Chapelwood

by Cherie Priest

  Lizbeth held the light aloft, a talisman of another, more practical kind. “Shall we?”

  “The front door?”

  “Let’s see what it gets us.”

  I’d say that she led the way, but in truth I walked beside her. She held the light, and that felt like leading—since I couldn’t go anywhere without her, or without that small totem of hope. I looked back at the car, sitting forlorn in that clearing at the foot of the big old house, or church, or whatever it’d been originally intended as. The engine popped and cooled beneath the hood, but otherwise there was no sound but our footsteps, crunching through the dirt, leaves, and grassy spots on the way to those stretched-out steps.

  Even the insects had left us by then. So had the moon, the stars, and everything else we might have found reassuring. When I gazed up to the firmament, I saw only the blank black surface of a slate washed down with a wet rag—but without any of the polish or texture. It was nothingness, that’s all. It wasn’t even empty.

  We took the steps one at a time. They were filthy, each and every one—no one had swept them in heaven knew how long, so I took some comfort from that. However these men came and went on a regular basis, this wasn’t it. We weren’t likely to encounter any resistance.

  We hadn’t exactly arrived with the utmost stealth, and our little handheld light may as well have been a chandelier in an outhouse, for it easily stood out that much.

  When we reached the double doors, we paused at that threshold and examined them—Lizbeth running the lantern up and down, giving us all the details. These doors were carved with scenes . . . no, not scenes. Maps, more like. Or closer still to what I’m attempting to explain: They were illustrated with astrological diagrams. Over here, I saw a series of dots that once connected, indicated the constellation Capricorn. Over there, the circle and tail of the great lion. Across the front, the vaguely sinister mark of the scorpion.

  “Scorpio,” Lizbeth correctly identified. “And Cassiopeia, isn’t it? That one, right there.”

  “I believe so.”

  “But it’s not a map—these aren’t in proper alignment. They’re a series of decorations, that’s all,” she concluded. “They’re nicely done, I’ll grant, but they’re no proper zodiac. And look at this knocker. Have you ever seen its equal?”

  I shook my head, and held out my hand to merely touch it—not use it, I assure you.

  It was brass, and oxidized, but otherwise rarely used; there were no telltale places where the patina had rubbed away under a visitor’s regular summons. At first I thought it was created in the form of an elaborate octopus, but when Lizbeth adjusted the light again, I reevaluated. “It’s not an octopus or squid, but . . .”

  “Some kind of cephalopod, surely? Not one I’d recognize. My sister, she would’ve known.” My hand reached out, and she stopped me. “Don’t touch that.”

  “I wasn’t going to strike it.”

  “I know, but—” She frowned, and I think her eyes were wet. Perhaps that was my fault. Perhaps it wasn’t anything but the atmosphere. “It looks unholy. Unhealthy. It has—look, Simon—spines, and teeth. You’ll prick your finger upon them, and sleep for a hundred years.”

  “What a terrible fairy tale.”

  “I was never any good at stories like that.” She pressed her shoulder against the wood and set her ear against it, too. “But never mind. Listen . . . I don’t hear anything, so let’s keeping moving.”

  Before I could stop her, she tried the door’s latch.

  (Would I have stopped her, given the time? No, I don’t think so. It was only the jerk of a knee, the nervous impulse to stay outside—and leave this place, run as far away from it as my fat old legs could carry me.)

  The latch released. The door retreated one slim inch, at Lizbeth’s slight pushing. That inch scraped and squealed, but not as badly as I might have expected—but as I’d absolutely anticipated, not a shred of light or sound exited Chapelwood through that tiny gap. Only a small gust of mildewed air puffed to greet us, smelling of dust, mold, and old death. And something else, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I didn’t even try.

  “It sounds like no one’s home.”

  “Not here—upstairs.” She sniffed, one nostril crinkling and rising while the other one flared. “Do you smell that?”

  “I smell something. Whatever it is, it’s unpleasant.”

