Chapter Fourteen
Fourteen
An array of colorful paintings studded the walls, and two easels held unfinished canvases. Beside the easels, a large worktable held a messy hodgepodge of brushes and paints.
Harper was impressed that Delilah Mason worked without a drop cloth; the jewel-toned Persian carpet seemed spotless. Harper once tried her hand at painting a secondhand desk “Tuscan Red,” and the room—and Harper—wound up wearing half the paint and looking a lot like a crime scene.
All the artwork shared the artist’s distinctive surreal style, with tumbling images in saturated hues.
One half-finished painting featured an upside-down woman held in a cocoon of vines among cypress branches, a group of menacing crows overhead, a door cracked open, and a barely-there face appearing in a floating mirror.
The other portrayed a lighthouse hanging within the twisting arms of a massive cypress tree, the tree’s bark appearing a streaky black against a bright orange and pink sky.
Harper leaned in closer, trying to make out figures barely visible in the dark bark, nightmarish, distorted faces…
“No offense to Ms. Mason,” said Detective Serrano, “but my six-year-old daughter could do better.”
“In that case you might want to show her work to the galleries in Carmel,” said Harper. “Because these paintings are worth a lot of money. Especially now that she’s gone.”
“Are you a collector?” he asked.
She let out a mirthless laugh. “On a professor’s salary? I wish.” She shook her head. “But apparently Mason’s ex-husband has several canvases.”
“How do you know her ex-husband?”
“I don’t, but our paths crossed earlier today, at Delilah’s gallery in Carmel. He’s very…loud.”
“Why did you go to her gallery?”
“Just curious. I had the morning free, and everyone’s been telling me I needed to see Carmel, so I went.
While I was there, I decided to see some of her paintings.
The gallery owner confirmed they are very valuable, more so now that she’s…
” For some reason, the word stuck in Harper’s throat. “Dead.”
He nodded. “We need to beef up security in this place. Wouldn’t take much for someone to break in here and help themselves. That damned door won’t stay locked.”
He headed farther along the hall to the basement door, opened it, and started down the ancient wood steps. “This way.”
The squeak of the door was matched by the loud complaint of the top wooden tread as Harper stepped on it. The railing was worn smooth and polished from more than a century of hands running along it, but when she gripped it, a splinter pierced her palm, and a bright red drop welled up.
Good thing I don’t believe in omens, Harper thought as she forced herself to continue down the stairs.
The descent seemed to take much longer than it should have.
She felt enveloped, as if the air itself were tactile, as if it had heft, swallowing her like the oppressive humidity of a New York summer’s day.
Or that time Harper had allowed herself to be persuaded to try a sauna: The air was thick, suffocating, clogging her throat and lungs.
But unlike the hot sauna, the air in Delilah Mason’s basement was frigid.
The stillness of the atmosphere, the musty scent of wood so old it had petrified, the stones as ancient as the earth: It felt more like a descent into an abyss than a basement.
The underground birthplace of something…
wrong. Malevolent. Malignant. Every fiber of her being was shrieking: Do Not Enter.
“You sure you’re okay?” Detective Serrano’s voice surprised her. He had paused several steps below her on the stairs. “ ’Cause you don’t look so good.”
“I, um…” Harper cleared her throat and tried to rein in her uncharacteristically vivid imagination. “I’m fine. I’m surprised, though—adobe houses don’t usually have basements, do they?”
“Not usually. See how thick the walls are? Adobe buildings are typically built on a rubble foundation to raise the adobe blocks up and out of the groundwater, so they’re not sucking moisture from the earth.
The mortar has to be made of earthen materials as well, so the materials can bond.
No cement. Protect the adobe from water, and it’ll last centuries. Barring an earthquake, of course.”
“Let me guess: You were an architecture major?”
He smiled. “I was, once upon a time. I’m still into alternative building methods.
I love these old places. Adobe buildings are energy-efficient, firesafe, insect- and pest-resistant, and there’s low-to-zero carbon emissions from the materials used to build them.
And if they do fall down, the materials can be reused to build it back up. ”
“What made you go into police work instead of green building?”
A smile graced his gruff face. “Had a kid and needed a steady paycheck and good health insurance. And…I suppose it sounds hokey, but I care about my community.”
“That’s not hokey at all. Admirable, actually. I’m afraid to ask, but I’m new in town. Are there a lot of homicides in Monterey?”
“Naw. Pretty peaceful around here. But I spent twenty years on the LAPD before retiring and coming here. Most times the only violence we see in these parts is the occasional bar fight or DV.”
“DV?”
“Domestic violence.”
“Oh. That’s hard. Families can be…complicated.”
“Yep,” he said with a weary sigh. “It’s a real Rubik’s Cube. Anyway, to answer your original question: Most adobe houses don’t have basements because you can’t use adobe bricks below ground level. These basement walls were built with local stone, not adobe.”
“Interesting. It’s strange: I saw the blueprints for the Perles Mansion, and there was no basement.”
“According to the brother, Delilah found the door had been covered up, and restored it. So it was left alone all those years, I guess. Probably the only reason it wasn’t ransacked.”
The conversation helped Harper to ignore the eerie feelings stirring in her core. Calmer now, she forced herself to look around.
It looked like the laboratory of Dr. Frankenstein.
Workbenches were topped with beakers and pipettes and other assorted glassware, Bunsen burners and Erlenmeyer flasks and glass vials with cork stoppers.
A coil of copper tubing led from one vat to another.
The floor was stone in the middle with hard-packed dirt around the edges, some of which appeared disturbed, making Harper wonder about rats.
Huge jars held bits of animals preserved in solution.
There were several human skulls and other scattered bones, including a light fixture made of what looked like human femurs.
