The Drowned Vault

by N. D. Wilson

  Daniel slid up against the kitchen door. He had a decision to make. Run, hide, maybe never come back … or go inside and face whatever was waiting for him.

  He’d abandoned this house before. He wasn’t going to do it again. He slid his key into the lock, held his breath, and said a prayer. With a crash, he exploded inside with his bat raised.

  John Horace Lawney VII choked on his toast. Someone tall and freckled looked up from where he was crouching on the floor. He had a short, thick rifle on his back, a large revolver on his hip, and a dustpan in his hand. He had been sweeping up the ruins of a coffee cup.

  Horace thumped his chest and hacked up a lump of bread.

  “Finally,” he said, dabbing at the corners of his watering eyes. “Your dormitory was being watched, so we came here.” He swallowed and smacked his lips. “Mr. Rupert Greeves requests your presence immediately.”

  Daniel lowered his bat. “I was just at my dorm. No one was there. What’s going on?”

  Horace and the kid with the dustpan exchanged a look. The kid jumped up, flicked off the kitchen lights, and hurried to the window, unslinging his rifle as he went. He peeked through the curtains.

  “There’s a van,” he said. “Out on the cliff. No headlights.” He turned to Dan. “You were followed.”

  Horace picked up an open jar of jam and a small hunk of bread and tucked them under his arm. He glanced at his pocket watch and sighed, then looked at Daniel over his half-moon glasses.

  He nodded at the kitchen door. “Off we go, then.”

  thirteen

  RIP

  CYRUS SWAM DEEPER, trying to stay on Rupert’s heels. The water wasn’t just warm anymore; it was hot. He felt like he was scuba diving in a Jacuzzi. On one side, black cliffs descended out of sight; on the other, he could see nothing but blue. Beneath him, on what must have been the bottom, lava flickered orange and heat ripples warped the water. In places where the cold water of the open ocean collided with the heat, swirls appeared like straws, belching up heat and sucking down cold. Rupert had already pulled him away from two.

  The squid belched air, but not much. Cyrus was worried for it. It might actually cook right on his face. Of course, he might cook, too.

  Rupert paused, drifting on rising heat, and looked back at Cyrus. Tentacles glistened across his jaw and ears, and the black squid on his face wobbled like the short trunk snout of a California elephant seal. That, plus the goggles, made him look more than a little alien. Rupert pointed into a large dark cave in the cliff, and Cyrus swam forward. As he entered, his body jerked with a sudden shock—the water in the cave was cold. Rupert and Nolan slid in after him. Rupert pointed at his own squid, and then floated back against the wall. A rest stop? Apparently Rupert didn’t want his squid cooked, either.

  After a moment, Cyrus’s mouth almost exploded with a blast of cold, bubbling air. He let most of it stream out of his nose, and then he filled his lungs. Rupert was doing the same. Nolan grimaced, still holding his breath. He looked like he was in pain.

  Rupert held up one finger. Cyrus braced himself, and the stiff beak clicked against his tongue. Two fingers. Three. Rupert kicked out of the hole and Cyrus followed. Heat flashed around him. Nolan passed him quickly, his skin peeling and trailing as he went.

  Down and down into the rippling heat, Rupert dove beside the black cliff. Cyrus wanted to scream, to close his eyes and float away. To cook and be done. And then Rupert turned into a narrow side tunnel. Nolan and Cyrus followed.

  Darkness. And cold. The light faded as the temperature dropped. And then Rupert’s spotlight flashed on and flickered back over Nolan’s body and into Cyrus’s face. They were in a cavern the size of a large living room, and it was lined with mussels.

  Rupert floated in the center, running his spotlight around the cavern. There was one smooth stone on the otherwise jagged mussel wall. Cyrus swam toward it, blinking.

  It was shaped like a headstone and skimmed with olive sea silt, though not one barnacle or mussel had adhered to its face. The squid on Cyrus’s face bubbled as he ran his hand up and down the stone. Scum swirled into the water, leaving behind a long inscription. With Rupert spotting the light over his shoulder, Cyrus traced the words with his fingertips. At the top, he immediately recognized the Tri-Dracul crest of the Smiths.

