Amy.
And Adam.
He kept telling himself there wasn’t anything he could do, but it didn’t help, and finally he’d tossed his books aside and decided to go to bed. But even that didn’t help, and now, with the moon shining brightly in through the window, he didn’t think the glow of his computer screen would show up, even if anyone happened to look up at his window. Slipping out of bed, he pulled his bathrobe on against the chill from the open window, slid his feet into his fur-lined slippers, and sat down at his desk, switching on the monitor of his computer.
He began playing one of his favorite games, an adventure in which he took the part of a wizard, making his way through dungeons and caverns, doing battle with the monsters that appeared out of the darkness with whatever tools came to hand. But as he played the game, his imagination took over, and in his mind the image on the screen became the Academy itself; the maze of caves and dark rooms transmogrified into the corridors of the mansion.
The princess in the game became Amy, and he himself was transformed into a knight in shining armor.
The game went on, but more and more Josh found himself playing the game in his own mind.
What if it was true?
What if Amy wasn’t gone at all?
What if she was still in the house somewhere?
The idea grew in Josh’s mind, until he abandoned the computer altogether, leaving the monitor still glowing with an image of a black-clad villain guarding the gate to a castle perched on a hill.
He went to the door, opened it a crack, and peered out into the corridor. It was empty. Empty, and silent.
He left his room, pulling the door closed behind him so gently that only a soft click was heard as the latch caught.
A click that sounded to Josh like a rifleshot in the silence of the house.
He froze, waiting for one of the other doors to open, already preparing a small white lie to explain his absence from his bed.
No doors opened. No one appeared to challenge him.
He stole silently down the hall to the stairway, and hesitated.
Up, or down?
Not up. If Amy was in the house, they wouldn’t put her on the third floor, where the other kids might hear her.
No, they would put her in the cellar. Maybe tied up.
Maybe even drugged.
His heart began to pound with anticipation as he crept down the broad flight of stairs to the main floor.
In the dimly lit foyer he paused once again. The chandelier’s soft glow barely held the darkness back. In Josh’s imagination, every shadowy corner held something watching him, something lurking, waiting to leap out at him.
He almost lost his nerve, but when he remembered once again the look of stark terror on Amy’s face that afternoon, and imagined the peril she might now be in, his courage flooded back to him. He scuttled across the foyer into the great dining room, barely illuminated by the spill of the weak light from the hall chandelier.
Between it and the kitchen, he knew, were the stairs leading down to the basement.
He came to the door, reached out with a trembling hand, and tried the knob.
As it turned, part of him almost wished it had been locked.
He pushed the basement door open, cringing as its hinges creaked. He stood still in the gloom of the butler’s pantry, staring down into the blackness of the cellar below.
Alight.
There had to be a light somewhere down there.
He reached into the darkness, feeling along the wall inside the basement’s door. His hand touched something that moved, scuttling off into the darkness as Josh jerked his hand away. His skin crawled as he imagined what the creature might have been, and he almost gave up the adventure and returned to the safety of his bed.
A moment later, though, he regained control of his nerves and quickly reached once more into the blackness,
sweeping his hand upward, so that his fingers would catch any switch that might be there.
It worked, and a naked light bulb flashed on at the bottom of the stairs. Josh stared at it in shocked amazement for a split second, then quickly stepped through the doorway, pulling the door shut behind him. He was standing on a landing at the top of a steep flight of rickety-looking wooden steps, a rough two-by-four banister offering the only means of steadying himself.
The white light of the naked bulb seemed to be swallowed up by the blackness that spread away from the foot of the staircase. It was all Josh could do to keep himself from turning away and fleeing from the unknown cavern beneath the mansion.
Stupid! he told himself. It’s just a basement, and there’s nothing hiding in it. Amy’s probably not even down here.
But what if she was, and he went back to bed without even looking?
He crept down the stairs, freezing every time one of the steps creaked beneath his feet, listening to the silence until he was sure nothing else had heard him, then moving onward.
At last he came to the concrete floor. Shading his eyes against the glare of the bulb that now hung directly overhead, he peered into the surrounding darkness. His eyes, adjusting to the light, surveyed the old furniture that was stored in the cellar, and the long-closed cartons that were stacked against the wall behind the stairs, cartons whose very contents had probably been forgotten years before.
