The Solemn Bell (2 page)

Brody sank to his knees in the wet gravel. He flattened himself on his stomach, trying to wedge through the space at the bottom of the gate. Of course, that did not work. People who built gates were not fools. They’d perfected the art of keeping intruders out centuries ago. No matter how badly he wanted inside, Brody wasn’t going to crack some long-held secret of gate breaking.

He was thinking like a desperate addict, not an intelligent, capable man. Dragging himself to his feet, he walked a few paces alongside the stone wall. It was solid as far as he could see. Eight feet high. Ivy-covered. He couldn’t scale it, but there was a beech branch hanging just low enough that he might find a way in from above.

He hadn’t climbed trees since he was a boy. He was in no shape to do so now, but Brody was determined to get over that wall. A perfectly good manor house waited on the other side, and, if not a doctor’s residence, he could surely find something useful in there—a forgotten bottle of whiskey, perhaps. Anything to numb the pain.

Brody lifted himself onto the tree limb. It danced in the wind, making his stomach churn. He inched out, white-knuckled, toward the stone wall. When he thought he could clear the gap, he slid down foot-first until the toe of his boot touched the top of the wall.

From there, he straddled the stone wall, peering down into the forecourt. Mostly grass lay below, and some bushes to cushion his fall. Brody sank down into the wet shrubberies with hardly a groan. If he ever became hard-up for money, he might earn a living as a burglar. At any rate, he’d made it to the other side of the gate. Nothing stood between him and the house now.

He limped across the forecourt, stopping only once to be sick in the bushes. The stone manor was shuttered. Ivy clung desperately to the walls, as if it was the only thing holding the old pile together. There were lots of chimneys, but, regrettably, none of them smoked. The entire property looked abandoned, and well on its way to becoming derelict. A shame. With a little work, the place could be a real charmer.

Brody climbed the slick stone steps to the front entrance. Ivy had intruded there, also, spreading its bare, brown fingers across the doorway. He pulled some of it away. No one had been in the manor in a very long time. Brody’s heart pounded at he twisted the knob and heaved the heavy, wooden door open.

The hinges screamed, but swung wide. Wind from the storm outside blew dust and old papers across the filthy floor. Coughing, Brody slammed the door behind him. He squinted in the dark. The place was wired for electricity, judging by the lamps overhead, but he didn’t bother trying the switches. For once, darkness was welcome.

He fumbled his way through the hall, careful not to touch anything, lest it crumble to dust in his hand. He walked until he reached a long, oak-paneled corridor. Normally, he would have been curious to know what the rest of the house looked like. That night, he just wanted to find a place to be sick in peace.
 

Brody ducked into the first open doorway he saw. It led to a drawing room, though the space had seen better days. Faded wallpaper fell away in sheets, and the heavy draperies were moth-eaten and full of holes. He sliced his way through the cobwebs toward an upholstered sofa at the edge of the room.
 

It would do for a night. God knows, he’d slept in worse places. After testing his makeshift bed to see if it was sturdy, Brody sank down into the sagging cushions. Dust billowed around him.
 

Damned fool. He should have at least kicked the dirt off first.

He coughed and choked, but coughing hurt his ribs, and choking pained his raw throat. His stomach lurched and the room swayed as his vision dimmed. Brody reached out blindly into the dark, his fingers finally finding their mark—he shouted in agony, and then got sick into a vase of dead flowers.

CHAPTER THREE

She heard the commotion coming from the drawing room upstairs. This wasn’t the first time someone had broken in, though past intruders had typically been looking for private, disused places to make love with their sweethearts, not to burgle or vandalize her home. But, from the noise this one was making, Angelica feared the worst.

Usually, she kept to the kitchens, and the young lovers kept to the rooms upstairs. In all the years she’d been alone in the house—to her knowledge—no one had ever discovered her. She felt certain that, if they had, someone would have come for her by now.
 

Thankfully, no one ever came.