  RIP

  CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH

  SOMETIME GOVERNOUR OF VIRGINIA

  BLOOD AVENGER OF THE ORDER OF BRENDAN

  WHO BURIED HIS BODIE THE 21ST OF JUNE 1631

  HERE LYES ONE CONQUERED,

  THAT HATH CONQUERED KINGS,

  AND DID DIVIDE FROM DRACULs THREE

  THEIR HEADS AND LIVES IN CHIVALRY.

  BUT WHAT AVILS HIS CONQUESTS, NOW HE LYES

  INTERR’D IN EARTH,

  A PREY TO WORMS AND FLYES?

  O MAY HIS SOUL IN SWEET ELYSIUM SLEEP,

  UNTIL THE KEEPER THAT ALL SOULS DOTH KEEP,

  RETURN TO JUDGEMENT, AND AFTER THENCE,

  WITH ANGELS MAKE HIS RECOMPENSE.

  WAKE HIM NOT, LEST HE WAKE.

  Cyrus looked at Rupert with wide eyes. Rupert nodded and tapped at his throat, where Cyrus kept Patricia and her keys. Nolan floated forward and pointed to the him in Wake him not. Cyrus blasted bubbles out of his nose, and then focused on the spot. The i was actually a keyhole.

  His throat tightened. The squid shifted a little, regripping his face and curling a tentacle around his ear. Cyrus had entered a Burial before, and it hadn’t been pleasant. He didn’t see how being related to the occupant would make it any nicer.

  But Rupert knew what he was doing. Hopefully. Cyrus reached up and slid Patricia off his neck. The keys, suddenly visible, dropped through the water into his hand, and silver Patricia coiled around his wrist, swallowed her tail, and disappeared. In the water, the strange Solomon Keys had taken their natural shape, which he had first seen in the Polygon when he’d plunged them into the cold showers. The gold key was long and heavy, with a triangle at its head, a circle in the middle, and a square at the foot. It was clearly too big for the hole. Cyrus fingered the smaller silver one—simple, slender, smooth, and sharp, like a miniature corkscrewing scimitar. Trying not to think about what he was doing, he slid it into the hole, and he turned it.

  Silence. And then grinding as the inscribed slab fell slowly forward through the water. Cyrus jerked out the key and kicked away. The cave echoed like the inside of a drum when the slab hit the bottom, but Cyrus didn’t notice. He was staring at the hole in the stone wall, a square tunnel. Something was floating out of it. Seaweed? It was uncurling out of the darkness, slowly drifting through the water and groping toward them. Nolan bubbled and retreated.

  A tangle floated in front of Cyrus. He touched it, rubbing it between his fingers. It was hair. Four hundred years’ worth of hair.

  Rupert drew a knife and kicked toward the hole.

  Dixie Mist pressed her ear against the dusty wall, listening as voices approached. The wall smelled like barn and tobacco. She shifted and tried her other ear.

  She’d popped awake at 4:29 a.m. and gotten right to work. The rope knots had finally ground their way off her thin wrists and over her hands; she’d only lost a little skin. After that, the ankles had been easy. Now she was completely free of the thick post the men had lashed her to … but she was still stuck in this tiny room.

  The voices were muffled, but she recognized the musical tone that belonged to One Hand. She had been stored a long way from the front door and the refinished part of the factory. While she’d worked on the knots in the darkness, the only sounds had been scratching rats, her own strained breathing, and the pylons creaking in the river beneath her. But now the men were close. Doors were rattling open on rusty sliders. How many prisoners were there? Were the men talking to her father? If they were, he wasn’t talking back. She would recognize his voice, even through walls.

  She ran her hands along the rough wood. She knew the factory well, but this was a part her father had placed firmly off
-limits. At this end of the building, the floors were rotten. The previous owner had even lost a worker.

  The floors.

  Dixie dropped to her knees and began to crawl away from the wall, feeling the floor, hoping to find some weakness. Planks sighed and old nails yawned, but the boards were strong and rot-free. She reached the far wall and sighed.

  “Who’s there?” The whisper was right in front of her, through a crack in the planks. “You’re too big to be a rat. Are you a rat?”

  Dixie stared at the wall, but the darkness was too thick for human eyes.

  “Who are you?” she whispered.

  “I asked you first.”

  A boy’s voice. She held her breath for a moment, thinking.

