The Quickening of Tom Turnpike (The Talltrees Trilogy) (15 page)

twenty five

Samson
stopped stacking the large cans of fruit onto the bottom shelves in the Pantry.

“What
do you mean, “empty”?” he asked.

“You
know.  Empty.  How many other ways are there of saying it?” said Reggie.  This
was the first time I’d seen him really worried.  In fact, he’d been biting his
nails non-stop throughout Double Maths that afternoon and was now desperately
tense.

“Look,
we need think about this for a moment,
calmly
.  If they aren’t in the
Sick Bay, then where else could they be?”  He paused to think about it.  So did
I.

I
thought back through all of the new places I had seen in the school over the
past few days.  They could be anywhere.  There were probably still a hundred
rooms I had never seen and that was before I had even begun to think of all of
the hiding places there might be in the Forest.  There was the Round Room,
where the old headmaster and his wife were entombed; there was the whole of the
top floor, where the Masters’ Private Rooms were – I had only seen a small part
of that; there was all of the Servants’ Quarters above the Kitchens; there were
probably all sorts of rooms in the Basement I had never thought about....  But
then I realised.

“Guys,”
I said, looking up at Reggie and Samson.  “I think I know where they are.”

“Where?”
they asked urgently, at the same time.

“The
Crypt.”

Reggie
stared at me.  “What on Earth’s the Crypt?” he asked. 

I
told them again about the mysterious bronze door in the Dungeon, the one which Colonel
Barrington had been scrutinising when Freddie and I had made our ghost-hunting
expedition just before he seemed to shine his torch directly at me. 

“Well,
you know I said that Freddie and I heard that horrible groaning noise coming
out of the Dungeons just as we left.  Well...”

“Oh!”
said Samson, wide-eyed.  “I thought Freddie was making that up for the story. 
So all of that was true?”

“Not
a word of a lie.  I must admit, we made one or two things up at first to tell
the First Formers, but everything we told you guys was true.”

Samson
looked at me open-mouthed for a moment, shaking his head slowly.  “So what
you’re saying is that all the boys who’ve
apparently
been ill for the
past couple of weeks are actually trapped behind a metal door in the Dungeon?”

“Well,
that must be it.  And Barrington’s logbook said that it was best to keep them
in a damp and cool environment.  That would certainly describe the Dungeon. 
But I don’t...  Oh!”  Something else had just occurred to me.  “I’d totally
forgotten.  How
stupid
of me!”

“What
is it?” asked Reggie.

“A
key!  I found a key lying on the floor down there.  I’d forgotten about it all
this time.  How could I forget?  I wonder... well I suppose it might just be a
key to the bronze door...”

“Where
is it now?”

“I
would have pocketed it, I guess.  I suppose it must still be in my dressing
gown.”

***

“Look!”
said Reggie, pointing shakily at the floor just outside the door to the
Dungeon. 

There
was nobody in the Basement.  It was another hot evening and almost everyone in
the school, at least everyone who had not yet been spirited away by Barrington,
was passing the time between Prep and bed outside in the Forest, the Pool or
the Cricket Nets.  So there would be nobody near this part of the building. 
Anyway, most of the rooms around here were just for storage.

I
had the long, slender key clutched firmly in my hand like a robber’s knife in a
dark alley, and Reggie brandished his torch nervously, flashing the beam
unnecessarily at the marks in the dust in front of his feet.

“It
looks like something has been dragged in through the door,” said Samson.

“Or
some
one
,” added Reggie dramatically, but without jest.

I
pushed the ancient, heaving door, holding it ajar to usher past Reggie and
Samson before I let it close behind me.  The door’s werewolf growl as it shut
seemed somehow to have a quality of finality about it, like it was warning us
that it would not let us back out again, that we would be down here in the
Dungeon forever.  And Freddie’s adage that “it’s never daytime in the Dungeon”
certainly seemed to hold true.  Nothing in here gave any hint that outside it
was a glorious, balmy midsummer’s evening.  In fact, nothing in here gave any
hint that there was, or had ever been, an outside at all.