  “Reminds me of the ocean. The shore, in the sun—after the tide goes out.”

  I nodded. “But worse. No, it makes me think . . .” I hated to say it, but she was forcing me to make the connection—though I’m sure that wasn’t her intent. “The bodies in the morgue, in Fall River. All those years ago, when I visited those strange brothers at their funeral home. This smells like that, almost.”

  She pushed the door farther, adding her thigh to the leverage. “Then I’m glad I didn’t accompany you on that errand.”

  “No good would have come of it.”

  She stepped inside.

  “You are fearless, madam.”

  “Hardly. But I’m confident that we’ve not yet reached whatever terrors lurk below. Or above . . . ,” she added in a weird murmur.

  “The sky is strange tonight.” I said it as some mild, anxious form of agreement.

  “Everything is strange tonight. Right now, we’re as safe as we’re likely to get—neither underground, nor under that naked sky. Help me, Simon,” she pleaded. “Look for a way downstairs. Or look for any sign of how these people might come and go, or where they gather.”

  “Of course. But turn up the light, if you don’t mind. My eyes aren’t as strong as they once were—and they were never very sharp in the first place.”

  She obliged, and soon the lantern was as bright as we could expect it to become. It showed us the whole great space—not a foyer and a sanctuary, but one huge open area full of pews in disarray. They weren’t lined up in tidy rows; they were pushed aside and stacked, as if this was someplace they were stored—rather than used for their traditional purpose.

  Above, we saw rows of stained-glass windows mounted so high against the ceiling that I couldn’t make out any of their details. Perhaps on a sunny day I could’ve seen something more distinct than “black, blue, and green shapes,” but that was the best I could surmise by the light of our little lantern. Up front, where a pulpit should hypothetically go, there was a large piece of furniture better suited to an altar. I would’ve been more alarmed if it hadn’t been knocked onto its side, suggesting that, like everything else, it was rarely (if ever) touched.

  “This is the strangest church I’ve ever seen . . . ,” I observed.

  Lizbeth agreed with me. She walked down the center aisle, such as it was—holding the lantern over here, over there, trying to tease out more information from this bizarre and unlovely chamber. “It looks less like a church than a place where churches store old fixtures. It reminds me of Storage Room Six.”

  “Indeed. I wonder if it likewise eats paperwork.”

  “It consumes worse things than paperwork, if anything. Health, reason—sanity . . .”

  I couldn’t argue, and I had no intention of trying. “Then let’s be swiftly on our way. There’s nothing for us here.”

  She didn’t turn around, and didn’t really seem to hear me. “If everything happens underground, there must be an entrance somewhere. More likely, there are entrances in a number of places—secret ones, for the sake of safety and access. We must keep our eyes and ears peeled for trapdoors, stairs, or any spot where the floor sounds hollow.”

  “You make these men sound like groundhogs, or chipmunks.”

  “Evil ones.” She made a small grunt, like she’d prefer to giggle—but not here, and not now. She cleared her throat instead. “It’s only logical, wouldn’t you say? They must come and go. They must have taken Ruth someplace. Don’t believe in the ghosts, if that’s your pre
ference; but believe your own eyes. This place is abandoned. She’s someplace else, and my money says it’s somewhere below us.”

  The smell was wafting up my nose, into my mouth, and back against my throat as I breathed. I could taste the dank, putrid air, and it made me want to lose my supper. (Terrible waste though that would have been.) I coughed a little and said, “Over there, that’s a choir loft, of a sort.”

  “We want to go down, not up.”

  “I know, but do you see the staircase?” A corkscrew spiral against the wall, partially hidden by a heavy curtain of indeterminate color. “It might go down to parts unseen, as well as up.”

  She ushered herself toward it, and I followed along behind her; there was no way to walk side by side anymore, not in this maze of lengthy and discarded benches and books. I kicked one of those books, and it was nothing more thrilling than a Holy Bible. Even when I opened it with my toe, no hollowed-out space revealed treasure or trap. Another book nearby turned out to be a tome about the True Americans, and yet a third was an ordinary hymnal. All were kept around for the sake of appearances, I guessed—but it was clear that no one cared about those appearances anymore.

