Dead Silent

by Ivan Blake

  “Burgoyne, who the hell are all these people?” Mayor Paget said, still sitting in the pool of blood.

  “They’re my actors.”

  “Was that the shit you’re gonna perform during the festival?”

  Gilbert nodded.

  “Oh fuck, we’re screwed!”

  “What do you want, Mr. Mayor?”

  “You see this? Blood all over me!” Paget struggled to his feet.

  “It’s not real. Someone give the Mayor a rag.”

  “Better not stain. This is my good suit.” Paget wiped blood from his hands with a greasy cloth.

  “Why are you here, Mr. Mayor?”

  “I went to see the DuCalice woman. She won’t cooperate.”

  “What’s that to me? My plays are my only concern.”

  “Whoa! Hold the phone.” The Mayor stared angrily at Gilbert. “You sold me on a whole festival, not just your sick plays. I wouldn’t have got involved in any of this, I wouldn’t have rushed through your permits to fix up this dump, if you hadn’t proposed an entire festival as a way to attract visitors to Lewis. So back the fuck up. We get DuCalice and her Trail of Horrors as part of the festival or we put a stop to your goddamn plays right this minute.”

  Gilbert looked around at his company of performers, all watching intently. He smiled. If only he had Paget on that gurney, he’d take his prick off in one slice! Paget was a short-sighted buffoon. But putting up with him was the price of doing business in Lewis. Besides, there would be better opportunities to deal with Paget.

  “Mr. Mayor, stop getting yourself so worked up. Leave DuCalice to me. You’ll get your trail of horrors.”

  Paget looked around with obvious disdain: crumbling plaster, torn curtains, dust everywhere, half the theater chairs damaged and unusable. “I thought you were fixing this place up? It looks worse than ever.”

  “We’re going for a certain ambience, but relax, we’re not done yet. When we are, it’s not going to look like any theater you’ve ever seen.”

  “So if you actually want this place to look like a trash heap, maybe you won’t need as much money for your renovations? Maybe you could increase your contribution to the rest of the festival?”

  “For what?” Gilbert asked.

  “I’m taking care of all the publicity out of my own pocket, but we need to make down payments on the portable stage and sound system. We need rental cops and portable toilets for the rock festival. The bands you booked want advances and motel accommodations. And the films you chose require deposits.”

  “I’ve already given you a lot of money.”

  “You gave me shit. I’m beginning to think you aren’t serious about this festival. My reputation’s on the line. I’m already fighting with some members of Council. That DuCalice woman has her supporters.”

  “I’ve big expenses of my own,” Gilbert said. “This theater, our publicity, and I have to pay my performers.”

  “You could at least cover the costs of the bands and the films. You chose them.”

  “All right fine,” Gilbert said.

  Dolorosa Morgana stepped out the wings. “Mr. Mayor, perhaps you and I should talk. Gilbert’s the artist. He’s not on top of our financial situation. I am.” She was dressed in black jeans and a tight black leather halter that accentuated her gorgeous breasts. She took Mayor Paget by the arm, pressed herself to his side and continued, “Perhaps we can brainstorm some ideas to help each other out.”

  Paget grinned like a schoolboy.

  Manfred Arimanes rolled a television onstage. “Time, boss,” he said to Gilbert, and switched on the TV.

  “Oh right. Mr. Mayor, you might want to watch this,” Gilbert said.

  The black and white picture came into focus and a news anchor intoned, “After the break, we’ll have a story on a new theater in Lewis that expects to have audiences screaming...in terror!”

  Manfred cut the sound as the station went to a commercial.

  “We had a film crew from Montpelier here yesterday for one of our rehearsals,” Gilbert explained. “I think we gave them quite a performance. The camera man puked!”

  Paget was red-faced. “You never told me a TV crew was coming to Lewis? Christ, you’re always thinking of yourself.”

  “Coming back on,” Manfred said as he turned up the sound.

