Angels of Mercy

by Laura J Underwood

  “Weird!” she muttered. The paper must have been painted with something like phosphor. But to glow after all these years like something radioactive. She shook her head, wondering if this was safe. So far, she didn’t feel sick, just that odd whisper of a tingle.

  “Just what are you?” she said aloud.

  The pages shivered as though a breeze had touched them, and slowly, they began to turn on their own. Katie jerked back, tripping over a small container. Before she could catch her balance, she was thrown back against a stuffed chair covered with sheets. She found herself sitting only for a moment. The force of her fall threw the chair back, and she flew backwards with a yelp. Fortunately, the heavily upholstered chair kept her head from banging the floor, but she now found herself splayed back, her legs in the air, skirt thrown up like a wanton. The sheet added to the confusion, sliding over her to shroud her view of the world. She batted it out of her face, sputtering.

  “Oh, great,” she growled. She hoped no one came to see what had happened as she struggled to regain her dignity and her feet. She finally tumbled sideways just to get out of the chair, and that jerked the sheet with her. Lurching upright, she flailed until the white folds released her, while she muttered obscenities under her breath. Once free of its grasp, she tossed it aside. And stopped as her eyes fell on the wall and an object sitting up against it.

  The wind of the chair had caused another covering to be blown aside, revealing a trunk.

  Katie pushed her hair out of her face. Curiosity was aroused now. The trunk was no ordinary piece of workmanship. Even in the shadows, she could see patterns not unlike those decorating the glass windows upstairs, intricate knotwork and carvings of figures. She fetched her lantern and set it near the trunk, pushing back the rest of the covering to reveal its wondrous surface.

  Someone had taken great pains to carve this huge trunk from a single block of wood. The figures were so detailed she expected to see them move. Men and women dancing to the tune of a harper with long flowing hair who leaned over his instrument. Other musicians surrounded him. Katie peered closer and saw mythical animals cavorting among forests and hills. A dragon coiled about a tree. Birds flew above the revelers. This had to be the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, and she realized it might take one all day to view every miniature scene depicted among the knotwork frames of each panel.

  “You are a work of art,” she muttered.

  There was a single keyhole on the front, wrought so it was part of the design. It was a large one too, as large as the one of the door leading to this sub cellar. Frowning, she slipped a hand into her skirt pocket and drew forth the key. Would it fit? Only one way to know.

  She touched the key to the lock. The key slid home as though it belong, turning with well-oiled grace. A click, and the lid came free. She touched it, feeling that same tingle that the book had held then pushed the lid open, letting it fall back against the wall.

  Bright light flooded out of the trunk. Katie shielded her eyes with one hand, trying to make out the contents within. As her vision adjusted to the brilliance, she was greeted by a set of stairs.

  “Stairs?” she muttered. “A sub cellar with a sub cellar.”

  Maybe she should have gone back and told Durgan or Lonnie what she had found, but curiosity ever remained a thorn in her side as a child. She was forever getting into odd places then, like when she found the caves back behind her parents’ home. One couldn’t help having a certain love of spelunking in East Tennessee, for the mountain regions here were full of caves like Tuckaleechee. She had never outgrown her sense of wonder when she explored them even in adulthood. Just quelled it under harsh reality that said she had no time for nonsense. These stairs held a beckoning as old as childhood, and the call was too sweet to ignore. Katie seized up her lantern and her flashlight, pocketed the key, and carefully descended into the glow.

  For a moment, as she followed the stairs, the world seemed to grow hazy, like she passed through a fog. She touched a wall that felt like stone under her fingers, using it to guide her as she made her careful descent. Gradually, the mist all cleared, and the glow faded, leaving her lantern to light the way.