  “Dixie,” she said.

  “I’m Oliver,” said the boy. “You don’t sound tied up.”

  “I’m not,” Dixie said. “I was, but not anymore.”

  “I’m really tied up,” Oliver whispered. “They didn’t even lock my door. Do you have a window?”

  “No.” Dixie wished she did. She would already be out.

  “Of course not,” Oliver said. “Your room is farther in. I have a window.” He paused. “There’s a moon.”

  “You can see?”

  “Not well. I can’t move my head much. I’m stuck looking up.”

  Dixie stood. He had a window, and his door was unlocked. She only had to get through one wall. She ran her hands across the planks until she found a knothole in the pine. She wormed her fingers through and then tugged. The board barely bent at all. The wood was tough.

  “There’s a trapdoor in the ceiling,” Oliver said. “By a giant lightbulb. Do you have a giant lightbulb?”

  A trapdoor …

  Outside, down the hall, a heavy sliding door slammed. One Hand was shouting at someone. Dixie held her breath and listened.

  “They’re both dead!” One Hand bellowed. “Is that what you wanted? I want one dead, one alive. Do you understand?” One Hand’s last words sounded odd, shifting into an animal-like roar. Wood smashed.

  Whoever was out there, Dixie knew they’d never hear her over the noise. She could be as loud as she wanted. Slapping at the walls, she raced around the dark room, feeling for holds. If she could find a way to climb …

  A metal light switch dug into her arm. She flipped it on.

  A giant lightbulb sputtered to life in the ceiling above her. She blinked and looked around. Just two feet farther down the wall, nailed flush up against it, there was a plank barn ladder. A small trapdoor was set in the ceiling above it.

  More wood was smashing outside. Someone, some creature, was snarling. Dixie flipped the light back off and scaled the ladder. Her head thumped against the trap; she scrambled through it and up into the ceiling.

  Above the ceiling was something like a hayloft, maybe fifty yards square. Flakes of ancient tobacco cracked beneath her, and moonlight filtered through a hundred holes above her. Dixie crawled quickly toward the boy’s ceiling. Off to her left, wood exploded up and she yelped, jerking away in surprise. Pieces of the ceiling scattered through the rafters. Yellow electric light blazed up through the hole.

  She had to hurry. Sweeping the floor with her hands, she found the boy’s trapdoor, tugged it open, and looked down into a room painted with moonlight that flowed through a small window. She didn’t bother with the ladder this time; the ceiling wasn’t that high. Reaching through the opening in the ceiling, she found the thick wire that ran to the big lightbulb. Grabbing on to it, she swung down into the room and then dropped.

  A floorboard snapped beneath her right foot, which punched through into air. Pulling her leg back through, she staggered forward and bumped into a table.

  “Careful,” the boy whispered. His arms and legs were strapped with leather to a heavy wooden chair, and the chair was lying on its back, strapped onto a table. His hair was brown and long, straggling and uncut. His skin was pale, even where it was freckled.

  “Try the window,” Oliver said, twisting his head toward the moonlight. “There’s no point in braving the halls when he’s like this.”

  “Who? One Hand?” Dixie raced over to the window. It was small, four little panes, but it had a crank handle and hinges. She twisted hard and pushed on the wooden frame. The hinges snapped and the window dropped, spinning, fifty feet down into the moving river. She heard the glass shatter on the surface.

  She ran back to the boy and got to work on the leather straps that held him in the chair.

  “The window’s not going to work,” she said.

  “One Hand,” the boy said quietly. “He’s my uncle. Great-uncle, actually. I guess he does just have one hand, thanks to the Smiths.”

  Dixie freed the boy’s arms and moved down to his legs.

  “It’s not going well,” Oliver said. “He said it would have happened already.”

  “What would happen?” Dixie asked. The straps on his legs were sticking.

  “He would raise the dead.”

  The boy might be delirious, but he was free. Dixie staggered back, breathing hard, as he swung his legs off the chair and sat up slowly.

  “Why?” Dixie asked. “Why would anyone want to do that?”

