Chase Baker and the Lincoln Curse: (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book No. 4) (5 page)

I take another look around the room, shining the flashlight on
the walls, the ceiling, the floor. I go to the opposite end of the room, begin
rapping the wall with my knuckles, knowing that should a brick wall exist
behind the plaster, my skin and bone will detect the more rigid material. I
make my way around the room, and manage only to come up with hollow knocks.

Once more, I shine the light onto the ceiling.

“That’s way too impractical,” I whisper to myself.

That’s when, once more, I shine the light on the floor. My
gut speaks to me then. Screams is more like it.

“Jesus,” I say. “I should have thought of this ages ago.”

Crouching, I press both hands against the big sleigh bed
like it’s a blocking sled from my high school football days, and begin to push.
It’s so heavy and cumbersome, the bed seems bolted to the floor. After three
hard shoves, I manage to move it all the way to the opposite wall. Looking down
at the floor, I see something that confirms my suspicions.

A piece of perfectly square flooring that’s looks to have
been cut out and reinstalled at a later date. Taking a knee, I feel around the
four by four foot square portion with my bare hands. The thin joint is filled
with dirt and dust. I can hardly even jam my fingernails into the thin
separation, much less shove my fingers inside.

A crowbar would be nice right about now. But I don’t have
one.

“There’s always the kitchen,” I whisper.

Back up on my feet, I head back down to the kitchen in the
hope of finding a knife that’s big enough to cut through Clara’s floor.

Moments later, I’m back upstairs in the bedroom a heavy meat
cleaver in hand. The sucker must weigh five pounds it’s so big. By the looks of
the steel blade, it couldn’t bring down a tree much less butcher a pig into a
few dozen pork chops.

Taking a knee, I raise up the cutting edge and, aiming for
the joint, swing it rapidly downwards and connect with the wood. I don’t hit
the joint exactly, but the blade lands close enough to cause a chunk of the old
dried wood to shatter. Pulling the knife out, I raise it and swing again, more
of the wood disintegrating as I chop. After a few minutes of this, I’ve created
an opening big enough for me to reach in with my hands. That’s when I begin to
pull the pieces of floorboard up. In no time at all, I’ve removed almost the
entirety of the square area.

Pulse pounding, I pull the flashlight from my pocket, shine
it down into the opening. That’s when I see it—a wooden staircase covered in
cobwebs and dust that contains maybe a half dozen risers. What’s located at the
bottom of this staircase steals my breath away.

I don’t see plaster-covered lath. Instead, I see something
else.

A brick wall.

My crap detector whispers something to me. My heart begins to
beat in my temples. The hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention as I
feel the eyes upon me. The eyes of a ghost. Lincoln’s spirit? His eyes? Clara
and Henry’s eyes? The butcher knife in hand, I stand and scan the sleigh bed
once more with the flashlight, eye the blood stain.

Nothing there.

Quickly, I make my way over to the sleigh bed, push myself
between the frame and the exterior wall. Using all my strength, I shove the bed
back over the opening in the floor. Then, coming around to the opposite side of
the mattress, I shine the light directly into the mirror on the table in the
corner. That’s when I see myself…

…and something else.

The bedroom door opening and a mustached man dressed in a
white shirt stepping inside.

I turn quick…

The Presidential box is small, narrow, and barely fits four
chairs and the adults who occupy them.

I’m seated in the chair furthest away from the man I most
revere in the world. The man I would have taken a bullet for on the field of
battle be it Manassas, Shiloh, Gettysburg…

…Gettysburg.

I was there that day when he spoke. I stood close to a
cobbed wood podium that gave his already extraordinary height even more
verticality. Add to that his tall top hat, and he appeared not like a mortal
man at all but a giant born not of this earth. But then, the man is a giant
among men. A sad giant at that. A man who doesn’t fit into this world in this
day and age. A man who seems too big for his own pale skin and bones.

I try not to stare at him as he sits in his chair at the
far end of the box by the wood door, his hands laid flat on his knees, the
sleeves on his charcoal jacket too short so that his bony wrists are exposed,
the backs of his hands crisscrossed with thick purple veins, fingers long,
crooked, and painful looking. Like old dry twigs in the dead of winter.

It doesn’t take a genius to recognize the exhaustion in
him. It’s never more apparent than on his face—long, cracked, and sunken like a
piece of old fractured window glass that has drooped with time. His black beard
is speckled with gray and it sings not of age, but instead of impending doom.