  That fact worried me almost as much as the awful, familiar odor. The congregation was finished with the pretense, which meant these deranged, villainous people were very, very near to their end goal. Whatever that might be.

  “Good God, Simon! That was one hell of a guess—”

  “Was it?” I joined her at the staircase. It did indeed vanish into a slot in the ceiling, but it likewise disappeared down into the floor, where a circle had been cut to accommodate it. “No, I don’t think so. You’re the one who suggested keeping an eye out for stairs.”

  “This wasn’t what I had in mind, but”—she knelt beside the hole and cautiously lowered the lantern—“it might be what we’re looking for, regardless. See, over here.” Lizbeth pointed with her free hand. “No footsteps, no dust recently disturbed on the upward steps—but heading down, there are plenty of shoe prints. They’re coming from . . .” She looked over her shoulder, and brought the lantern around to help her see. “Coming from that way. If we had nothing but time, I’d say we should backtrack and see what we can find; but given the circumstances, we’d better skip that side path of an investigation and head directly down.”

  She rose to her feet and dusted her knees.

  I held out my hand, gesturing for the light she held. “This time, I’ll take the lantern. And the lead.”

  “Oh, will you, now?”

  “Yes, I will. I’m much larger, and these stairs don’t look particularly sturdy. But if they’ll hold me, they’ll hold you. Besides, I’m a consummate gentleman with a gun. In case you were unaware.”

  She smiled at me, and it made me sad for reasons I’d be hard-pressed to explain. It wasn’t a happy smile, but it was a fond and polite one. “Very well, as you prefer. Take the light, and lead the way. You’re the one with a gun, after all.”

  “Right. I’m the one with a gun.” Chapelwood had me rattled, that’s all I can say to excuse myself. The whole place was off-kilter in every way, and it was giving me a headache—like staring too long in a fun-house mirror and trying to make sense of your reflection. The smell, the angles, the silence, the darkness. Neither church nor temple, nor shrine nor memorial. Neither human, nor divine. It was something in the middle, and the middle was a horror.

  What an awful place for Ruth to be, alone and afraid, captured by the very men she feared the most.

  I took the lantern in my left hand. I retrieved my gun and brandished it with my right—though this left me with no stray hands to hold the rail for balance. It would have to suffice. I was descending into hades ahead of my time, but I would do it on no man’s terms except my own . . . even if those terms were ridiculous, and I was a ridiculous coward, even with a gun and a light. Well, show me the man who does not cower in that place—and I’ll show you a monster who has found his way home.

  I steeled myself. I paid close attention to the spiral of wood-plank steps below me. One foot at a time . . . down . . . down . . . down . . .

  With an unarmed woman behind me, and horror ahead of me.

  So help me God.

  Or whoever.

  Lizbeth Andrew (Borden)

  OCTOBER 4, 1921

  I crept down the stairs behind Simon, treading carefully out of atmospheric suggestion rather than necessity. He was more graceful than one would expect a big man to be, but the steps creaked and shook beneath our feet, loudly enough to announce us to anyone near enough to spy us.

  We weren’t sneaking up on anyone, that was for damn sure.

  But at the bottom, we still found ourselves alone. He turned up the lantern as high as it would go, for the ceiling was low and there were no windows; when he lifted it aloft, his knuckles grazed the damp, peeling plaster above us.

  I hunkered as we looked around. I wasn’t tall enough to strike my head upon any low-hanging light fixtures, but then again, there weren’t any. It was only the air of the place, so cramped and tight—despite the fact that the room was long and virtually empty.

  “It’s too tall to call a crawl space, and too wide to call a corridor. What a peculiar space . . . just like everything else here, neither one thing nor another,” Simon observed. “No windows up there. No lights. I don’t even see any candles, do you?”

