Chapter 6 #2
And then there was Bethany. If I went into his room, he might see her. And that thought made me more nervous than I already was. I couldn’t go in there, I just couldn’t.
Feeling defeated, I shuffled away from the golden doors. What do I do now? I gazed over the stairway railing where I’d first laid eyes on the master from the foyer below. The only light I could see down there now came from the candles burning beneath the life-size oil painting of Agnes Voss.
Nothing inside me wanted to head down the double staircase, but where else could I go? Back to my room, where all I could do was fear what would come next?
No. Must continue forward.
Signaling for Bethany to follow, I clung to the polished railing and slowly made my way down the staircase, into the silence of the foyer with its massive Artemis and Apollo statues. Once I’d descended and stepped onto the tile floor, it wasn’t as frightening as I’d imagined.
Just dark and cool. Quiet. No signs of the servants.
I didn’t know where to go, so I headed around the staircase and tried one of the arched Gothic doorways lining one side of the foyer and entered an empty parlor.
There were other doors here, and I found myself blindly leading Bethany through a series of grand rooms filled with exquisite furniture and paintings.
“They must have the most wonderful parties here, don’t you think?” Bethany whispered. “I can just imagine all the pretty dresses that would float over these floors during a grand ball. Do you think Voss throws balls here?”
Maybe he once had, but the man had to have hired outside staff to help. I couldn’t see the three servants being able to throw a birthday party, much less a ball.
As I pressed forward with Bethany, my lantern’s light bounced around a sitting room, a music room, an art gallery that was missing half the paintings.
Empty. All the rooms were so empty and quiet.
After walking and re-walking a maze of small rooms, I dared to call out, “Hello? Anyone? I’m not angry, I’m just very confused. Please…?”
Utter silence.
When I got the guts to carry on, I came upon a door that was closed, where I hesitated, and knocked. No one answered, so I left it closed, thinking of the rules that had been laid out for me about the winterized sections of the home.
But the further I stumbled around the ground floor, the more I lost my patience. Especially when I found the servants’ wing—finally—where a staff dining room, kitchen, and butler’s pantry were all deserted.
“I’m not in the mood for these bloody games!” I called out in frustration and fear, cowering when my voice echoed around the unfamiliar maze of hallways.
This was ridiculous. The servants couldn’t have disappeared from the estate. Where would they go? There was nothing out here for… fifty acres, as Mrs. Culpepper had pointed out. They must have been inside the house somewhere.
And really, there was only one person I wanted to confront. Mr. Hoffmann had brought me here. Mr. Hoffmann had a strange tattoo on his neck in the same place where my neck hurt. I didn’t know if the two things were related, but I knew one thing.
Mr. Hoffmann would answer for this.
I had to find him.
Up and down the corridors I searched. If no one was on the ground floor, then I’d just return to the upper floor and go inside every room. The master’s, even, if I had to—politeness be damned.
“There’s no one here,” Bethany said, not bothering to whisper anymore.
“There has to be.”
Frustrated to the point of anger, I stumbled my way back to the foyer and was beginning to climb the steps when my gaze stopped on the oil painting that hung over the altar of candles.
Was there something I’d forgotten? I glanced back at the Greek statues and spotted the copper railing that circled the basement stairs.
Its elaborate copper gate was cracked open… just a few inches.
The servants had said that the basement was off-limits. But these people had broken my trust and given me no other option.
“We only give our honorable word to honorable folk,” I whispered, and made my way back toward the statues.
The basement’s copper gate held a beautiful bird pattern and didn’t squeal when I opened it further.
I began descending. The granite stairwell was narrow and cool enough to make me shiver.
Halfway down, Bethany became wary. “I don’t like basements.
This reminds of those creepy back stairs in the hospital that lead to the mortuary. ”
“There are no dead bodies down here, and if there were, you should be the last person to care about them,” I mumbled.
“It smells funny,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
How she could detect that in her state of being, I didn’t know. But she wasn’t wrong. Something hung in the air, and it smelled of rot. I became irrationally scared and almost retreated. Stop being silly, I told myself, and continued all the way down…
Until I ended up in a long hall.
I was underground. I could feel it in my bones.
The hall ended at a peaked Gothic arch similar in style to the rest of the home.
I stepped through into the main room, and for a moment, I thought I’d discovered a chapel in the basement, because there was statuary down here that looked religious.
A stone bench. A pair of granite urns that stood taller than me.
And a wall filled with dozens of alcoves.
Some of the alcoves were filled with carved stone boxes…
Sarcophagi.
This wasn’t a basement. It was an underground tomb!