Once, when I seem to have forgotten my manners, I lock
eyes on him as the skin-tagged eyelids slowly descend and sleep begins to
overwhelm him, his chin coming within a hair’s length of his sternum. But just
before chin connects with chest, his internal alarm awakens him like the
loudest of roosters.

His eyes pop open wide.

I almost want to laugh aloud, but dare not. But then
something happens that sends a start into my heart. He connects with my gaze as
if he knew I was eyeing him the whole time. Almost as if he was putting on a
show for me far more interesting than the one currently playing on the stage
below.

The truth: I feel the embarrassment well up on my face in
the form of blood. The President is a strong man but a kind man, too. And he
issues me the gentlest of the smiles as if to say, “It’s okay, young man. I
don’t blame you for eavesdropping.”

Quickly turning my head then, I try to concentrate on the
play. But such affairs fill me with the utmost disinterest if not dread. Like a
household chore that must be accomplished whether I like it or not. Oh, the
things we must do for those we love the most.

The one I love most…I shift my eyes towards her. My
Clara. I’m seated in my chair like a proper gentleman, but if only we were all
alone in this box. It might be possible for me to wrap my arms around her,
caress the soft skin on her face, run my hands through her thick hair, kiss her
tender lips. Oh, how I am counting the days until we wed, when it will be
possible to lie ourselves down together in our marriage bed, without the burden
of our clothing, our naked bodies pressed together, tightly, sweetly, lovingly.

The box door opens slowly.

So slowly, the movement of wood slab on well-oiled hinges
barely registers. Which means I hardly take notice. Initially, I’m of the
opinion that one of Lincoln’s sleepy guards is delivering a message to him as
can happen from time to time, even during performances such as this one that
are dear to Mrs. Lincoln.

Yet, the man entering quietly, but somehow deliberately,
into the box is no blue-uniformed guard. He is, instead, a tall, mustached,
dark-haired man who bears the handsome face of an actor. I have seen this face
before. Both on poster advertisements and in the newspapers. His name, however,
escapes me as he raises up his right hand to reveal something inside it.

It’s a pistol.

A small pistol that I recognize right away. A Derringer
or what’s known as a pocket cannon. When he aims the barrel of the weapon at
the back of the President’s skull, I know precisely what is about to follow.
Yet, for some reason, the reality of the situation begins to escape me. It’s as
if this man’s actions…this actor…were playing a part in a separate play
altogether or perhaps acting out a scene which is meant to distract from the
main scene being revealed on the stage. How inventive and yet odd that the
President has chosen to portray himself in a stage play so soon after the war
against Southern aggression has ceased.

A comedic line is delivered on stage. It causes the
audience to erupt in laughter. Even Mr. Lincoln goes wide-eyed while issuing a
heartfelt series of giggles.

Then the shot.

The explosive concussion reverberates throughout the
playhouse and all manner of make-believe is wiped away in the instant it takes
for Lincoln’s cerebral blood to spatter over both Mary’s and Clara’s dresses,
the latter of which is pearl white. Lincoln’s head thrusts forward, chin
against sternum, not unlike his bouts of fatigue. But this time, the bobbing is
violent and severe. I raise my left arm, reaching out for the killer with open
hands, as the President slumps into his own lap. But I can’t possibly reach
him, separated as I am from him by two grown women.

Clara turns, looks on in horror, while Mary continues to
gaze upon the play like the surreal moment is having trouble registering in her
brain. The collective gasp of the crowd fills the deadly silence when I make a
desperate lunge for the man as if attacking an entrenched enemy Rebel.

Clara screams. Mary wails and takes hold of her husband,
setting her left hand on the back of his head as if trying to put the shattered
egg of a skull back together again.

I manage to grab the killer’s sleeve on his shooting arm.
From there, I regain my balance and shift my grip to his forearm. I am just
about to physically subdue him with the utmost strength in my body, when his
left hand comes up revealing a dagger. He is quick with the weapon, slicing my
left arm from elbow to shoulder. The cut is so swiftly and expertly applied
that the pain is minimal if non-existent. All that registers is the immediate
loss of blood, a dizziness in my brain, and a sickness in my stomach. I go down
on my knees and wretch an ugly mixture of sputum and bile while Clara comes to
my aid, grabbing my collar.

