back the way he had come, walking soundlessly on the dense Persian carpet, and halted at the corner where he thought he had seen something. Gingerly he poked his head around the corner. And saw no one.

  He moved around the corner, eyes wide in the spare light that came from the open kitchen and the stairwell beyond the vestibule. As he passed by the kitchen door, he caught another hint of movement in the direction of the butler’s pantry, something fluid and rusty in color, airy like crepe paper. Again he halted, but not as long this time. He spun on the heel of his shoe and plunged into the kitchen, intending to get a clear look at whoever had darted into the shadows. But the pantry was deserted. Whoever had been there must have fled down the rear stairs to the basement. His nose picked up a rotting odor that dissipated with the movement of his own body through the still air.

  The stairwell to the basement was a
cave of esophageal gloom, and Carl waited a moment for his eyes to adjust before taking the first step downward. As he was lowering a foot to begin his descent, a familiar old voice spoke in his mind.

  Oh, this is real nice, Old Carl. You’ve committed the crime of breaking and entering, jeopardizing your lawyer’s ticket, your career, and the new life you’ve wanted so bad—and for what? Because of some half-baked idea about discovering what’s wrong with Jeremy, some nutty suspicion that Dr. Craslowe hasn’t leveled with you. Do you have to work at screwing up, Old Carl, or does it just come naturally?

  He froze again. He needed to get his emotional ducks in a row, to be certain of what he was doing and why, for the repercussions of being caught here could indeed be nasty.

  Carl could not turn back now, he knew. He felt, more than knew, that Craslowe was at the root of his and Jeremy’s miseries, that nothing substantial could come from merely asking questions. More than this, he felt that deep inside his son lived an ordinary little boy who was not eloquent or prodigious, who did not speak with an aristocratic British accent or read minds, who if given the chance could find simple joy in rock and roll and video games. This was the son whom he loved, whom he meant to save.

  He took that first step downward into the dark, and then the next, feeling the air cool as he descended, wishing he had a flashlight. At the bottom of the stairs he became aware of a yellow incandescence from a bare light bulb that hung from the low ceiling, some two dozen steps farther down the passage. He made for it quietly, passing by an iron-grated door that led to the wine cellar. To his right was a wall of grainy foundation stone that gave off the damp smell of earth. To his left were stacks of wooden crates and cardboard boxes, some of which were imprinted with names like Bekins and Florida Oranges and Del Monte.

  Like the basements of most old houses, this one had not been meant for living, but rather for storing wine and vegetables and little-used odds and ends. It was dark and damp, a place more suited to rats and spiders than human beings. A network of naked water pipes traveled along the low ceiling, forcing Carl to duck now and again as he drew nearer the light bulb, which was where the passage turned to the left.

  He made the turn and walked a path between two mountains of junk that included old bicycles and tricycles, lawn mowers and gardening tools, boxes brimming with moldy toys from someone’s childhood. There were kitchenwares and shapeless furniture, statuary and baby cribs, lamp shades and dusted-over pictures in tarnished frames. Carl passed under an arch of heavy masonry into another room, smaller than the first but not as tightly crammed with junk. He remembered that this was the site of the massive old boiler that heated the house. He could just make out its shape, hugging the left wall like a giant squid made of cast iron.

  To the right and a few more steps ahead was another brick archway, which—according to his boyhood memory—led into a room that he and his buddies had always thought special. On one wall was a mysterious steel door that would have looked more at home on a bank vault. It boasted the biggest padlock Carl had ever seen.

  I want you boys to stay away from that door, Ted Dawkins had more than once told his son and his two pals, Carl and Stu. There’s nothing in there for kids, believe me.

  So, naturally, they had visited the door often. They had pushed their ears against the chilly metal and tried unsuccessfully to scare each other with claims about hearing unspeakable horrors on the other side. They had even tested the lock now and then, hoping against hope to gain access to the mysteries that lay within. But the door had never given up its secrets, never even budged.

  Carl’s nose wrinkled, tickled by a whiff of the smell he had detected moments earlier near the top of the stairs. He moved through the archway and gasped, for the vault door was standing open, a yawning rectangle of flickering light from a sooty kerosene lantern hanging just inside. Actually open, the same door that throughout his boyhood had stayed locked against the prying fingers of curious little boys! The stink densified as he moved toward the opening, but he hardly noticed, and he bowed his head to step inside.

  The room was small and empty, walled with rough-hewn stone that gleamed wetly here and there in the muddy lamplight. At the far end was another brick archway, this one barred by a weighty-looking door of dark, very old wood. Something from his boyhood drove Carl toward the door, a rekindled hunger to know secrets that someone had seen fit to lock away. He gripped the cold brass handle that time and dankness had corroded and pulled it open, fully expecting a groan from the rusty hinges. But it yielded smoothly, silently, revealing a circular stone stairway that coiled downward into a well of dim candlelight.

  Carl grimaced against the onslaught of odor that wafted up the stairway, for it carried the tang of disease and decomposition. He fought his recoiling senses and went forward, his palms outstretched toward the narrow, curving walls. He moved downward, ever downward, at least a score of steps and then a dozen more, passing candles in wrought-iron holders that were mounded over with gnarly wax. He listened for sound, any sound, but heard only his own breathing and the scuff of his boat shoes on stone.

