Late at Night (16 page)

It kept nagging at him, a compulsion to investigate. He had the oddest feeling that the girls were down there. Ridiculous, he told himself. They were too scared to even go into the house, let alone go down into the basement. No one had seen them walk into the mansion in any case. But what if there was another entrance? Theodore Langford had built several secret passages, and there might have been a few even before the bootlegger took possession of the house. The girls had found one of those passages, he was sure of it.

But how could he know that?

It came back to him in a flash.

The book.

There had been something about two young woman getting trapped in the basement, getting
—Oh My God!
No, it couldn’t be true, couldn’t be real. He had
dreamt
it all, that had to be it. The book. Everything. Nothing but his imagination. It simply could not have been real.

He didn’t remember what the protagonist—his literary counterpart—had done once it was mentioned that the housekeepers in the novel were missing, but he knew that nothing had happened to “him” so early in the story. He was safe enough. A part of his mind kept shouting—
are you crazy? you’re acting as if that book was for real, as if it actually was a prediction of forthcoming events in real life—
but he couldn’t afford to take chances. He had to find out for sure.

The others were gathering at the end of the house, peering around the corner to look for him. “Are you coming?” Cynthia shouted impatiently. “We’d like to go back to the house.”

Bitch.
“Look, give me a minute,” he called. “I want to check something out.” He started running towards the others. “Has anyone got a flashlight of some kind. I just have this feeling …”

Lynn was digging in her purse. Everson flapped a hand to his forehead. “I knew I should have brought one along. Luckily there was enough light inside the mansion.”

“Ah ha!” Lynn held up a silver sliver. “I found one. A pen light. Will that do?” It seemed she had everything but the kitchen sink in her shoulder bag.

“Good enough.” He grabbed it and ran back around the corner, ignoring the others’ pleas for an explanation.

The window opened with one good shove. The glass was cracked and some of it fell out as he pushed the frame up on its hinges. He gingerly slid through the opening, dropped to the ground, stood up quickly. He heard squealing sounds from the darkness. Rats. Smelled like them, too.

He tried to concentrate, to remember exactly what he had read in—what was it called?—
Late At Night,
but most of it eluded him. Only three things came through clearly. Housekeepers. Basement. Death.

This was the basement, all right. There was a stone floor and brick walls—he could make out that much in the light from Lynn’s pen—and the whole place was so cluttered with boxes and covered furniture that you could hardly take a step without walking into something.

This was only one room, he thought. Judging from the dimensions of the place he was in, it certainly did not run the width and breadth of the mansion, or even just the house’s main section. That meant there were probably other rooms, other cellars, maybe even subcellars or crawl spaces deep underground, for him to look into. He might be able to cut down on the time if he called the girls’ names out loud. Feeling just a little bit foolish, he started yelling: “Joanne. Emily.
Joanne.”

No answer. He moved towards the right, hoping he could find a door. Might as well look around while he was down here.

Stumbling across and around the dust- and sheet-covered bric-a-brac he finally got to the far wall and started looking for an entrance to another room or a staircase to a level below. He shined the light across the brickface, searching carefully for any seams or cracks which would indicate an opening of some kind. Ah—there it was. A narrow, not very high wooden door slightly recessed in the wall.

He opened the door. Two rats came hurling up a staircase behind it. He jumped back, startled, then laughed at his nervousness. The rats were probably more scared than he was.

He started down the stairwell, somehow knowing this was it, the right way to go. The odor as he descended was indescribably foul and noxious. He was halfway down when he raised the light to study the ceiling of the chamber he was entering. He saw eyes glowing back at him, saw skittish movement up in the beams supporting the cellar above.
Bats.
What were they doing down here? They were supposed to be up in the attic, weren’t they? Everything on this island was confused.

He reached the bottom of the stairs. The bats shifted in their places nervously, but otherwise stayed put, for which he was grateful. This sub-basement was more like a cavern than a room; maybe that’s what had attracted the bats.

He called out the names of the girls, but there was no answer.