  This was no ordinary passage. Nor was it the work of nature’s hand. As near as she could tell, the stone had been worked, but it looked like none of the Native American sites she’d visited as a child. Patterns had been carved into the rock, circular whorls not unlike what she had seen depicted in grave barrows when she’d taken a few courses in early British history. The walls themselves did not appear to be constructed of concrete. In fact, they didn’t look like any stone she had encountered in East Tennessee caves, where limestone was the norm. These walls looked to be of a harder substance. Instead of being cut and mortared into place, the stones had been carefully fitted to one another.

  She followed the wind of the stairs until they halted. All sense of direction and time were lost now. She couldn’t tell what part of the house she might be under. At this depth, she could have been anywhere under the hill on which Mercyville sat. A short passage stood before her now. She followed it, letting the lantern light spill forth, and stopped just at the end.

  What she found there took her breath away.

  She stood in a cave, a large chamber where a circle of water flowed around the tumbling roots of a tree. Gnarled sprouts spread everywhere, some stretching across the expanse to connect to walls too deep in shadow to see. Others seemed to twist and split then wove thick again. At the base of the roots where they thrust into the rocky ground, there were two openings, almost like nature had created archways. She couldn’t see through them in the deep, earthy shadows.

  “What in the...” She’d never seen anything like this in caves before.

  She stepped up to the water’s edge, shining the light on this barrier. The stream itself looked as though it had been purposely channeled. It came through under one wall of the cave, split to circle the tree roots, and disappeared into another hole.

  “But why would anyone do that?” she thought. Maybe MacKenzie was a kook after all. Katie shook her head, directing her light towards the roots. From this distance, there seemed to be carving in the wood around the openings, and some of the roots were braided into knotwork. Her desire to examine them closer was halted by the watery barrier at her feet. The stream channel roamed too wide to cross in less than three steps, and she was in no mood to wade it or test the invisible depths. She frowned and looked around, wondering how she could get across to get a closer look at the arches. A ladder would help, if she could find one up in the basement.

  She turned to go back, only to stop as her light fell on the archway through which she had entered. A wooden structure rose over the archway, planks set horizontal to two long beams that rose like columns. And a pulley that looked positively ancient, its hemp attached to a wheel close to the entrance. She had not seen them in the shadows.

  “A drawbridge,” she muttered. “Wonder how safe it is?”

  She frowned. The hemp did look old, and the wood dark. It could have been rotten, especially if it was as old as she suspected. Still, her curiosity drove common sense into the background. Katie approached the wheel, setting the lantern aside, and took hold of the piece of wood that served as a catch. Moisture had swelled it tight, but her determination was just as strong. She wriggled and shoved and hiked her skirt to kick it a couple of times. With the last blow, it fell free, but before she could catch the wheel, it groaned, jerked and began to spin, letting the hemp go. The whole wall over the archway seemed to fall at an alarming rate, and Katie could do nothing but throw herself aside and hope she got out of range in time. There was a mighty crash as she stumbled, striking the stone wall with her hand. Her thin glove tore, and a jagged edge ripped into her skin, causing her to hiss against the pain. Blood welled from the gash. She held her hand close, nursing it and cursing, when she realized the noise had ceased. Bits of root and dirt fluttered about her.

  Katie turned, flailing debris from her eyes.
>
  A drawbridge now lay across the stream. She crawled to her feet, marveling that the lantern was unscathed. The hemp ropes, however, had broken, so there would be no way to pull it back up. At least, the exit stood unblocked.

  She stepped up onto portions of wood still on the ground. They felt solid enough under her feet. Cautiously, she walked the planks, crossing the little stream, putting herself on the little island.

  Close as she now stood, she could not see through either opening, for they seemed veiled in mist, one pale, one dark. Around the pale fog, the arch looked fresh and new, but around the dark, the roots were cankerous. She reached out to touch them with one hand, quite forgetting the tear in her flesh that had ceased to sting. A little bit of her blood stained the wood.

  The dark mist suddenly seemed to shift and undulate. Katie stepped back as the small hairs on her neck rose in unease. A faint gibbering sound swelled from the murky depths...