  “First on Four, this breaking story out of Maine where Governor McKiernan recently ordered an inquiry into the disappearance of dozens of bodies from a graveyard in the small town of Bemishstock. Police there moments ago confirmed a person involved in that case, the father of a boy whose body is among the missing, has himself been killed in suspicious circumstances. The remains of forty-four-year-old Edwin Balzer were discovered late last night in the offices of his bankrupt trucking company. Bemishstock Police aren’t releasing details except to say they want to speak to the young man who was jailed last year for killing the doctor suspected of stealing the Bemishstock dead.” Chris Chandler’s picture filled the screen. “Chris Chandler was released from South Portland Juvenile Detention Center yesterday morning and is believed to have visited Bemishstock for several hours before traveling on to an unknown destination. Police are not calling Chandler a suspect in yesterday’s brutal death, merely a person of interest.”

  “I think I’ve seen that kid somewhere,” Mayor Paget said.

  * * * *

  The drive to the cottage didn’t do much to change Chris’s first impression of Lewis. In Rose’s old Land Rover, they drove to the end of the common, around the cemetery and back to the granite church where they turned left and headed out of town on North Kingdom Road, an uninteresting one-lane highway with narrow gravel shoulders, few homes and no street lights.

  “In three miles, this road crosses the Black Branch of the Nulhegen River, then it meets Power Line Road running either south to North Stratford or north to Averall and the Canadian Border. But we’re not going as far as the Nulhegen. We turn off in two miles.”

  The road meandered among low hills, past tiny lakes and several large marshes. Not far from town, a high fence topped with barbed wire appeared along the left side of the road.

  Rose slowed the car, turned left into a grassy lane and stopped before a very grand gateway in the barbed-wire fence. Two enormous granite pillars flanked the lane, and set into one of them was a bronze plaque that read, Marymount Cottage. The double-wide, wrought-iron gate across the lane was padlocked with a heavy chain. Rose got out of the car and unlocked the gate, then returned to the car, and said, “You’ll keep the gate locked at all times, understand?”

  “Why all the security?” Chris asked.

  “Hunters and snowmobilers,” was all she said.

  “How far now?”

  “Another mile.”

  The lane may once have been wide and graveled but was now narrow and snow-covered. Overhanging trees cast the lane in deep shadow. On either side of the lane were deep ditches filled to overflowing with muddy meltwater. Rose’s Land Rover had little difficulty with the snow, but where it had melted, the lane had become muddy and slick. Rose had to drive with caution to avoid sliding into a flooded ditch.

  “The lane’s usually quite firm; it’s only messy during breakup.”

  The track climbed steadily. This was going to be one hell of a hike if he had to walk. Chris noticed only one turnoff along the entire length of the lane. As they drove past, Rose remarked offhandedly, “That’s the trail to Cathy’s Pond and the cemetery.”

  “Cathy’s Pond?”

  “The lake below the cottage. Not much of a lake though.”

  “With all this shadow, does the lane ever dry?” Chris asked.

  “By May the grass will be up to your waist. It has to be mowed every week through the summer. That will be one of your chores, and of course digging it out if we get any more snow.”

  “By hand?”

  “No, there’s a tractor with attachments in a shed at the cottage.”

  “So the cottage is what, about three miles from
town?”

  “Probably.”

  Up ahead, an enormous building silhouetted against the darkening sky emerged from the gloom. Nigel Harrow had described the place as a cottage, but it was far more than that.

  “Welcome to Marymount,” Rose said as she pulled up to the back of the huge building. “Shall we see the outside first?”

  “Please.”

  They set off through the slush and the rotting snow to see the house from all sides.

  “Marymount was built in the 1870s, when my family’s quarry started doing well.”

  “So you’re a Monsegur?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Bernard Monsegur is your brother?”

  “Right.”

  The house sat on an outcropping high above a small lake. An imposing granite and beam mansion, it had been constructed in the manner of the country estates of the lumber barons of the last century. The side of the house facing the lane was an uninteresting, four-story wall with only a few small windows in the upper floors and a single door to the parking area at ground level. The other side of the building was another matter entirely.