“I have done it! I have avenged the Confederacy!”
shouts
the booming, stage-trained voice of the killer after pulling himself away from
me and leaping out of the box onto the stage. “Sic Semper Tyrannus!”

“My husband!” Mary Lincoln shrieks. “Someone help my
husband!”

But all I can think about as the world around me fades to
darkness, is Clara’s dress.

“You’re ruining your dress, my love,” I whisper. “It’s
covered in blood and it’s all my fault.”

When I come to, I’m chained and shackled inside a dark, dank,
colorless hell hole that smells like mold, must, and cat piss. Shaking the webs
out of my pounding head, I realize I’m sitting inside the stone-walled basement
of this old home. A basement that resembles—in my battered brain anyway—a
dungeon or, more accurately, a Civil War-era prison.

Between the bizarre dream where I assumed the role of Major
Henry Rathbone and this dark, dank place, I feel as if I’ve been transported
back in time.

The place0is half-lit with kerosene lamps positioned on wood
tables. A couple of wall-mounted wood torches are also burning, giving off a
red-orange glow. I’m still fully clothed, my bush jacket still draping my
torso. That’s a good sign. If my wrists weren’t shackled, I’d dig into my
pocket for my Swiss Army Knife. My mind begins to run through ways to free
myself. I scan the area around me for anything that might help. That’s when I
realize something…

I’m not alone.

As my eyes regain their focus, I can make out the figure of
a man standing on the opposite side of the square space. His face is shadowed,
but he’s wearing a suit with a long coat over a white shirt, an ascot, straight
trousers, and riding boots. He sees I’m awake and approaches me. As he comes
closer, I can tell that the man is Balkis but he’s pretending to be somebody
else. If I had to guess, he’s playing the role of John Wilkes Booth. His manner
of dress taken together with his long black wavy hair and overly thick
handlebar mustache are dead giveaways.

“I knew you were an asshole from the moment I met you,
Balkis,” I say, the words feeling as if they’re peeling themselves away from
the back of my throat. “But I didn’t know you were this much of a pathological
asshole.”

He slowly bends at the knees, backhands me across the mouth.
My head spins and I taste the iron of my blood on my now split upper lip. When
I get a hold of this lunatic—and I
will
get ahold of him if it’s the
last thing I do—I’m gonna break his nose.

“Silence, Yankee scum,” he barks. “I will do the talking.”

“Maybe you should put some duct tape over my mouth.”

“What, pray tell, is this duct tape you speak of?”

Who exactly is this lunatic and how did I end up inside this
place?

“Cut the shit, Balkis—”

“Stop!” He raises his right hand in a dramatic, actor-like
fashion. “Who is this Balkis?”

“It’s you, dummy. The madman who cold-cocked me upstairs.”

“I am not that man. You know me as John Wilkes Booth.”

I’m sure I’m smiling. Because I can feel the muscles in my
face tightening, contracting.

Me laughing aloud.

He bitch slaps me again.

I yank on the shackles, the sound of metal slapping against
the stone wall filling the square space. To no avail.

“Okay, Balkis…ummm, excuse me…Mr. Booth. What’s this all
about? You kill the Girvins and bury them somewhere? Did you do it so you could
somehow lay claim to their house and the dress that might be hidden inside it?
There a deed somewhere with your name newly printed on it? What did you promise
the Girvins to convince them to sign the joint over to you? Did you tell them
that you and you alone represented the university? Fool them into believing it?
And once that was done and they realized they’d been duped, you killed them in
your rather, ummm, dramatic fashion using the same weapons the real Booth used
to kill Lincoln?”

His eyes go wide. “I know nothing of which you speak,
Yankee.”

Another slap. This one hard enough to make my eyes water.
“What fucking planet are you from?”

The hand raised again.

“Wait…wait…wait, Mr. Booth. I apologize. I’m really, really
sorry about how things turned out in the war and I think you had every right to
shoot Lincoln in the head.”

He slowly lowers his hand, relaxes his grip. “That meddling
man did not only destroy the Southern union, he destroyed a way of life, and an
entire people.”

“This isn’t about slavery, is it?”

“Of course not. Man has a right to own slaves if he wishes.
This is more about one man believing he is above the law and the Constitution
of the United States of America. That was your Mr. Lincoln.”

“So, what exactly do you want of me?”

“You, Mr. Baker, are going to dig up Clara’s dress for me.”