Wax anatomical models displayed the ghastly results of diseases like syphilis and cancer.
Large baskets were full of dried leaves, rose hips, dried roots, and seedpods.
“What is this place?” Harper whispered.
“Looks like something out of a movie set, you ask me,” said the detective. “The lair of a mad scientist.”
“I heard Mason mixed special teas and tinctures,” she said, noting the numerous small jars, bottles, and vials with plastic caps, which were clearly more modern than much of the lab equipment.
“I met a friend of hers at the gate the other day who said she provided her with herbs for her concoctions.”
“Who was that?”
“Her name is Sigrid. She introduced herself as part of a coven that—”
He cut her off. “You’re saying Delilah Mason was a witch?”
“Apparently not, though Sigrid said she was hoping to convince Delilah to join.”
“Sounds like a fruitcake to me,” he muttered. “I don’t go in for that sort of crap. Any actual evidence this Sigrid person was really working with Mason? Or is she just saying she was, for whatever reason?”
“None that I know of. You have a suspicious mind, Detective.”
“It’s in my job description.” Serrano made some notes on his phone, then gestured at a workbench. “What’s with all the leaves?”
“I assume they’re tea leaves. Tea is brewed from leaves and coffee is brewed from seeds. There’s no magic to it.”
“Uh-huh. You got a last name for this witch person?”
“No, but she gave me a phone number. Not sure what I did with her card, but she mentioned a coven—the Gaderian coven, I think she said.”
“Garderian? Galderian?”
“Ga-derian, if I remember correctly. Check the internet. Everyone seems to have a website these days.”
“Worth a shot.” He jotted down the name. “Let me know if you find that card, will you?”
“Of course. Sigrid mentioned she had left some of her things here and wants them back, so she would probably be happy to hear from you.”
The detective scoffed. “Yeah right. No one’s ever happy to hear from a homicide detective.”
Pointing to jars filled with plant material, Detective Serrano asked, “What can you tell me about that stuff?”
“Well, they’re seedpods and the like, but if you really want to know what you’re dealing with, then you need a toxicologist or a botanist. A scientist, not a historian.”
“All in good time. I wanted you to see this place first, in case any of it meant anything to you.” He seemed to be measuring his words carefully. “Tech guys get in here and sometimes mess things up. Some of this stuff looks pretty old. I thought a history professor might have a unique take.”
“I’m just not sure I’m the person to ask.
I would assume this laboratory belonged to Soren Perles, who lived here in the 1800s, right?
I also know that test tubes date back only as far as the late eighteenth century.
And dedicated laboratory equipment did not truly exist prior to the early 1800s.
Before that, most chemistry was done with whatever bowls and jars were readily available. ”
Harper picked up a fat, bound journal sitting on one counter.
This was no pristine tome: The pages were interleaved with scraps of paper, dried flowers, leaves, and twigs.
Annotations and marginalia were scrawled on the pages throughout, and dirty smudges abounded.
It was embossed with a copy of the poem “Snowdrops,” the middle section underlined:
I didn’t expect
to waken again…
“Louise Glück,” said Harper. “I love her work.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The poem.”
“Not really a poetry guy.”
“It’s by Louise Glück.”
“You know a lot of obscure things.”
“That’s part of my job description.” Harper opened the journal, and a few leaves and twigs fell out onto the counter.
Flipping through, she found various notes and recipes in different handwriting with two different kinds of ink, one fresh, the other old and faded, as if the journal were two items combined into one.
“Check this out, Detective—” Harper cut herself off at a sound coming from overhead.
A strange, scraping noise. Scritch, scratch…
“You hear that?” Serrano asked, staring up at the ceiling.
“Sounds like chairs being dragged across the floor.”
Detective Serrano frowned. “Stollins?” he called out, then said, as much to himself as to Harper, “What the hell is he doing up there?”
“Rearranging furniture?”
A new sound drifted down: voices intoning in unison. The words were indistinct but rhythmic, starting low and growing stronger.
Harper and the detective exchanged glances.
“Chanting,” Harper whispered.
“Wait here.” Serrano turned and sprinted up the basement stairs, flung open the door, and disappeared from sight.
Like hell I’m waiting alone in a mad scientist’s underground lair.
Dropping the journal on the workbench, Harper rushed up the stairs, her pepper spray clutched tightly in one hand.
When she reached the first-floor hallway she saw the front door standing open again, heard the chanting noises coming from the second floor, and caught a glimpse of the detective as he rounded the stairway landing.
She hesitated. Following the detective, especially when it was clear he didn’t want her to, seemed like a bad idea, but waiting here by herself seemed worse.
This house felt…wrong. Maybe waiting outside was a better option.
Before she could decide what to do, Harper heard the thundering of boots coming toward her down the wooden stairs.
She ducked behind the door and watched as several people in dark robes ran by her and out the open front door.
The hood fell from the head of one of them, and Harper thought she recognized her student Jenny. What in the world had they been up to?
Silence descended.
“Detective?” Harper called up the stairs.
There was no reply.
“Serrano?” she tried again. Had they hurt him?
She took a deep breath and mounted the stairs. The telescoping sensation returned worse than ever, and once again it felt as if her feet were moving but she was not going anywhere. Then suddenly she found herself standing in the upstairs hallway.
A door stood open in the middle of the corridor. She peeked in. The octagonal room held a messy circle of chairs and was entirely ringed with mirrors.
And there was blood. Everywhere.
How can I paint sweet land and oceanscapes, when there is so much else to see?
The wronged face has shown me the secrets of the Séance Garden, of the Witch Tree, of poor doomed Hero and Leander, of those who have died here, within these walls of ancient mud.
I try to portray them, but my brush and paints—and talents—fail me.