“I don’t like this, I don’t like this…,” Bethany whispered, wrapping her arms around herself to ward away her fear.
“It’s okay,” I whispered back. “It’s a family crypt. Look, there’s fresh flowers on that sarcophagus. That’s probably where Agnes is buried.”
“It looks like the hospital mortuary,” she said in a small voice.
It really didn’t. She was just frightened.
And her fear was infectious, because I worried she was sensing something that I, being a non-ghost, could not.
Taking a few calming breaths, I reminded myself that it wasn’t uncommon for the wealthy to have family mausoleums built on their property. I’d just never seen one inside a house.
The sarcophagi were contained on a stretch of wall on the left side of the room, and other than the bench, urns, and flowers, there wasn’t anything more to see there.
But the room itself was far bigger—you could just feel it, like walking into a cavern.
It was as black as pitch, the only light shining from my lantern, so I moved very cautiously, daring to go a little farther.
My pulse picked up speed as I looked around.
The ceiling was low, supported by dozens of stone columns that gave the effect of being inside a Greek temple.
But there was something else. Something wrong.
A kind of writing covered some the columns, a scrawled foreign alphabet. The farther into the crypt I dared to explore, the more of it there was. It had been crudely painted onto the columns using a dark paint. I held my lantern closer to one of the columns to inspect it.
“Is that… blood?” Bethany whispered at my side.
Was it? Panic flashed inside my chest. She wasn’t right, though…
was she? I wasn’t sure, but the foreign writing looked like a complicated math problem that used letters instead of numbers.
My eyes tracked the strange writing from the columns upward, where it extended onto the low ceiling and formed a large pattern: a triangle with a circle around it.
“What is all of this?” Bethany whispered.
I held my lantern high and took another step, head tilted.
A slithering sensation slipped over me as I stared at the circle of foreign words.
“Molly, I’m scared. This feels wrong,” Bethany said in a small voice. “What is it?”
“I don’t know!” I whispered, feeling myself beginning to tremble as I stared at the mysterious shape on the ceiling. The slithering sensation shifted under my skin. The pattern itself felt… Alive. Restrictive. Unnatural.
Bad.
A heavy metallic scraping noise pulled my attention to the very back of the crypt.
I swung my lantern wildly. Gold light bounced from column to column. I couldn’t see anything! Fresh panic swept over me.
What if there’s something else down here?
I’d never been one to get spooked by graveyards and burial sites. Why would I? No ghost had ever even tried to scare me, not once. And I’d seen more dead bodies than I could count in the mortuary below Bellevue.
However, my mammy, being a good Irish woman, had warned me to be wary of things I didn’t understand. And I didn’t understand any of this.
All the hairs on my forearms lifted. Irrational thoughts filled my head.
“Something’s wrong. Leave, Molly!” Bethany’s voice whispered as her physical form disappeared.
Bollocks! I’d just gotten her back. And without Bethany’s presence, the basement suddenly felt more menacing. Fear wormed its way into my heart.
“If there’s anyone here,” I called out in a cracking voice, “speak now or… be gone from this place!”
Heart pounding beneath my tightening bodice, I shakily held up my lantern and scanned the shadows. And at first glance, there didn’t appear to be anything else, just row upon row of columns, likely holding up the house. I started to relax—
Until a foreign voice full of strange melodies spoke from the darkness.
“I would like nothing more.”
I swung my lamp in the direction of the voice.
Beneath the circle of strange paintings on the ceiling, a figure reclined on the dusty crypt floor, dressed in a fine suit. A boy. Or a man? I couldn’t judge his exact age in the dim light, not from this distance.
He propped himself up on one elbow and turned his head my way, holding up a hand in front of his eyes to block my lantern’s light.
Dark curls fell in soft waves around a pale, regal face that I couldn’t make out all that well. But I guessed he was about my age, maybe a little older.
My heart raced wildly as warring emotions wrestled with panicked thoughts. Why was this boy down here alone, lying on the floor in the dark? Why was his beautiful clothing damaged? Was there something wrong with his shoulder? He looked…
In pain.
He shifted, and a terrible metallic scraping noise echoed around the basement.
One of his ankles was bound in an iron shackle that had been attached over his tall boot; a heavy chain connected the shackle to a nearby column.
He was chained. In the crypt.
Hot and cold chills raced up and down my arms.
“W-what is this?” I whispered, backing away. “What is happening?”
The boy continued to hold up one hand, shielding his eyes, but slowly moved his head to peer beyond it. Silvery irises flashed at me. “We are in a wretched place filled with monsters, Molly O’Rinn, daughter of Cat O’Rinn. You don’t know it yet, but I fear you are just as much a prisoner as I.”