CHAPTER 21 THE MORE DEAD, THE MERRIER #2
Camille stands still in the frigid air, her head moving slowly from side to side, like she’s looking for something. Suddenly, a man in a heavy coat emerges from behind her. He shoves her roughly as he goes past.
“Excuse you!” Camille shouts at him.
The man doesn’t even turn around. He stomps through the snow toward the snowcat.
“Where the hell are you going?” Camille asks.
“The package is ready for transport,” he responds. “Everything’s almost ready so I’ll go get it and bring it back.”
“Well, hurry up,” Camille says. “I want to get started.”
The man moves around to the side of the castle.
“I’m going with you,” Camille says. “Make sure you don’t screw this up for me.”
“No,” the man responds. His tone is harsh, like he’s annoyed with her. “I don’t want your company and besides—” He stops short, looking around. “Where are the gas cans I left over here?”
A smile spreads across Camille’s face. She saunters up to him, limping a little, leaving the door behind her open a crack. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“I don’t have time for games,” the man says. “Tell me where they are right now or—”
“Or what?” Camille asks. “What will you do?”
The man looks at her in a way that makes me scared for her but she doesn’t budge.
“Tell me I can go with you and I’ll show you where the gas is,” she says.
The man grumbles something I can’t quite make out and then Camille leads him around the side of the building and out of sight.
My mom stands up and grabs me by the arm. “Come on,” she whispers.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Did you see Camille?” Mom asks. “She didn’t even have a coat on. That means it’s probably warm inside.”
“It means she doesn’t need it,” Noah says. “The paper said she died, remember? She’s reanimated.”
We sit in silence for a few seconds.
“Regardless,” Mom says. “We need to get Meka inside.”
“They’ll see us,” Noah counters.
“Just come on,” my mom says.
She pulls me through the trees and out into the open area in front of the castle.
The wind whips up once we’re out of the shelter of the trees.
Tears sting my eyes as we move toward the door Camille had come out of.
We duck inside and press ourselves against the wall as Camille’s voice returns outside.
My heart leaps into my throat. She’s arguing with the man again and then the engine of the snowcat turns over and their voices are drowned out.
A moment later the rumble of the engine dissipates, and I breathe deep.
“Look at this place,” Noah whispers as he looks around.
We are in a narrow hallway with windows on one side and doors on the other.
It’s cold in here but better than being outside.
Lights in decorative sconces line the hall.
The place is wired for electricity and apparently, it’s on and working.
There is a strong musty smell in the air, like damp earth and smoke mingled together.
A murmur of voices sounds from somewhere behind us.
The sound moves closer and panic grips me like a vise.
I rush toward the closest door only to find it locked.
Noah stumbles toward the next one and it opens for him.
We duck inside and find it filled with dusty furniture and moldering boxes.
We shut the door and lean against it as the voices move down the hall and past the door.
After a moment, they’re gone, and I collapse onto the floor.
“How many people do you think that was?” Noah asks.
“Two? Maybe three?” I say. “That’s what it sounded like. I’m not really sure.” I rub my legs trying to push some feeling back into them.
“What do we do now?” Noah asks. “Where do we even start?”
Mom squeezes her eyes shut and rubs her temple. “Let me think.” She paces back and forth in front of the door as Noah crouches next to me. “We can’t stay here,” she says. “We should keep moving. Maybe we should follow the people who just went by.”
“I don’t like this,” Noah says.
I take out my phone and google Dundas Castle, New York. Pictures of the exterior come up. I erase my search and start over. I tap in Dundas Castle blueprint. A schematic of the interior of the castle pops up. I show it to my mom and Noah.
“I think we came in here,” I say, pointing to a doorway marked Carriage Entryway. “The castle is built in an L shape with a square inner courtyard. If we’re here, the people who passed by us are headed toward”—I glance at the blueprint again—“the remains of the spa and bath.”
“The bath?” Noah whispers, confused.
“It’s probably underground,” I say as I study the picture.