  A small shadowy form sprinted out, hitting her foot. She cursed and hitched back when she realized it was a large rat. It paused and looked up at her, red eyes seeming to glow, and revealed its long teeth as it chittered. Damn, she hated rats! She bolted for the bridge, racing across it. More of them surged from the arch. The tree roots must have been their nests!

  Wonderful, she thought, running for the stairs. Behind her, she could hear their little squeaks, and mixed with it, the horrid sound of wicked laughter. Frantically, she scrambled until she was out of the wooden trunk, and then she slammed the lid shut and raced for the next set of stairs.

  Darkness filled the library basement. Even with the lantern, she stumbled into furniture and boxes. She didn’t even bother to close the large door as she ran on, for the sounds of chittering whispered behind her now.

  Where was everyone? Why was the basement dark?

  “Henry!” she called. “Bud?”

  No one answered. Katie threw a quick glance at her watch, only to find more time had passed than she realized. It was after seven. The library closed at five!

  They had left her here!

  Fear took an unholy grip on her. She ran for the stairs to the ground floor. She raced through the halls into the front room. Everything sat dark and shuttered, and drapes had been drawn. The building would be locked.

  Quickly, she hurried for the locker room to grab her purse. The wild sound of child-like maniacal laughter began to ring. She fumbled through it until she found her emergency key. With that, she was out the front door at a frantic pace, fighting to lock it again before she went, as though that would contain the panic she felt now coursing her. What had she done?

  Rats. They’d have to exterminate. Durgan would blame her for stirring the nest. Maybe they wouldn’t get past the trunk!

  Oh, god, she could only hope. She finished fumbling the lock into place and turned.

  A wall of flesh and clothes blocked her flight. She shrieked and flailed at the hands that reached out to seize her shoulders.

  “Katie!” a familiar voice barked. “Ow!”

  “Dan?” It took a moment for his voice to register in her befuddled thoughts. She drew back clenched fists, realizing she had not been holding the blows.

  “Are you all right?” he said, rubbing a hand across his chest. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost! Where have you been all this time? I’ve been waiting out here for you since the place closed.”

  “Oh, Dan,” she said, leaning into him and relishing his arms as they slid around her shoulders. “I lost track of the time, and then there were the rats, and I panicked.”

  Dan chuckled. “Rats?”

  “Yeah, the sub cellar is full of them.”

  “Come on,” he said gently. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee and dinner at the diner.”

  “What happened to the pizza?”

  His face warmed visibly. “I got hungry,” he said. “Sorry, but you were taking so long...”

  Katie nodded, more than willing to let herself be led across the street, past the stump where the stone angels’ eyes seemed to follow her. She frowned, glancing back at the library, shaking her head.

  Rats. Durgan was going to have a hemorrhage.

  THREE

  “I feel like a dork,” Katie said as she pushed the last bit of peach cobbler about on her plate. It had taken most of the meal for her hands to stop shaking. Maggie Sue Turner, the owner of the Mountain Laurel Diner, had provided some clean bandages and first aid for Katie’s hand before serving her favorite customers in their regular booth. “Running away from rats, of all things,” Katie continued. “I mean, I used to shoot rats when I was a kid.”

  “I can’t say as I blame you,” Dan said. He played with the handle of his coffee mug. “I’m not fond of the vermin.”

  “It just felt weird,” Katie said. She turned her glance towards the fading light of the town square. Sunset had finally arrived, and the few streetlights that ringed the square had started to glow. Across the way, the library was a dark silhouette. Its shadow spread over the square like some creeping fog. “I’ve never seen anything like that place. It was almost like something you’d read about in a horror novel.”

  “Didn’t think you had any horror novels in the library,” Dan quipped.

  “Oh, you know perfectly well, we’ve got them,” she said, grinning impishly. “You’ve read most of the books in the locked room.”

  Dan shook his head. “Never could understand why a library had to lock away books either.”