  A quick sweep of the place proved him correct. “I suppose they carry a light around, like us.”

  He jiggled the lantern in response, and the room swayed back and forth. None of the angles felt right, and nothing felt level, even when the light was perfectly still. “Maybe. Or else they don’t need it.”

  “That’s an ominous thought.”

  “Which only means it’s appropriate. Now which way, do you think? I suppose back over here . . .” He held the light forth, and indeed, there appeared only one direction we might travel for more than a few yards. Besides, when he dropped the light again we could see pathways worn in the filth that covered the floor—solidly indicating that, yes, we should proceed toward the left, to the edge of the light, where there was only a blackness as flat as the sky.

  He started walking, and I joined him.

  I was almost relieved to be free of the lantern, for without it I could concentrate on my surroundings—rather than on the simple necessity of showing the way forward. Now I could take note of the crusty patches of brown-stained walls and oozing bubbles of mold that sagged from the ceiling above. Here and there, tree roots and rocks and clumps of dirt poked through cracks (below us, beside us, above us), and small spills of pebbles crunched under our feet.

  • • •

  Emma, we were walking through a grave.

  I fancied myself a little thing—a beetle or a mouse—exploring the collapsed ground where a coffin has rotted through and the body has long since been eaten by the worms, the ants, and the wandering rats. Even the smell was not so different, though it was much wetter down there than I’d hope to think of any grave. The air was so moist, so thick, it clotted in my lungs like old cream in a cup of tea.

  The quietude was gravelike, too, broken only by our own feet, feeling about on the floor—and in time, by something else: a susurrous hum that wasn’t quite a hum, and wasn’t quite a rumble. I heard it only barely, at the very edge of what my ears could detect—strain though I might to bring it into sharper relief. I thought maybe it was singing or chanting; it was alive, at any rate, and not the mechanical clanks or grinds of gears and pulleys.

  On second thought, it might have been the sound of something breathing.

  So this was a grave, Emma, and I looked around for ghosts. I looked for you. I listened for you, as hard as I ever listened at home when I smelled the spirit of your perfume. But you weren’t there, and neither was Nance, and nor was the minister James Coyle, who may (or may not) have spoken to us through the board
we’d made out of sticks and wishes. If this unique place of worship was a monument to the middle distance, and if I’d ever touched it, I still had no idea what it looked like, what it felt like, or why it’d called me—and no other.

  • • •

  Simon paused, his head cocked to the side. He could hear it, too—I knew it, even before he asked me, “What’s that? Do you hear it?”

  “Barely, but it’s getting a bit louder. We must be getting closer . . . I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.”

  “Nothing’s good down here. Let’s think instead in terms of helpful or not helpful. And is it my imagination, or is the ceiling getting even lower?”

  I reached up and drew my fingertips along the flat, dirty space above us. “I can’t tell. But the smell is getting worse, and the noise is getting louder. And the floor . . .” I squinted down at the tracks we more or less followed.

  (There was only one way to go, so everyone went this way. We weren’t following them, or tracking them. We were only flowing in the same direction as others had before us.)

  I said, “There’s something funny about these marks. Some of them aren’t footprints.”

  He nodded at them, and then at me. “I thought that might be my imagination, too—but no. Some of them look like drag marks, where a person’s heels have scraped along the dirt. Ruth, do you think? Or other, previous unwilling visitors?”

  “I’d rather not consider either of those possibilities. We might be wrong, anyway,” I said, but I did not specify that I didn’t think they were drag marks. They weren’t straight, and they didn’t come in pairs—but in random patterns. To me, they looked more like the paths of enormous snakes, the boas or pythons one reads about in National Geographic, when one would rather not sleep at night for fear of finding one in the washroom.

  I did not want to say that out loud. I locked it down in my mind, pulled the shutters down, and refused to look at it. I refused to look down anymore, except in furtive glimpses to keep from falling over the detritus of a basement that was slowly being crushed by the weight of the church above it.