He noticed that his feet made squishy sounds with each step he took; there was some kind of grayish mush spread out in different places on the moist dirt ground. His light hit upon a grating in the wall. He assumed it was a conduit for water in case the chamber got flooded. He could hear more rats scurrying back into the darkness, and saw the wiggling rears of little worms as they burrowed back into their hiding spots. There was a pile of boxes over in one corner, tumbled this way and that in disarray as if someone had walked into them. One box, flat on the ground, seemed half-full with a squirming mass. Ernie wanted to get a closer look, but couldn’t overcome his revulsion.

And then he saw the skeletons.

Two of them, bones picked clean, not a scrap or shred of meat or clothing anywhere. Lying in the dirt, they looked as if they had been there for years. Ernie bent down for a closer look.

Skeletons. Two of them.

Ernie put his hand to his mouth, and tried to chase away the horrible thoughts revolving in his brain.

Something told him these skeletons were not nearly as old as they looked.

PART FOUR

Afternoon

Chapter 29

“I think we’d better go out and look for them,” Everson was saying. “Mrs. Plushing is half out of her mind with worry. Frankly, I’m a little concerned myself. I’ve never thought of Joanne and Emily as the kind of flibbertigibbets who’d play a joke like this.”

The group was gathered in the guest house living room. Everyone was there but Anton and Gloria; Hans and Eric, who were repairing something outside; Mrs. Plushing, preparing dinner unassisted; and the two missing girls. The others had eaten a hasty lunch, coffee and sandwiches, then moved into the lounge. Lynn sat on the piano bench, and Everson stood at her side, discussing the problem with the group. Though he was outwardly calm, Everson’s eyes betrayed a creeping anxiety, as if the girls’ disappearance was only the beginning of their troubles.

Ernie sat on the sofa next to Andrea and Cynthia. He wanted to open his mouth and tell everyone that somehow he sensed he had found the girls already, but there was nothing he could say to make his story sound believable. Two skeletons picked clean were all that remained of Joanne and Emily? Preposterous, they would say. And he wouldn’t have blamed them. They’d ask him how he knew this, and he would tell them that he remembered reading it in a book the night before, although it was all a little foggy. And they would say, What book? Where is it? And he would have to stare at them blankly and admit that he didn’t know where it was, wasn’t sure it had ever even existed, or if it was just the result of a fever in his brain.

He desperately needed to talk about this with Andrea. The whole trip back from the old house she’d been discussing the mansion with Betty and Anton, as if she didn’t want to hear any more of what he had to say. Her behavior in the library had been so strange, that odd remark about “Horatio.” That was something else he had to get to the bottom of.

“No one remembers seeing the girls after we got out of the house?” Everson was asking. “No one heard or saw anything?”

“Have you asked Hans and Eric?” Cynthia said, biting the nails of her right hand with dogged intensity.

“Yes, yes.” Everson waved away the suggestion with his arm. “They were here all afternoon. Saw nothing. Same for Gloria.”

“They must have gotten lost,” Andrea said, shivering. “Poor things. Out there alone. And it’ll be getting dark soon.”

“That’s why I suggest we get moving while there’s still some light. The girls must have wandered off the path at some point. They’re probably all right. Given enough time they’d probably make it back safely on their own. But it’s getting later and they might have lost track of the time.”

Ernie stood up. “How many in each search party?” he asked his cousin. “Or should we all concentrate on the path to the old house?”

“Really,” Cynthia said with impatience, “aren’t we all being a bit serious about this? I mean, the girls decided to go off and do a little exploring, so what? So they’re dawdling a little to get out of peeling the potatoes for Mrs. P. Big deal. They’ll come back. We’re all acting as if its three in the morning on Saturday night and they haven’t come home from the prom yet. Give it awhile.”

Everson paused, although there was clearly something on his mind. Finally he sighed and said, “You may have a point, Cynthia, but my feeling is, why take chances? If we are to believe what Mrs. Plushing has told us, Joanne and Emily can be very suggestible, excitable, emotional young women, appearances to the contrary. Who knows what trouble they might have gotten into?”

