Frazer Lee - The Lamplighters

“Jessie! Don’t sneak up on me like that, Christ!”

Panic over, Marla noticed the flecks of tomato sauce on Jessie’s clothes and caught the first whiff of something edible from downstairs.

“Didn’t mean to startle you girl. Chill out. I called to you guys—you didn’t hear me?”

Adam and Marla both shook their heads at Jessie, who stood looking matronly surrounded by the scent of hot food, which had followed her up the stairs and onto the landing.

“Well, I made some food if you’re hungry. It’s not much but it’ll keep us going ’til some help arrives.”

“You go ahead,” Adam said, “I’ll join you guys just as soon as I’ve figured out this damn lock.”

Jessie looked puzzled, only now noticing that Adam was crouched by the door with a penknife in his hand.

“What’s with the door?”

A sharp bang replied in place of Adam, coming from somewhere behind the door.

Jessie’s face frowned a question. “What the hell is that?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. Go on, get something to eat. I don’t know how long this is going to take me.”

“Okay. You holler if you need any help. And holler loud; this house seems to devour sounds,” Jessie replied.

“Hey, just make sure it doesn’t eat all the food. You save me some,” Adam said, as the girls began their descent down the creaking stair.

Jessie winked at Marla in mock-conspiracy. Marla could barely hear the creaks of the old wood above the manic rumbling of her stomach. She was starving. Only Jessie could think of preparing food at a time like this, locked in a mansion house together while (she was sure of it) all hell was breaking loose outside. But as they approached the kitchen together, Marla’s saliva glands took over and her mouth flooded with the thankful expectation of her first hot meal in hours.

They sat in silence, wolfing down the food hungrily. The pasta was delicious, even though the spaghetti was overcooked and burned molasses-brown in places where it had escaped over the edge of the pan. Marla wiped a glob of orange-red sauce from the surface of the table next to her bowl, enjoying the feel of the smooth textured wood beneath her fingers. The table, like almost everything else in this vast house, gave the impression that it was constructed entirely from driftwood rescued from the sea. Wood paneling, formed of gnarled and mottled beams that looked like they’d been plundered from the deck of some ancient sailing ship, lined the walls all around them, adding to the strange nautical effect. Marla sucked the spilled sauce from her fingertips and returned her attention entirely to the last morsels of her meal.

“There’s more in the pan if you want it,” Jessie offered.

“Better save it for Adam,” Marla replied. “That was great though, thanks, just what the doctor ordered.”

Jessie smiled, her eyes narrowing. “You Brits are so polite. It was awful, I know, but we had to eat something. Plenty of supplies with us. Good job too, all things considered.” She paused, slurping up a long strand of spaghetti through pursed lips. “Your turn to cook next time, toots.”

“I wouldn’t advise it. Not if you don’t want food poisoning.”

“That bad huh?”

“That bad.”

“Ah, well, I guess then we’ll manage,” Jessie rose from the table, chair legs rumbling across the kitchen’s rust-red stone floor, “Let’s go explore the rest of the house.”

“Now?”

“Sure, no time like the present.”

They started with the ground floor, opening door after door into room upon room. Each time Jessie swung a door open, Marla expected to be back in the kitchen conservatory where they’d started but the house seemed to go on forever. As far as her confused inner compass could decipher, Marla was traveling in a wide circle around the perimeter of the building. Each room in the house seemed to serve a particular purpose—here, for instance was a games room stocked with a billiard table, which was clad in a formidable armor of thick, padlocked wooden covers. The table was the centerpiece of the room, surrounded by huge, also padlocked, cupboards and chests presumably stocked with board games and decks of cards. A room filled with forbidden games. Marla shivered, remembering seemingly endless games of checkers with her foster parents on rainy holidays in damp and leaky vacation rentals. As she followed Jessie out of the room and into a connecting corridor, she caught a faint scent—of damp, of remembrance. Glancing back into the room as she closed the door behind them, Marla drew a quick breath as she glimpsed a small shape flitting behind the billiard table.

“What’s up?” Jessie was like a dog straining at its leash, eager to move on and get to the heart of this vast house.

Marla blinked into the half-light, her quick eyes scanning the room. She took a couple of steps back inside to afford a better look beneath and behind the billiard table. Nothing there, save for shadows, and that smell. The scent was old and so musty she could almost taste it. It was the smell of wasting away on rainy spring evenings when you are trapped inside instead of being able to play outside. The odor was thick with the taint of boredom. Marla shuddered and quickly shut the door. She walked on without saying a word to Jessie.

They followed the corridor as it formed a sharp left turn, then another after only a short distance. Here, the corridor grew narrower and the ceiling lower, ending in a small door that occupied almost the entire meager expanse of wall up ahead.

Jessie slipped in front of Marla to try the door. She gripped the globe-shaped door handle and twisted it. The door creaked open revealing a darkened staircase descending into impenetrable blackness beneath. Jessie pointed her Maglite down the stairwell. The cool air from within played across her face like a whisper.

“Cellar,” Jessie said, and started climbing down the steps.

“Shouldn’t we let Adam know—” Marla began.

Jessie’s muffled voice cut her off in mid-sentence, “Come on, toots. Rich folks and cellars. Almost always fine wine and hard liquor where there’s rich folks and cellars.” She was already several feet away, a black shape back-lit by the flashlight’s halo as she descended.

Marla shot a look back into the corridor behind her then took her first step down into the basement of the house and into the unknown.

The stairwell opened up either side into a low-ceilinged cellar. Jessie swung her flashlight around slowly, revealing wooden beams lined with rusty copper pipes and casting cobweb shadows that seemed to dance on the walls as the beam of light moved across them. Marla followed tentatively behind, the damp cool air turning the skin on her arms to gooseflesh. Something caught Jessie’s eye, revealed momentarily in her searchlight sweep, and she quickly pointed the light at it again. Holding the flashlight steady and creeping forward, Jessie could see a mattress, child-sized and strewn with loose bedding, lying in the far corner of the cellar. Marla saw it too and walked close behind Jessie. Taking in the visual information revealed by the flashlight beam, they found themselves standing in what looked like a makeshift bedroom. Ramshackle shelves formed a perimeter around the mattress, laden with old toys—threadbare teddy bears, rusty spinning tops, a tiny broken blackboard complete with crumbling colored chalks. A tangle of soiled linen was heaped atop the unmade bed, sheets and blankets that looked like they had never been washed, their surfaces encased in a crust of filth. The mattress itself was mildewed and stained in hues of livid green and autumnal brown. A faint smell, of urine accompanied by something sickly sweet like rotting fruit, hit Marla’s nostrils suddenly and she gagged. Jessie, made of sterner stuff, seemed unfazed as she crouched down to study something lying next to the bed. Smiling, she grabbed it and held it up in the light so Marla could see. She looked at its once-bright red plastic surface and realized, bizarrely, that it was an old Fisher Price kids’ cassette player. Jessie hit the play button and a nursery rhyme sang out from the tiny speaker. “Old MacDonald had a farm, and on that farm he had some pigs.” Marla didn’t like the sound, especially down here where the air was cold and foul. She jabbed the stop button with a loud click and looked nervously over her shoulder into the gloom.