“I
hate this place,” muttered Samson, reminding me that I was not alone.

Reggie
was flashing his torch frantically into every nook and corner.  “Let’s not hang
around,” he said with a shiver.  “Where are we going?”

I
could feel the fear crawling all over me, making my arms and legs twitch with
the urge to run away.  It was different to the last time I was down here when I
was just trying to prove a point to Freddie.  A pretty stupid point, now I
thought about it.  But that was before I believed in ghost-stories – and if we
hadn’t come down here that night, maybe I never would.  I certainly wouldn’t
have been standing here now, shuddering with terror.  This time was far worse
because I
knew
that something was lurking here in the swallowing
darkness and I could not turn back and make up a story to tell the First
Formers the next day.  This time it was real.  And I needed to suppress the
tension and my instincts to flee.  In fact, I would need to be totally robotic
and emotionless.  Like a zombie, I thought with a grimace.

“Right,”
I whispered, swallowing.  “That way.  Let’s do this!”

We
crept slowly down the first passageway on the right, the one where I had found
the key lying in the dirt.  Reggie swung his torch-beam around, painting the
walls and the floor with nervous cones of orange light which seemed to yield in
submission to the unknown depths of blackness.  Perhaps it was a failure in my
memory or a trick played by fear on my mind, but the passage seemed a good deal
broader than it had been last time I was here.  But then I noticed why that
was.

“Guys,”
I whispered as quietly as I could.  “There were loads of big wooden cases along
this wall before.  Ah, look, like those down there, but loads more.”

“Hey,”
said Samson, his whisper slightly too loud for my liking.  “They look a bit
like coffins, don’t they?  I mean, they look a
lot
like coffins, don’t
they?  God... I don’t like this one bit.”

“And
look,” said Reggie, dragging the lights across the cold, dank floor.  “It looks
like people have been dragged up to about here,” he indicated the area around
where the row of boxes had begun when Freddie and I had hidden behind them. 
“And then look...”

After
that point, the dust – well it was more like damp grime and mud here – had
clear tracks through it, about two feet wide, and ending at the base of the
bronze door.  “So the boys have been dragged down here,” I said, “then loaded
into these coffin-boxes and then the boxes have been dragged into the Crypt.” 
I looked up at the bronze door.  “Guys,” I added, with the tempo of my
heartbeat rising, “I’m a bit scared!”

“Me
too,” whispered Samson and Reggie at the same time.

I
opened my right hand.  I had been clutching the key so tightly that my skin
peeled away from it to leave a deep indentation in my palm.

“We’ve
got
to do this,” I said, hoping that, by sounding defiant, I could trick
myself out of the terror.  “I don’t exactly know what we’ll find, but Barrington’s
logbook said that they shouldn’t be zombies yet, not until the eclipse of the
Moon.  Anyway, as I see it, if we don’t do something now, we’ll all either get
turned into zombies or we’ll end up getting killed by them.  Right?”

“Well
then, stop dithering and let’s get on with this!” said Reggie boldly, shining a
light on the keyhole.

The
key slid in neatly.  I turned it slowly and the lock yielded smoothly with the
faintest click.  I looked up at Samson and Reggie and then, deciding that I
ought to make the escape route as accessible as possible, I pushed the bronze
door open as far as it would go.

It
scraped grittily across the stone floor, like fingernails down a blackboard,
with an agonised banshee-shriek that rang and echoed down into the unseen
depths of the Crypt and then it boomed against whatever was behind it, which
rattled and reverberated into the darkness, causing a flutter of scratchings
and scurryings of what I could only hope were unsettled rodents.

