Fortress of Ephemera: A Gothic Thriller (14 page)

We caught up to Noah as he stumbled through the debris from the deadfall trap at the base of the staircase. Everything there was as we'd left it, except for one thing. When Noah's swinging lantern steadied enough, we saw that the robber Cormac lived no more. He had died not from his previous wounds but as the result of decapitation, a beheading, the removal of his top story entirely.

A New Threat

“What the hell, Langley?” I said as Miss Buxton covered her mouth and turned away from the dismemberment. He only stared into the dark, trying, I think, to locate the grunts and other rooting sounds we could hear not far away. One of his mongrel cats hopped up on top of the corpse and began feasting at the stump of the neck. In the name of decency, I kicked it away.

“Who did this?” I asked.

“Elizabeth,” he said.

“Your sister? I don't understand.”

“She must've heard the gunshots earlier,” he said, “and my trap crashing down. She summoned me with her bell, and when that failed, she panicked.”

“Panicked?” Miss Buxton said. “In what way?”

“She must've tumbled out of bed and crawled. Dragged herself, really, for she only has the use of her arms. Dragged herself across the floor, and down the hall and . . . and freed them.”

“Freed whom?” I said. “Or what?”

“Where's his head?” Miss Buxton interjected. “The man's head is missing.”

“Don't concern yourself,” I said. “This is no scene for a young woman to examine.”

“I have to know! I don't know why, but I do!”

I understood her reaction. During the Battle of the Canal du Nord, a good friend and comrade, Roger Whitcomb, had been decapitated by his own helmet as the result of a concussive blast, and I'd dropped my rifle to search for his head myself.

“It must've rolled away,” I said to Miss Buxton after a brief scan. “It's no doubt hiding somewhere in the debris.”

“Incorrect,” Noah said. “It was taken.”

“Taken?” I said. “Explain.”

“I can't,” he said. “I can't say more.”

“Why in blazes not?”

“Because I took a vow of secrecy thirty odd years ago, and I won't break it now.”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing—or rather, not going to hear. Nor could I believe what I was seeing—or thought I saw—when I bent down over the corpse to examine the wound.

“The beheading,” I said, “appears to be the result of several hacks with a dull blade.”

“That can't be,” Miss Buxton said. “It's an illusion. The poor lighting.”

“I don't think so.”

“But what animal could wield such a weapon?”

“A chimp?” I suggested. “An orangutan? A gorilla?” By now I would not have been surprised to encounter virtually anything beneath the Langley's roof, animate or inanimate.

“But those shrieks we heard earlier,” she said, “they did not sound apish.”

Those shrieks returned just then, as if summoned by their mention. The same wild ululations as before. And as before, a second voice soon joined the first. But this time, of course, the sounds were terribly close. I worried that something might jump out at us from the darkness.

“They're human cries!” Miss Buxton said. “Human, I tell you!”

“Surely not!” I said. In truth the cries struck me as part human, part animal—hybrid monsters from The Island of Doctor Moreau come to life. But for the sake of the woman I kept this impression to myself.

“They've found another corpse,” Noah said. “Patrolman Cox, I think. Next it'll be the newsboy.” Behind the cries I overheard a few hacks of steel against bone, or so I concluded.

“We can't just let them carry on this way,” I said.

“We've no choice,” he said. “Believe me.”

“I think we better,” Miss Buxton said to me.

“Come.” Noah made for the staircase, his lantern light swinging again as he stumbled through the debris. “We must make the most of it while they're distracted, while they're feasting.”

“On human brain, you mean?” I said.

“It's a delicacy for them.”

“They've had it before?”

“Brain in general. They are not particular as to the mammal.”

“So they are beasts, after all,” Miss Buxton said, “and not men?”

“Are men not beasts?” Noah said.

“A valid point,” I said, “on this night especially.”

“I am frightened halfway out of my wits,” Miss Buxton said, “and still your secrets exasperate me, Mister Langley.”

“I've already said too much,” he said.

“One thing more,” I said. “Why would your sister unleash these creatures—whomever or whatever they are—with you down here among us?”

“I imagine she hopes they will not bite the hand that feeds them.”

“Ah,” I said.

“And what of us?” Miss Buxton asked.

Noah began his ascent. “Stay close to me. Stay very close indeed.”

Main Staircase

Approximately 9:00 PM

We could not manage to stay
very close indeed
on that packed staircase, for Noah was like a mountain goat scaling a familiar precipice. We would've been swallowed up by darkness if not for a voluminous skylight overhead in the stairwell.

Miss Buxton, a step ahead of me, peeked down over the balustrade to where the entry hall was now buried in blackness.

“ 'Hell is empty,' ” I said, quoting Shakespeare, “ 'and all the devils are here.' ”

“Are you quite sure we're not in Hell ourselves?”

“Not entirely, come to think of it.”

I did not mention that my life had become a living hell long before this night. It had begun with the Great War, a procession of unpleasantries punctuated by fear and death. I'd lost close comrades—and my own left arm—while gaining a certain unshakeable horror at mankind, not excluding myself. There had been the advent of my opium addiction and, upon war's end, a new and repulsively warped American society to greet my return, instead of dear Annabel, who lay dying in our marital bed never to reach her twenty-first birthday. So to find myself trapped in a labyrinth of junk—piled with treachery, avarice, murder, and beheaded corpses—and fleeing from unseen monsters who would eat my brains struck me at that moment as almost predictable.

Noah paused on the second floor landing. “Hurry, you two!”