  Marymount had a grand covered porch that wrapped around three sides and faced the cliff edge and the small lake below. Two huge bay windows flanked the twelve-foot-high double front doors, and the four corners of the house were topped with spires of the sort one might see on a castle in Bavaria. As if the building was not strange enough, a huge four-sided stone tower rose through the center of the house’s vast slate roof and climbed a further thirty feet or more into the sky. In the sides of the tower were several small, leaded windows and, on its top, crenellations like the battlements of a medieval keep.

  “You have a tower on your roof!” Chris exclaimed.

  “Oh you noticed,” Rose said with a chuckle.

  “Is it some sort of forest fire station?”

  “No. It’s called the Mary Tower. I suppose you might call it a family folly. It has a long history.”

  The tower, she explained, had been the work of several dozen Québécois including the Monsegur and DuCalice families who’d arrived in the area in the 1660s in search of isolation and a measure of security from marauding Indians and English. They’d established a small village by a spring on the other side of Cathy’s Pond and built the watch tower on the highest point of land in the area in order to spot approaching enemies and to provide a retreat in the event of attack. The village site had been abandoned in the middle of the nineteenth century when the Monsegur granite quarry drew laborers to a new town site closer to the route of the Grand Trunk.

  When the decision had been taken by the Monsegur family to erect a home on the bluff, it had been decided to incorporate the ancient tower into the new building rather than tear it down. The house would encircle the tower with an oak staircase from the cellar to the attic. If, however, one wanted to visit the look-off atop the Mary Tower then one had to climb the narrow stone stairs inside it. Since more than one visitor had panicked in the tower’s tight confines, the door was now kept padlocked.

  At first, Chris was overawed by the grandeur of Marymount, but the more he stared at the building, the more unsettling it became. First, the location troubled him: nearly four miles from town, at the end of a long, muddy track, in the middle of nowhere. Chris had been hoping for peace and quiet after fourteen months behind bars with two hundred other boys in South Portland Detention Center, but this place was more isolation than he’d been hoping for.

  Second, the building’s scale felt all wrong. Such an impressive house on such an imposing bluff deserved an appropriately spectacular aspect, but Marymount seemed to be too imposing by half for its indifferent surroundings and out of all proportion to the landscape. The enormous building barely fit on its rocky promontory and Cathy’s Pond below the bluff was nothing more than a tiny circular pool in a granite bowl, barely a hundred yards across, encircled by low uninteresting hills and a wall of impenetrable black spruce. To describe the view as uninspiring was to be kind.

  Third, the windows were unsettling. Time and again Chris’s attention was drawn with a start to one window or another. The many small panes were apparently original to the building’s construction and were criss-crossed with ripples and flaws, all of which had the effect of multiplying and magnifying anything they reflected. A crow flying past a bedroom window became a menacing black cloud, a branch waving in the wind near the left bay became a tangle of skeletal arms scratching at the clouds, and the pale gibbous moon rising in the late afternoon sky and reflected in an attic window became a dozen cats’ eyes staring down at intruders.

  And finally, the tower gave Chris the creeps. It had to have been a trick of the watery afternoon light, but the first time Chris looked up at the tower, he thought he saw movement—first through one window, and then another—as if someone or something was climbing the tower. Not a figure or a face, but movement of the kind one glimpses out of the corner of one’s eye, nothing recognizable but something one wasn’t intended to see. He’d almost asked Mrs. DuCalice if anyone was already living in the house, but then felt foolish and didn’t.

  “So, shall we go inside? I turned up the thermostat and turned on the water yesterday, so you should be quite comfortable, but I expect you’ll want to open some windows to air the place out in the morning.”

  Inside, the cottage was every bit as grand and off-putting as the outside. The atmosphere was oppressive. The twelve-foot ceilings were shrouded in gloom. The oak and leather furniture was dark and heavy. The mounted animal heads and stuffed birds cast strange shadows on the walls, and the many paintings depicted either bloodthirsty hunting scenes or grisly biblical stories. Chris could find no photographs, no family portraits or baby pictures or graduation photos, not one. On the ground floor was a parlor, a library, a formal dining room, and a kitchen, all with huge fieldstone fireplaces and cedar beams. Upstairs were six bedrooms, four on the second floor and two on the third. The two on the second floor at the front of the house had bay windows and balconies overlooking Cathy’s Pond. A large portion of each floor was taken up with the stone tower, the huge oak staircase encircling it, and the wide landing encircling them both. All rooms opened out onto the landings. There would be no escaping the sight of the bizarre tower from anywhere in the house. Wherever one might sit, one was confronted with the tower’s dark stone walls and the stairs that ringed it ascending into the darkness above.