  The stairs ended in a long passageway that Carl figured lay at least two stories beneath the basement of Whiteleather Place. At ten-foot intervals were heavy oak timbers that shored up the ceiling and walls, as in a mine shaft. The passageway stretched onward in a straight line for perhaps fifty feet, unlit but for a faint patch of yellow light at the far end. As he moved closer, he saw another wooden door. Light was escaping around the edges of a small shutter that was not quite closed.

  So the local rumors about old Captain Whiteleather’s treasure chamber were true, he told himself, as he trudged toward the door. This was probably where the skipper stored the ill-gotten booty of his Pacific adventures, the stolen antiquities from the temples of Sumatra or Java or Malaysia, gold and jade and priceless ceremonial masks. What a field day the Greely’s Cove Historical Society might have had in this place, if only they had been able to get beyond the steel door.

  These thoughts evaporated with the onset of sound, a ululating chant from a deep male voice that reverberated low against the surrounding stone walls, oddly rhythmic and yet somber, punctuated now and again by the voice of a boy that overlaid the first voice in a kind of liturgical counterpoint.

  The nape of Carl’s neck pringled, for he was certain that the second voice belonged to Jeremy.

  He pushed himself onward through the thickening stench, which had become nearly unbearable now. The voices grew louder as he neared the door with its small hinged shutter. He raised his hand to the shutter and nudged it open, and the voices seemed very close. He edged close to the rectangle of light and peered in.

  His lungs seized up. His heart missed a beat, missed another, then started to pound in his chest like a jackhammer. Beyond the door was a spacious undercroft with walls of stone and a vaulted ceiling hung with torches in mounts of filigreed metal. In the wall directly to his front was a gaping archway that led into a maw of blackness that seemed impervious to the torchlight, and somehow alive. It seemed hungry.

  Much worse was the spectacle taking place on the threshold of the blackness, the sight of Jeremy floating unsupported in the air, rigid and naked, with his arms splayed wide. Craslowe stood over him, clad in flowing robes of black and crimson, his own feet well off the ground. From the old man’s mouth issued a staccato stream of alien words that rose and fell in pitch, that crescendoed and ebbed in rhythmic cycles. At regular intervals Jeremy’s voice overlapped Craslowe’s, reciting back the exact syllables with a rapidity that seemed impossible for a human tongue.

  Carl wanted to believe that this was a dream or a hallucination. But the details were too real, too solid to be made of dream stuff: the fiery glint off Hadrian Craslowe’s steel-rimmed spectacles; the silvery array of chalices on the ebony table beneath Jeremy’s floating body; the Kabbalistic symbols carved into the stone walls.

  Even more real than the solid sights and sounds was the pall of evil that hung in the a
ir, a vaporous presence that flowed from the furrows of Craslowe’s long face, from his oily eyes, from his spittle-slick lips. Carl sensed that the evil was flowing from Craslowe into Jeremy, that the boy’s lank body was a vessel into which the old man poured power and will and knowledge.

  Then Carl’s gaze alighted on Jeremy’s hands, and he bit his tongue. The index finger on each hand was at least an inch longer than the other fingers.

  Carl wanted to vomit: Small wonder that Jeremy nearly always kept his hands in his pockets or out of sight under workman’s gloves—to hide this hideous deformity.

  Craslowe raised his arms in a gesture required by the hellish ritual, and Carl saw that his hands were similarly deformed, but much more radically. Craslowe’s index fingers were easily twice the normal length, topped with sharp black nails that hooked inward like talons. He knew now why the good doctor never offered to shake hands.

  Carl’s intellect switched off, overloaded by contradictions of the sane, rational world in which he had lived until this moment, of all that he had known as truth. Rage took over, tensing his muscles and knotting his fists in preparation to lunge through the door. Battle would ensue—good, old-fashioned physical battle, fueled by a father’s righteous rage against a perverted old monster who had corrupted an innocent boy. His fists would smash that loathsome old face, shatter the spectacles and inflict great pain. He meant to crush and rip and shatter that grotesque old body, then snatch his son away and flee the stinking undercroft, back to where the sun shone. He was drawing up to launch himself when—

  This could not be.

  —human figures began to emerge from the maw of darkness behind Craslowe. Or almost human figures. Their flesh hung in ragged tangles from their bones, as though eaten away. Their eyes glowed. Some walked on what was left of their feet, while others floated in the air. One man actually sat in a wheelchair that made an electrical hiss as it rolled along the stone floor. Half a dozen strong, they formed a circle around Craslowe and Jeremy, their faces turned inward, their palms upward in a gesture of obscene worship. Carl’s jaw dropped as realization flowed into him. One of the hideous acolytes was old Elvira Cashmore, the woman whose yard he had cared for as a boy. Now she was a barely recognizable scarecrow of exposed bone and rot. Next to her stood the ruinous figure of a young girl with red hair, her Army field jacket ripped and clawed to shreds, her face a third gone, and her arms—