Angelica had become a master of keeping to the shadows, and, ironically, remaining out of sight. She knew exactly which stair creaked. She knew precisely where to tread so the carpets muffled her footsteps on the old, worn floorboards. She kept the drapes drawn, and never burned the lamps. Darkness was her world, and whoever wandered the rooms upstairs surely stumbled in the absence of light.
 

Darkness would hide her from the intruder upstairs. Most likely, he merely sought refuge from the storm. He would be gone by daylight, or sooner, if the weather cleared. Until then, she prayed that he wouldn’t come down to the kitchens in search of food. There was precious little of that anyway, but it was harder for her to hide with someone opening cupboards and rummaging through the larders. If he were to switch on the lights, then there would be nothing to save her.

The shadows were both her friends and her enemies—her one advantage, as well as her greatest weakness.

Angelica tried to block out the sounds coming from upstairs. In her world of quiet darkness, a whisper might as well have been a scream. Listening to some strange man—she knew it was a man by the weight of his footsteps—overturning furniture and getting sick in her mother’s favorite room was torture on her already raw nerves. There would be no sleep tonight.

She tossed and turned on her pallet by the stove. It was the only warm place in the house because she dared not light a fire.

Fire was something she feared more than anything—even more than the asylum. If her house went up in flames, she would not make it out alive. There would be no one to save her.

Pushing that fear from her mind, Angelica tried in vain to sleep. The man upstairs was so angry and loud. He’d begun to shout and curse—not at anyone in particular; she knew he was alone, but it was still so frightening. He was obviously troubled. Possibly dangerous.
 

Really, she should bar the kitchen door. But, even then, a powerful man could easily break it down and strangle her where she lay. The only way to save herself was to keep him from coming downstairs at all.

Angelica hadn’t known many men in her life, but she remembered Freddie had been perpetually hungry. He could eat three plates of Sunday roast and still have room for dessert. If this man was anything like her elder brother, he would soon come looking for a meal.

Rising off her pallet, she fumbled around for something worth eating, for something she could part with, if only to prolong her life for a few hours more. She gathered some fruit, and went to the basin to wash it. She took a cup from the drying rack, and then filled it with fresh, cold water—it was easy to keep things cold in this frigid place. Most mornings, she had to break the ice in the pitcher just to wash her face.

Hopefully, this clutch of apples would be enough to sustain the stranger. Angelica climbed the stairs from the kitchens to the servants’ corridor. The servants were long gone, of course, but she could pass through these areas without suspicion. Even in a derelict old house, trespassers preferred to keep to the family areas. She felt comfortable enough to walk quickly toward the baize door separating her world from his.

Stopping at the panel, she paused to listen. He was mumbling to himself, talking nonsense. Obviously, this man was distressed. He was injured—she could smell blood on him. But that wasn’t all. He was sick and rotten. He stank of general decay.

She pulled back from the door. Whatever it was that plagued him frightened her. She’d never encountered anything like it before. Honestly, Angelica doubted if this man could physically consume the meager fare she’d brought him. He needed a doctor rather than food.

“Aghh!” His screams echoed through the hallway. “Christ Jesus!”

Angelica heard his boot heels rake the carpet, and the sofa creak and groan as his body contorted. She clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from crying out. His pain was an almost physical thing, heavy and sour in the air. She wanted to run from it.

He would probably die from whatever ailed him. If he died here, she would never get him out of the house. His corpse would pollute her home. The flies would come, just like when the food had first spoiled in the kitchens. He would rot and reek, and the smell would draw animals from the wood. It might even make her ill, too. His death would surely drive her from the only place she called home.

This wasn’t like the urgent, moaning couples who’d entered her house before. They’d wanted nothing more than to please themselves. She could afford to ignore them as they copulated in her mother’s drawing room, or mussed the sheets of her own bed upstairs. Those couples would leave once they were sated. This man, however, needed refuge. He needed what little help she could give. If he died here, he would never, ever leave this place.

Angelica knew she should let him suffer in peace. It was the only way to save herself. But she’d been alone for so long. She knew how it felt to be afraid, with no one to turn to for comfort. At the very least, she should offer him food and water. It would be the Christian thing to do.

