Barbara Michaels - The Walker in Shadows

The others ignored her.

"Hey, that's right," Mark said. "Kathy. Shovel."

"In the garage," said Josef. He slid to one side so that Kathy could pass him. Again he and Pat exchanged eloquent glances.

"We've got to watch the time," she whispered.

"Almost three hours yet. Don't worry, I'll keep track."

Kathy returned with the demanded implement and handed it to Mark. He began to dig. The earth was hard-packed, but it was damp and-as it turned out-only about eight inches thick. Pat and Josef, abandoning their pretense of disinterest, watched as Mark gradually uncovered a flat wooden surface. The rusted iron ring made its function clear.

"Trapdoor," Josef muttered. "I'll be damned."

But for a moment no one moved. Mark leaned picturesquely on his shovel, mopping his damp forehead with his sleeve; and Josef, too fascinated to resist any longer, came to his assistance. He tugged at the ring, his face reddening with effort.

"Stuck," he grunted. "We need a chisel, Mark. On the workbench."

Mark pried and Josef pulled. At first it seemed that they were making no progress. The hinges gave way all at once, sending Josef sprawling. A dark, square hole gaped. From it came a breath of air as stale as death itself.

Mark turned on the flashlight. Its beam showed sagging wooden steps descending into darkness.

"Wait," Josef said, as Mark turned preparatory to descending. "Those steps don't look very solid."

Mark put his foot on the top step and pressed. The whole structure collapsed in a shower of splinters.

"Termites," Mark said. "Or damp. The floor is only about six feet down. Here, hold the flashlight."

He handed it to Josef and lowered himself, disregarding his mother's groan of protest. Josef kept the flashlight steady. It illumined Mark's sweating face as he stared up, but showed nothing else.

"I'm standing on the floor," Mark said. "Come on down."

"At the risk of sounding like a coward, I'd like to be sure I can get up again," Josef said. "Wait till I get a stepladder."

He lowered it to Mark, who held it steady while first Pat and then Kathy went down. Pat had caught the fever. Forbidding as the dark hole appeared, she would have fought anyone who suggested she remain above. Josef was the last to descend. He brought the flashlight with him, and handed it to Mark. Not until then did Pat see the nature of the place into which they had descended.

The room had once been virtually airtight, every crack carefully sealed. It was so no longer. The insidious damp of Maryland soil had crumbled the mortar between the stones; water had seeped in and dried and seeped again, so that the lichen-stained walls bulged ominously in places. The damp had affected the objects in the room too. There was nothing left of the bed except a low, irregular platform, and even less remained of what had lain upon the bed. Its shape was due more to suggestion than to actual form; but enough was there to bring a suppressed cry from Kathy.

"It's okay," Mark said-but his own voice was not quite steady. "Could be worse."

He turned the flashlight beam full on the bed.

The rotted remains of a sheet or blanket covered the shape below, but things protruded here and I here:.1 rounded curve of skull, the end of a long bone-a femur, probably, Pat guessed.

"Human," she said softly.

"Oh, yes." Mark said, turning the light away from the pitiful remains. It illumined smaller piles of decay and stopped at one. There was little to distinguish this heap from the others-once pieces of furniture-but Mark stepped to it and fumbled in the debris for a few minutes before producing a handful of metal disks.

"Buttons," he said. "Stamped 'CSA.' He put his uniform on the chair before…"

"A Confederate soldier," Josef muttered. "Then this room was something like a priest's hole. The Trumbulls concealed fugitives-"

"And spies," Mark said. "You guys are really dense. Didn't you understand all those hints in Mary Jane's letters? She couldn't be explicit, not at the time she was writing, but her friend knew what she meant. This was one of the stations on the Confederate spy circuit. The location is perfect-isolated, only a few Billet from the river-"

"With the Bateses right next door?"

"There was a wall," Mark said. "Remember? The houses aren't that close. On a moonless night one man, creeping through the underbrush, wouldn't be seen or heard. The very fact that it was so close to the Bateses would disarm suspicion. People would think they wouldn't dare. But it was typical of the Turnbulls-that damn-your-eyes bravado."

"This man was no spy," Josef said. "He was in uniform. A fugitive from one of the nearby battles, perhaps. Wounded, hidden by the Turnbulls… Come on, Kathy, stop sniveling; it's only bones."

Kathy gulped and wiped her face with her fingers.

"She's got more sense than you have," Mark said in disgust. "You still don't get it, do you? Not just anybody's old bones. They're his."

"You don't mean-"

"Yes, I do mean. They're his . That's Peter Turnbull- what's left of him."

Prove it," Pat said. Then, as Mark took a step toward the rotted bed, she exclaimed, "No, don't… don't."

"I bet I could prove it," Mark said. "He was probably carrying identification. A watch, a locket with his dear old mother's hair… Or, speaking of hair, maybe some of his-"

"For God's sake, Mark." Even Josef was shaken by this callous speech. "You are without a doubt the most ghoulish-"

"What's ghoulish about this?" Mark demanded, in tones of honest surprise. "This is just leftovers, like old clothes. Compared to what we've seen lately, this is clean and normal."

"You have a point," Josef admitted. "And, since you have been right about everything else, I suppose you're right about this. Would you care to explain to us idiots why Peter Turnbull's bones are lying here, unburied and unconsecrated, in the cellar of his own home?"

"Not exactly unconsecrated," Mark said. "She covered him up. And… there were flowers."

From the tatters of the blanket he lifted a cobwebby coil, a fragile ghost of vegetation. It crumbled into dust as he touched it, but a hundred years ago it might have been a wreath.

"She covered him?" Josef repeated, sounding like the idiot he had called himself. "No, it's no use; I cannot possibly follow your… Mark. This is where it comes from, isn't it?"

"Yes," Mark said. "This is where, and this is why. If you'll just wait a minute-"

"Wait? Here? When that cursed thing may… Or does it only come at one a.m.?"

"Well, now, I wouldn't swear to that," Mark said. "We're getting awfully close. In fact, I've got most of it figured out. That's what this is all about-figuring out what really happened. It didn't want-"

Mark's sentence ended in a choked gurgle as Josef grabbed him by the collar.

"Are you telling me, you unprintable delinquent, that you want the thing to come? That you deliberately, with malice aforethought, brought us down here so that it would… Let's get out of here."

He released his grip and turned to Pat.

"No, wait," Mark gasped. "It's all right. I can handle it. We've got to have a confrontation, right here, where it happened, that's the only way… Ah. Here we go." He pointed; his voice shook with an uncomfortable blend of triumph and revulsion. " 'Look, here it comes again.' "

He stepped forward, in front of the others. Josef gathered Pat into one arm and Kathy into the other. "If we survive this," he muttered, "I'm going to kill that boy."

Pat leaned against him, incapable of speech, as the indescribable aura invaded the room. Mark's flashlight was dimmed by the ghastly whirling light. As the light strengthened, two burning blue spots formed in its core.