Miss Buxton whispered to me. “Perhaps we should rejoin the robbers instead.”

“What's that? Another jest? I can never be sure with you.”

“I'm not sure myself. All I know is there is safety in numbers.”

“Some choice,” I said. “The devil we know, or the one we don't.”

“We know enough. We know about the beheadings, the eating of brains.”

I glanced down over the balustrade. “I wouldn't relish retracing our steps.”

“An excellent point. But if we start down now, we could slip through the entry hall before . . . before . . .”

“Mealtime ends?”

“Precisely.”

“On the other hand, we might end up dessert.”

“So what would you have us do? Continue chasing after that little crackpot?”

“Harsh language for a social worker, eh, Cora?”

She sighed. “It's been a trying night.”

“To say the least.” The path upon the staircase snaked so far to the right that we had to brush up against a slimy, white carpet of mold on the wall.

“You'll pardon me,” she said, “if I find it increasingly difficult to filter my thoughts, to maintain poise and equanimity.”

“How could I not?”

She stopped and faced me. “Which direction shall it be then?”

“Don't be a ninny. Onwards and upwards.” She took to the steps again, but hesitantly, until I gave her
derrière
a swat.

“Mister Trenowyth!”

“Miles, remember?”

“Whatever happened to your manners?”

“My apologies. I don't know what came over me. Unless it's only that calamity has a way of encouraging swift intimacies.”

“I'll give you a swift intimacy. Right in the—”

“Hurry!” Noah adjured once more.

Miss Buxton, somewhat out of breath, called to Noah. “For a man with a weak heart . . . you're a spry climber, Sir.”

“I confess my heart is sound.”

“But what of the homemade digitalin?” she said. “From purple foxgloves? You seemed to know everything there was to know about—”

“I do make it,” he said. “For Elizabeth. She's the one with the heart condition.”

A few sounds wafted up from below. I did not strain to interpret them, preferring to leave the goings-on vague, indistinct.

We hadn't quite made the landing when I noticed a number of odd shadows beneath where Noah was climbing the next flight of stairs. They appeared to be the shadows of long ropes and strings. Some dangled straight down, whilst others wrapped themselves around the railing, and just as we made the landing, I stumbled over a fat one at my feet and picked it up.

“What is it?” Miss Buxton asked.

“Believe it or not,” I said, “it's a root of some kind.”

“A living root?” She stared at the roots dangling overhead. “All these?”

“Yes, something's growing up ahead.”

“Here? In this overstuffed tomb? How is that even possible?”

“We should know soon enough.”

Also on the landing was an antique office safe. It had been constructed early in the previous century, I suspect, given its tin-plate and sheet iron exterior. It stood about four feet high with a width and depth of about three feet. It was shut and locked, of course, and stuffed, I assumed, with Langley treasures of great or worthless value or anywhere betwixt and between.

“I've an idea, Cora. We cause an avalanche behind us with this office safe.”

“Ah!” she said. “To bar anyone from following.”

“Anyone or any
thing
!” I drove against the safe with my shoulder. Barely budged it. “I'll need your help.” Together, inch by inch, we slid the safe across the floorboards and toward the lower set of stairs.

“Must you grunt as mannishly as myself?” I said.

“What do you expect? There must be bars of lead inside.”

“Hey!” Noah cried from above. “What in Heaven's name are you doing?”

I explained even as Miss Buxton and I continued to push the safe toward the edge of the landing. A moment later, the metal behemoth tumbled and crashed its way down the staircase, toppling over—or taking with it—all manner of aged impedimenta. The sound was cataclysmic, and great plumes of dust shot up. An avalanche indeed!

About three quarters of the way to the bottom of the staircase, the safe knocked out a length of railing and fell over the side. A last crash issued below in the darkness and the rumble of the avalanche ceased. As the dust cleared, the brain eaters below issued another hair-raising round of their ululations, and we saw—as intended—a huge pile of debris blocking access to the base of the staircase. Noah's path leading upwards through the clutter had been obliterated too, leaving behind a difficult, nigh impassable, obstacle course—at least for a human being.

We had just turned to go on when there came a tremendous creak from all directions, and the landing jiggled beneath our feet.

“What's happening?” Miss Buxton said, frozen in place, as indeed I was.

“The structure's giving way.”

“The entire staircase?”

“Let's hope not.”

The jiggling soon ceased. “Dare we move?” she asked.

“What choice have we?”

“You damn fools!” Noah cried. He kept on in that vein for some time as we made our way across the landing and began to climb the next flight of stairs. He knew more imprecations than I would have guessed.

“I apologize profusely,” I said to Noah, “and promise to pay for the repairs to the staircase and, uh, all other damages.”

“See that your word is good.” He turned to go on. “I wouldn't wish to sue.”

With the staircase now partly unmoored, the walls groaned and the steps swayed an inch or two as we advanced. The white mold on the wall that we'd brushed past on the lower flight of stairs proved a harbinger of sorts, for the dank and musty air grew more so, and more mold—in assorted colors, textures, and odors—attached to the walls, and the Victorian wallpaper peeled more and more, whilst the mahogany beneath our feet grew slick with moisture and began to rot. Narrow carpentry nails began to poke through the wood, one piercing Miss Buxton's shoe leather and stabbing her toe.

“God help us,” she said.

“He won't,” I said. “We're in Hell now. Remember?”

“Do you really think so?”

“No, not really. But if I'm wrong, and that's indeed the case, then I haven't just arrived. I've been in Hell since the 12
^th
day of April, 1918.”