  “I put out fresh linen in all the bedrooms so you can take your pick, and I put some of the basics in the kitchen—bread, milk, eggs, canned stuff, but you’ll have to do your own shopping if there’s something special you want.”

  “Is there a vehicle here?”

  “No. The tractor isn’t licensed for roads. There’s a bicycle in one of the sheds if you can find it. Or you could walk. As you saw, it’s not too complicated. Go straight down the lane about a mile to the gate, then turn right and walk another two miles to the church and the park. Cross the park and you’re on Main Street. You can find me most days at the library, and if it’s closed, you can buzz me because I live above the library offices. There is another route to town that I’ll show you when you’re ready. It goes through the woods, but it’s rough and dangerous so I don’t think you’ll want to use it often.”

  “Is there a phone?”

  “Yes several, in the parlor, the kitchen, the library, and the upstairs landing, but I’d rather you not use them for personal matters. I want to be able to reach you whenever I have to. I’ll come by every few days to check on you, and I expect I’ll see you in town from time to time. I know this house very well. It’s been in our family for a long while. You shouldn’t have any problems.”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “So, let’s review your duties. You’re going to keep the house clean and warm and dry to prevent mold and frozen pipes, and you’re going to make sure the building and the property are always secure. You’ll perform some light maintenance on the house and basic groundskeeping on the pro
perty, and you’ll keep the lane to the main road clear. In return, you’ll receive your room and board and a small monthly stipend to cover your basic needs. I’m told you also require privacy to complete your correspondence courses, and anonymity since you’re trying to stay out of the glare of the press until investigations back in Maine have run their course. I think I can assure you of both.”

  “It’s a very generous arrangement.”

  “There’s one more thing. I need you to keep an eye on our cemetery.”

  “Your cemetery?”

  “Yes, it’s on the other side of Cathy’s Pond, near the old village. It’s not much of a cemetery, fewer than thirty stones. They’re in a small clearing above the pond. I want you to check on the cemetery from time to time and tell me if you see anything…out of the ordinary, I mean.”

  Chris’s heart sank. Another graveyard! Then, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a blue light, and heard a crackling sound.

  “Shall we have a look at the outbuildings next?” Rose asked.

  “Actually, if you don’t mind, could we take a break for today?” He had to get Rose out of the way before Mallory struck. “I didn’t sleep well last night in the bus station, and I feel very grubby. Besides, I haven’t eaten all day and I need to use the bathroom.”

  “All right, I’ll let you get settled. Come see me tomorrow at the library and we’ll discuss financial arrangements.”

  “Great.”

  “So you think you’ll be okay here? Remember, it’s an old house; there are bound to be sounds, you know, drafts, creaks, that sort of thing, but nothing to fear.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow then,” she said and left through the back door. Chris heard the old Land Rover turn over.

  The air crackled with electricity. Sparks flashed and the room filled with a blue light. Chris’s flesh crawled. He looked around the foyer in desperation. A smoldering fire in the fireplace and century-old wood trim everywhere. The whole place could go up in an instant if Mallory’s assault scattered embers on the ancient wooden floors. He had to find somewhere safe. He ran to the cellar staircase and then down into the darkness. The crackling blue light followed him. The stairs seemed to descend forever but at last, Chris found himself in an enormous chamber, almost the size of a basketball court. The outer walls of the room were of stone and the floor of earth. Air in the chamber was close and damp and smelled of rot. By the blue light swirling and crackling around him, he spied the base of the Mary Tower and its iron door. He ran to the door and pulled at the lock. Rusted shut!