CHAPTER FOUR

Brody’s gut cramped, and his body convulsed, spewing vomit down his coat front. It dripped off him and splattered onto the carpet at his feet. He’d been sick so much that it had started to puddle.

He was dying, surely. If he wasn’t, he wished he were. Death would be easy compared to this. Hellfire and eternal damnation would be a kindness. He did not want to suffer anymore. He’d left his service revolver in the car, or else he would’ve ended it all in this forgotten place.

Anything to keep the morphine sickness at bay.

Countless times, Brody had begged for death, only to reach for the syringe when survival loomed eminent. He didn’t like living, but, if truth be told, he was too much of a coward to pull the trigger. Keeping himself doped was the blessed in-between—not quite life, but not death, either. A way to pass the time until nature took its course.

Groaning, he angled himself onto his side, so he could be sick directly onto the floor. He was sorry to ruin such a costly carpet, but the vomit was starting to seep through his tweeds. From the state of the house, Brody doubted anyone would miss the thing, and if they could afford to abandon it, then they could surely afford to replace it. Tonight, he needed his clothes more than anybody needed a dust-caked Turkey carpet.

Though the storm raged outside, the house was surprisingly sound. It was a solid, sturdy place, despite the neglect. Once or twice, he thought he heard mice scraping in the walls, but most of these old country manors were home to far more than human inhabitants. The mice probably shared their space with bats, spiders, and all sorts of creepy-crawlies.
 

Ever since the trenches, he feared rats gnawing at his fingers and toes. He knew how quickly those insidious rodents could render a corpse unrecognizable. If he died here tonight, he’d really rather not be found half-eaten and peppered with their feces.

A creak of wood paneling just over his shoulder brought his mind back into focus. Another creak. For a moment, he swore the panel shifted. Surely, his senses were playing tricks on him. Rats could not move walls.

More creaking. This time, however, he knew the panel had shifted. He watched it move.
 

Brody slung the vomit-filled vase at that portion of the room. It shattered on impact, coating the wall with his sick. There was a squeak—a wounded rat, no doubt—but then, silence.

“Get out of here, damn you!” he shouted at the offending rodent. “Stay away from me!”

When the rat answered back, Brody knew the morphine sickness had finally taken hold.
 

“I’m sorry. I’ve only come to bring you water. And…and some fruit.”

A girl rat. The voice was scratchy and unsteady, but, then again, he doubted very much that rats spoke human English regularly. It would be as foreign to them as it now sounded to his ears.

“Vile rodent! You’ll not chew my fingertips!” He reached for something else to throw, but there was only the bundle of dead flowers, which had already begun to crumble.

The shadows stirred just over his shoulder. “I’m not here to chew your fingertips.”
 

“Then what the devil do you want from me?”

A pale hand reached out from the darkness, clutching a red apple. “Here, take this.”

Brody took it. The thing was poisoned, no doubt. He’d heard the tales as a child. Creatures from the shadows did not typically offer apples to strangers that were not deadly. But, he reckoned, at least he’d be dead by morning.

He bit into it, letting the juices quench his sandpaper throat. It was good and ripe. Death would be sweet, indeed.

The pale hand put forward a glass of water. “I thought you might be thirsty.”

Brody snatched the cup from her hand, gulping down the water. It burned his lips and throat, which were raw from heaving up the contents of his stomach. He hadn’t expected the water to be so cold. It didn’t sit well, and he lurched forward as it threatened to come back up.

While he spewed the water on the carpet, the shadow-girl placed her pale hand on his shoulder. It was a comforting gesture. Comfort was completely foreign to him, though. If he’d had the strength, he would have knocked her hand away. But, as he retched until he tasted blood, Brody was thankful to know he wasn’t quite so alone.

She patted him soothingly. “You’re very sick.”

“Obviously.” He heaved one last time, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Who are you?”

The hand retreated to the shadows. “I am nobody.”

“Are you a ghost?”