  “To keep the MacGreeley sisters from dragging them out and burning them,” Katie said and sighed. “They’d turn half the collection into ashes if they could get away with it. The only thing that stops them is MacKenzie’s will. Nothing in the house can be sold or thrown out or destroyed, so technically, anything we buy and put into the collection is protected by that clause. At least, that’s how Mrs. Perkins kept them safe. She was hell on censorship. Too bad she’d not around now. Durgan’s too much of a bootlicker to fight back.”

  “Uncle said Mrs. Perkins was living in a retirement home in Knoxville now,” Dan said. “He still sees her daughter Anne over in Townsend where she works as a dispatcher for the sheriff there.”

  “I’ll be glad to see Durgan in a retirement home,” Katie said. “Tonight’s fiasco is really his fault, but I know he’s going to blame me if those rats get out of the sub cellar.”

  She pushed back the pie plate, and reached for her purse.

  “I guess I better get on home,” she said.

  “Want me to drive you?” Dan asked

  “No thanks. My truck is behind the library,” Katie said. “Oh, and thanks for the dinner, even if you did eat all the pizza.”

  “I told you, I got hungry,” he said with a sheepish grin.

  “Yeah, and you just ate a fried chicken dinner and a piece of pie on top of that,” she teased. “Where do you put it?”

  “In my mouth,” he said.

  “Good aim,” she said with a sneer and crawled out of the booth. Dan unfolded himself off the bench. They waved at Maggie Sue and headed out the door.

  Night air was humid. Katie took a deep breath and frowned. Something smelled fetid for just a moment.

  Dan slipped fingers through her hand, accompanying her across the square towards the library. They took the narrow path along the side yard fence around to the back of the building, and there, Dan drew arms around her, kissing her gently, sending flutters through her stomach.

  “Sure you don’t want me to drive you home?” he insisted once they parted again.

  “And give Sally reason to have heart failure?” Katie said, still smiling.

  He chuckled. “Drive careful,” he said as she slid out of his grasp and unlocked the door of her small pickup truck.

  “I always do,” she assured him as she crawled in.

  “And clean that cut,” he insisted before he closed the door for her.

  “I will!” She waved to him before she started the engine and pulled out of the space. He stood there until she was out
of the parking lot and onto the small back street that went around the other side of the library and opened out into the town square.

  As she drove past the statues, from the corner of her eye, she saw movement around the stump, like a shadow gliding back. But when she turned to look, there was nothing unusual. She shrugged and reached for the tape player, pushing in a cassette of The Battlefield Band, and singing along with their jaunty versions of Scottish ballads to soothe her nerves.

  Out of the north end of town, she passed the MacGreeley mansion seated high on its own hill. Lights were visible in only a few windows. No doubt, the sisters were having one of their bible talks. Mercyville didn’t have a movie theater. Didn’t even have a bowling alley, luxuries Katie had found in other small towns. Folks here looking for a good time had to come by it in their own houses or up at the church which hosted youth meetings and a recreation hall with a table hockey game and a television. Which always made her curious as to why MacKenzie had built his home here. From every account of him, he wouldn’t have fit in with the staid, upright citizens to whom he donated his wonderful gift of knowledge.

  Katie drove on. The road eventually wound into Ash Hollow where her own home stood just at the edge of the forest. The front yard had actually pastured cattle and horses once, but the MacLeod’s gave up farming long ago. The old cantilever barn was falling to ruins. There was a small pond there too and the remains of an orchard where apple and mountain ash trees fought for space. Dan had suggested she clean up the orchard and start selling apples to tourists.

  “What tourists?” she had retorted. Like anyone was going to visit Mercyville to look at the old stump. Katie had heard a rumor that the MacGreeley sisters were thinking of trying to get Mercyville opened out as one of those “old fashioned craft centers.” Even Gatlinburg had started out as an apple stand and a gas station. But Mercyville was too far off the main highway, and while places like Cosby might do well with their music and ramp festivals, Mercyville didn’t have enough draw. Besides, the MacGreeley sisters would only try to convince the visitors that censorship could be fun.