Be all right,
Ernie found himself ordering the housekeepers.
Be all right. Let those skeletons belong to somebody else. Come home safe and sound. And alive. Please. Please.
In the sane, rational portion of his brain, he sided with Cynthia. Mystical books that foretold death and then vanished did not exist in the real world. People were not skeletonized in mere hours in the real world. But in the dark recesses of his mind a question kept forming, and though he tried to shake it away, to dispel it, it simply would not disappear.
Who says that this
is
the real world anymore?
It was beginning to be more like a nightmare. And though he told himself he was letting the place’s reputation, the eerie atmosphere of the island, get the better of him, he still couldn’t shake the spectre of dread and paranoia that he felt. The house hadn’t really breathed, he knew that. It was just an illusion, that was all. The girls were not dead; they were just lost, playing, exploring. That was all. Now if he could only convince himself of that.

He put the somber thoughts out of his mind and again paid attention to what was going on. Everson was dividing them up into search teams, handing out flashlights. Ernie and Andrea would go together. Lynn and Everson. Cynthia and Jerry. Betty could help Mrs. Plushing with the supper.

And then Gloria and Anton came back into the room.

“Did you get any sun today?” Lynn asked pleasantly.

Gloria wore a scowl on her face that was nearly indescribable. Her cheeks were bright red underneath her makeup, and her eyes were close to popping from their sockets. She ignored Lynn’s question and said, “I want to go on this search party, too. I want to go with Cynthia. Yes, that’s right, dear. You and I will make a lovely pair, don’t you think,
Cyn
darling? You and I, out alone in the woods. We have so much to talk about.”

Jerry’s face was blank. Cynthia looked quite pale.

Sensing a volcano about to erupt, Everson continued handing out the flashlights, assigning areas to the different couples.

“Glo, why don’t
you
go with Jerry?” Cynthia suggested, rising to her feet.

“I’d rather stay here. I think this is a waste of time anyway.”

Over at the bottom of the stairs, Anton stood with his arms crossed, a devious smile on his face. Ernie had no trouble determining that the pianist had told Gloria all about Cynthia’s rendezvous with Jerry.

Glo would not desist. “I think Jerry is too
tired
to go traipsing in the woods, aren’t you, Jerry? No, Cynthia, I think you and I will take a walk together. I think that would be a very good idea.”

“Well, I don’t want to go for a walk,” Cynthia snapped. “You go. You look as if you could use the exercise.”

Gloria stepped forward and slapped Cynthia across the face. The strike was so hard and so well-executed that it nearly took the younger woman’s head off. Gloria stood there shaking with fury, momentarily triumphant, steeling herself for a retaliatory blow. Cynthia rubbed her cheek and glared at Anton. “Anton! You
shit!”
she screamed.

Anton smiled.

Always one to avoid awkward social situations, Everson hustled Lynn out the door and told the others to follow at their convenience. Andrea chose to play the role of peacemaker. “Listen, guys—this is not the time.”

Gloria was livid. “Shut up!” Ernie studied Jerry’s face but, whatever the man might have been thinking or feeling, his countenance was a calm and immutable mask. Was there a touch of panic on the corner of his lips, a strange near-hysteria about the eyes, or was the face itself still and inscrutable?

Ernie went over to Andrea and touched her shoulder. “Listen. Let them work it out themselves. It’s starting to get dark.”

Andrea hesitated. “I guess you’re right. It’s more important to find the girls.”

Cynthia had already chosen to ignore the whole thing. Cowed into submission by Gloria’s savage blow, she was over at the bar fixing herself a drink. Gloria was looking at Jerry now. “You—you miserable ingrate,” she said. “Here. With
her.
On this island. After all I’ve done.” Then she brushed past Andrea and Ernie, sobbing and shaking, and ran out of the house to the beach.

Andrea was alarmed. “She’s so upset. We’d better go after her.”

“Leave her.” The sound of Jerry’s voice was startling after such a long period of silence. “She needs to be alone now.” He gave a hoarse and nervous laugh. “This has happened before. I’ll go get her later.” Whether he was worried about losing the relationship or a source of income was unclear.