  Oliver seemed dizzy, perched on the edge of the table. His eyes were shaded with dark rings, and his cheeks were sucked tight against his teeth. He wasn’t healthy, but he didn’t look mean. Or dangerous. “He’s making new people from old ones,” Oliver said. He looked up. “But they always die. He’s waiting to change me until that’s fixed. I’m tired of waiting.” He closed his eyes and opened them again slowly. “You really should leave.”

  “You’re coming with me,” Dixie said, pulling him off the table. The boy obviously needed a hospital. He was a lot taller than she was—long arms, long legs, wide shoulders, but all bone and no muscle. The way he wobbled on his feet, she wondered how long it had been since he’d walked.

  She moved toward the door. “Help me find my father. Then we’ll leave.”

  The door wasn’t locked. The hallway outside was long and very dimly lit. One Hand was gone now. The factory was silent.

  Dixie looked back at the boy. “I’m in charge,” she said. The boy looked surprised, but he nodded. She grabbed his hand and stepped out into the hallway.

  “Careful,” the boy whispered. “He’s nuts right now. He took his coat off.”

  “One Hand?” Dixie asked.

  “People call him Phoenix,” Oliver whispered, “but not when he’s like this. Right now, he’s Mr. Ashes. His real name is Edwin.”

  Dixie led the boy past three open sliding doors. Then they came to one that had a chain and padlock around the handle.

  She put her ear against it. Nothing. She cupped her hands against it and whispered as loud as she dared: “Alfred Mist!” She waited. “Daddy?”

  Nothing.

  “He wants my body,” Oliver said. “I’m a Laughlin, too, and the same blood will help him switch. Every Laughlin has died but me. He’s old. He needs a young body.… ” Oliver held up two fingers and grinned. “With two hands.”

  “Quiet,” Dixie said. The boy looked pale, almost ready to pass out. And he was babbling.

  “Right,” said Oliver. “Sorry.”

  The hallway echoed suddenly with the sound of more splintering wood and shouting.

  “Oop,” said the boy. “Trouble.” Then he sat down.

  “No!” Dixie grabbed his hands, but he was heavy for a skeleton. Still, she wasn’t going to leave anyone here, not even a crazy boy. “I’m in charge, remember?”

  The boy nodded like he’d forgotten, then stood up. Dixie gripped his wrist and hustled him down the hall. At the end, the hallway opened into what had once been a big rolling room, where her father had said the slave women and then the free women who were treated like slaves had rolled the cigars.

  There were lights there. And voices. Dixie pushed Oliver into a nearby dark room and told him to wait quietly. Then she crept down the dim hallway. Nearing the en
d, she pressed herself against the wall and slid on until she could see into the room.

  The bright old rolling room wasn’t recognizable. Against the far wall, metal boxes the size of coffins were stacked like bricks, all the way to the ceiling. But every box had a long glass door in its side, frosted over with frozen condensation. And they were humming with electricity. Not just boxes—freezers. And Dixie could see the shapes of bodies behind the glass. Cords were everywhere, mostly running up into the ceiling. In front of the freezers, there was a table covered with strange tools. Where she could see the side walls, the wooden planks were battered and smashed. She couldn’t see it, but she knew that, off to her right, there was a big loading door that overlooked the river. Front and center, in a small clear glass pool not much bigger than the one Dixie had played in with a garden hose when she was little, there were two bodies lying beside each other under shallow water. They both had pale skin. One was covered with bone tattoos.

  Dixie held her breath, clinging even tighter to the shadows. Beside the pool was the girl with the rope hair. She was on her face with her knees tucked up under her chest and her arms folded in. Her hair was wound tight around her whole body, hiding her face, shielding her ribs, her neck, her sides. She looked like a turtle, or a rolled-up armadillo.

  An ape-shaped man hobbled out from behind the wall of freezers. His hair was white and ragged. His shoulders were broad, his eyes were pure black, and he leaned one huge fist on the floor as he went. The monster’s other hand was missing. Dixie blinked in surprise. Somehow, this was the same man. Snarling, he smacked the longhaired girl with his arm stump. She tumbled across the floor and stopped, not fifteen feet from Dixie.

  One Hand followed slowly. He seemed tired, exhausted in his anger. He paused at the pool and studied the bodies. Then, leaning on his stump, he reached into the water and pulled out his silver-handled cane. A black tooth like a shark’s stuck out of the top like an arrowhead. Water dripped off of it.