“It says ‘sublevel.’ ” A little circle appears on my screen, then all my bars disappear, replaced by the SOS symbol.
“The signal’s gone.” It feels like we are out of choices and maybe out of time.
I get to my feet and go to the door. “We follow those voices to see if Dad is with them,” I say.
“We get him and then we make a break for it. We get back to the car and get away from here.”
My mom gives me a quick nod and Noah does the same but this won’t work. The plan is simple enough—get Dad and get out. Nothing we’ve tried to do so far has gone to plan and something tells me this won’t be any different.
I press my ear to the door and listen. There’s only a low murmur but I can’t tell exactly where it’s coming from.
After a moment, I pull the door open and peer out into the hallway.
It’s empty so I slip out and turn left, following the path of the people who came by just a few minutes before and heading in the direction of the sublevel. Mom and Noah stay right behind me.
Pushing down the hall there’s a sharp right turn.
The hallway terminates in a narrow wooden door.
There are no other passages or entryways in this length of hallway so the other people must have gone through this door.
I don’t hesitate. I put my hand on the handle and push it open.
A spiral staircase twists down into the earth like a corkscrew. Noah peers over the rail.
“What the hell,” he says under his breath. “We gotta go down there?”
I take his hand and hold it tight. “Just keep moving,” I say.
I take the stairs and as we descend the cold dissipates, replaced with a warmth that at first feels like heaven compared to the bitter cold outside.
But as the staircase loops over on itself again and again, the heat becomes stifling.
I shrug out of Noah’s coat and hand it back to him, all the while moving deeper into the dark below.
By the time we reach the bottom, my back is sweaty and I pull the neck of my sweater open to try and circulate some of the hot air.
“Is this hell?” I ask as Noah joins me at the bottom. “It’s hot as shit down here.”
We’ve entered another hallway, at the end of which is a small arched doorway. It’s damp and it smells even worse down here than it had above. The stones that make up the floor are so worn, there’s a slope in the center of the hall where water has collected.
A noise wafts through the tunnel—the murmur of voices.
“Listen,” I whisper.
Moving toward the archway, my heart beats wildly as panic invades every part of me. I focus on my breathing, try to calm myself. When I reach the opening, I peer inside.
A room is situated another full floor below us.
It’s surrounded on all four sides by towering marble columns.
There is a raised platform in the middle.
The floor around it is tiled in a black-and-white checked pattern.
The air is thick with a familiar smoky smell, the scent from my dad’s strange robe.
I don’t see anyone but I can hear voices from somewhere below.
Whatever plan I’d had about bursting into a room, grabbing my dad, and fleeing into the snowy woods leaves my mind as I look into the space below. Everything I see here makes me believe more than ever that none of us have any idea what we’re walking into.
And that there may be no walking away from this at all.
Suddenly, from somewhere behind us, there is the sound of footsteps.
I lurch forward and trip down the stairs that lead to the room below.
Noah steps on the back of my heel as we emerge in the strange space.
The columns holding up the ceiling are massive and between each of them is a curved arch.
Torches light the dank space but the shadows are deep.
The footsteps are closer now and my mom’s eyes grow wide in the dark.
I grab her hand and we rush forward, skirting the platform in the center of the room and ducking behind what can only be described as an altar—a large rectangular stone draped in cloths and topped with small bowls and lit candles.
We press ourselves behind it, and Noah barely manages to join us as the other people enter the space.
“Everyone’s here?” asks a voice, the same man’s voice who had been looking for the gas cans earlier. He grunts and then sighs heavily. There’s a thud, like he’s just set something heavy on the floor.
“No,” Camille says. “Roger and Morris aren’t back yet. They have the book, though.”
I slide down the back side of the altar, getting as close to the ground as I can manage, before shimmying my way to the edge so that I can peer around the side.
Camille and the man we’d seen outside are standing near the platform in the center of the room and it takes everything in me not to scream when I see what they’ve brought with them.
On the platform, which had been completely empty when we rushed past it, now lies the body of a young woman.