“Why do you want it, Mr. Booth? It contains the spilled
blood of Lincoln and Henry Rathbone. Won’t it repulse you to be in the
possession of something so closely linked with the men you must abhor the most
on this flat earth?”

“On the contrary, Mr. Baker, that dress is no longer of this
earth. It is a direct link to Lincoln and his spirit. If I possess the dress, I
possess the ability to reverse the curse and haunt the man’s spirit for all
eternity. But first, you must find it for me.”

Reverse the curse…

Okay, stop the damn train because I wanna get off. What I
mean is, I’ve run into a few lunatics over the course of my career, but this
guy takes the cake and the platter it was served on, too. Call in the white
coats!

“The dress doesn’t exist. Clara’s son burned it, remember?”

“A wives’ tale to be sure. The dress was too important. Too
haunted. Too powerful to be burned. Had her boy attempted to put a lit match to
it, he would have been exposed to the curse and suffered a great injury.
Something fatal and ugly. As it is, he lived a long, healthy life which means
he went nowhere near the cursed dress.”

Upstairs in Clara’s bedroom closet…The brick wall…It’s
still there…But Balkis/Booth doesn’t know about the hole in the bedroom floor.

I think it over for a minute. Clearly this man is out of his
gourd. Nuts. Beyond nuts. On the way to the looney bin crazy. But I’m shackled
to a stone wall. And if I ever expect to be unshackled, I should probably play
along with his ridiculous game of partnering up with John Wilkes Booth to find
Clara’s ancient dress.

“Okay,” I say.

“Okay what, Mr. Baker?”

“Okay, I’ll help you, Mr. Booth.”

He pauses a moment, grows a crafty grin.

“I see now,” he says, his voice hardly more than a whisper.

“See what, whack job?”

The backhand that wallops the left side of my face doesn’t
hurt anymore. It just pisses me off further.

“How long shall we keep this up, Mr. Baker? Until I break
your jaw? Or perhaps knock out a tooth?”

“Sorry,” I say. “As you were saying…Mr. Booth?”

“I said, I see. As in, I see what you are up to. You wish to
work with me in order that I unshackle you, and once that’s done, you will do
your best to bring physical harm to my person. And that, I’m afraid, I cannot
allow.”

Okay, so he’s on to me. He might be a total looney, but he’s
not as dumb as I thought. Still, he needs to unshackle me if I’m to help him
out.

“So what are your suggestions?” I say. “I help you out by
using mental telepathy?”

“Not at all.” He smiles. Then, “On your knees.”

Staring into his big brown eyes. “Why?”

“Because I said so.”

“Sic Semper Tyrannus,” I whisper.

“Excuse me, sir?”

“Oh,” I say. “I, uhh, can’t wait to see what your sick plan
is, Mr. Booth.”

Shifting onto my knees carefully without breaking my wrists
against the shackles, he backsteps into the darker recesses of the
basement-slash-dungeon, messes with something laid out on a table, carries it
back over to me. What I see takes me by complete surprise, considering this man
is supposed to be caught up in some sort of bizarre
Twilight Zone
time
warp. It’s a belt loaded with plastic explosive.

“Allow me, please,” he says, wrapping the belt around my
waist, buckling it tightly against my lower spine.

Well, I’ll be a dumb son of a bitch. Balkis might not be
dealing with reality, but he certainly knows how to raise the stakes. He pulls
a good old-fashioned skeleton key from the pocket of his trousers and unlocks
each of my wrists.

As I stand, he holds out something that looks like a smartphone.
That’s because it is a smartphone. How odd it appears in the hand of some
reenactment aficionado flashback from 1865. And to think he pretended to never
hear of duct tape.

“One false move,” he explains. “One single attempt at
running away, or to do me physical harm, and I will punch the single digit that
will blow you straight to the kingdom of hell along with Mr. Lincoln. Do I make
myself clear?”

He could be bluffing, of course. The stuff wrapped around my
waist might be Play Dough for all I know. But I feel the weight of the belt
against my torso, and I have no reason
not
to believe it’s the real
deal. C-4, which, if detonated, would not simply cut me in two. It would pretty
much evaporate me.

“Very clear, Mr. Booth,” I say.

“We shall commence our work together,” he says. “Now tell
me, Mr. Baker, what exactly were you doing in Clara Harris’s bedroom prior to
my walking in on you?”