I
was petrified, rooted to the spot, prone, exposed and utterly betrayed by
Reggie’s torchlight.  If anything was going to hurtle out of the bowels of the
Crypt and skewer me with its talons, it would be able to do so right now
without resistance and I would be pinned to the wall behind me.  And then a
horde of shambling zombies could simply take their time devouring my brains and
sucking out my bone-marrow and innards in whichever order they saw fit.  Maybe polish
off my fingers and toes for dessert.

After
an eternity, the shrieking, booming, rattling, scratching and scurrying ceased
and was replaced by a dead silence.  It felt like the eye of the storm.  I was
still frozen.  I was willing my legs to spring me out of harm’s way, but they
would not obey me until finally Samson broke the spell:

“Jesus!”
he said out loud – I suppose there was no point in whispering after that. 
“Well, seeing as we’re still alive, I suppose we ought to find out what’s in
there.”

Reggie
shone the light over my shoulder and down into the Crypt.  It was a long, arched
tunnel of brick, like a sewer, opening up to a broader area towards the back,
with thick leaden pipes running along its ceiling, dripping with mould.  The
end of the Crypt was only just visible in the gloom, a crumbling brick wall
probably thirty yards away.  There were patches of sludge and puddles on the
floor, and, in the middle, a large pile of black mud with a shovel leaning up
against it.

Reggie
passed the light down each wall.  Along both sides of the tunnel were metallic
racks made of what looked like heavy-duty Meccano.  It was obviously one of
these that had produced the rattling as the door slammed into it.  Upon these
racks, in two rows like bunk-beds, were more of the wooden boxes, laid flat.

Reggie
approached one of them tentatively and shone his torch into it. 

“That’s
odd,” he muttered.  Samson and I peered in.  The box had no lid and appeared to
be about three quarters full of mud.

“A
box of mud,” said Reggie.

“I
doubt it,” said Samson grimly.

He
began to brush away some of the dirt with his hand, layer by layer.  At first I
couldn’t see anything, but Reggie suddenly stepped back with fright.

“Oh
dear!” he said.  “We’ve
got
to get out of here!”

“Look,
just give me the torch,” said Samson.  He snatched it from Reggie and shone the
light into the soil.  And then I saw what had startled Reggie.  It was a nose. 
Someone’s nose was poking out of the mud, soft, pink and shiny.

“Lend
us a hand,” said Samson.  “Come on, Reggie.  It won’t hurt you.”

We
dragged away more and more of the dirt until the form of a face gradually began
to sculpt itself out of the grime.

“Either
of you recognise him?” asked Reggie, brushing away the last of the mud to
reveal curly blond hair and tired, flaccid cheeks, marble-pale but for patches
of ingrained dirt and darkly reddened areas around his calmly closed eyes.

“It’s
Ambrose Milligan,” I said.

“Who?”
said Reggie.

“Milligan. 
You know, played Siegfried in the First Form Play.  I think he’s been ill for
about a week,” I said and then suddenly gagged because, in the torchlight, I
just caught sight of a thin worm slipping from his nose and into the mud. 
Reggie and Samson had not noticed. 

Samson
flashed the light towards some of the other coffin-boxes around us.  None of
them had lids, some of them were empty and, in fact, most of them did not even
contain enough soil to cover the sorry occupant.  We walked along the row of
boxes with Samson muttering the names of the boys inside as he recognised them,
though some had been bundled in carelessly, face-down.  “Ingram-Edge...
Bunting... Rainwater... Spitalfields...  Ah, here’s Milo.  Oh my God!”

Samson
hovered the light over Milo’s face.  It was horrific; his eyes were wide open
in an expression of abject terror and his cheeks were drastically gaunt and
sunken, far worse than when I had last seen him.  His skin was crusty and
tinged with green and yellow like it was beginning to rot on his bones,
particularly at the edges of his mouth, his nostrils and ears.  Reggie yelped
sharply.

“L-look
at his hand.”

One
of Milo’s hands was visible above the soil in his coffin and, as I looked,
wondering what had startled Reggie, Milo’s index finger suddenly jerked. 
Samson and I jumped backwards like we had been electrocuted.