For a moment he was tempted to open one of them, but then he turned away, intent on exploring the rest of the basement before he lost his nerve. He moved away from the light, ducking his head to avoid the cobwebs that hung from the huge floor joists that supported the mansion above.
The basement was a maze in its own right, partitioned off into various rooms. As he moved along, he found more light switches, and slowly the cavernous space beneath the house began to glow with light, each successive wave of shadows washed away by another of those naked bulbs that made Josh feel newly exposed every time he turned one on.
He found the laundry room, and the enormous furnace that heated the building. A monstrous boiler occupied a room of its own, with pipes leading in all directions to supply hot water to the various bathrooms of the house.
Josh explored each room as he came to it, then moved on, each step taking him farther from the stairs that were the only entrance to the cellar. And with each step, and every unlocked room he came to, his hopes of finding Amy Carlson faded a little further.
Still, he kept going, kept creeping through the shadowy maze.
It was well past midnight when Hildie Kramer left her suite of rooms on the ground floor of the Academy and mounted the stairs, pausing on both the second and third floor landings to be certain that none of the children were prowling around the house. Then she went on up to the fourth floor, and the small anteroom in front of the door to George Engersol’s apartment. Knowing it was empty, she used her own key to let herself in, then relocked the door behind her.
She switched a lamp on, confident the light would cause no concern to anyone, since Engersol was notorious for the late hours he kept. She glanced around the main room of the large suite that was perched on the roof of the mansion. In one corner was Engersol’s desk, where he worked on the projects that were far too private to risk leaving in his office in the classroom wing next to the mansion. In addition to the desk, the room contained a large, worn sofa, a pair of ancient Morris chairs that Engersol steadfastly refused to have reupholstered, and a small bar, from which the two of them occasionally enjoyed a drink at the end of the day. There were several small tables scattered around the room, each of them covered with books from Engersol’s extensive library, whose shelves were built into every available wall. The curtains over the large windows that pierced the two exterior walls of the room were open, as always, and Hildie didn’t bother to close them. Despite the airiness of the apartment during the daylight hours, it was nevertheless extraordinarily private at night, for unless someone was
high on the hill behind the building, there were no other points from which its interior could be viewed.
Crossing to one of the bookcases that lined the east wall, Hildie pulled out a thick volume by B. E Skinner and groped for the tiny button that was hidden in a small depression in the wood. As she pressed the button, a section of the bookcase swung open, revealing the closed doors of an elevator.
An elevator whose shaft was hidden in the wall behind the ornate brass construction whose scaffolding and cage visitors to the mansion never failed to admire, and which proved endlessly fascinating to the children of the Academy.
Neither the mansion’s visitors nor the children who lived in it were aware of this second elevator, for it was invisible to all, and while casual visitors would never have cause even to hear it, the tale of Eustace Bairington’s restless spirit accounted for whatever sounds the children might hear at night. Indeed, when George Engersol had discovered the existence of the elevator—and the hidden suite of rooms far beneath the basement to which it provided the only access—he had understood at once that there was some truth to the ancient legend about Eustace Barrington’s vanished son; understood that he had discovered the place to which the boy had “vanished.” Ever since, he had turned not only the elevator, but the rooms below and the legend itself, to his own advantage.
Hildie pressed another button that would summon the car, and waited impatiently for nearly thirty seconds before the doors slid open. Stepping into the car, she pressed the lower of the two destination buttons on its wall. Slowly, the elevator descended, inching downward to a level five stories below the cupola, deep beneath the foundation on which the mansion had been built.
To the subterranean rooms to which Eustace Barring-ton’s idiot savant son had been banished at the age of five.
Banished to be cared for—or to be held prisoner? Not that it made any difference now, a century after it had happened, Hildie reflected, though the mere thought of the silent child living out his darkness-shrouded days entombed in the deep subceliar never failed to prickle the skin at the
back of her neck. Well, she reminded herself, all that was important now was that no one outside the innermost circle knew it existed at all.
Nor would they—until the time was right.
Josh was just coming to what he thought might have been a coal bin when he heard the sound.
It was faint, but he was certain he recognized it.
The elevator.
Someone was in the elevator.
He froze.
Had someone found out he wasn’t in his room, and come looking for him? Panic threatened to overwhelm him, but then he realized that just because someone was looking for him, didn’t mean they would find him.
The noise grew louder, and he listened, finally moving toward it, certain that it would stop in a moment as the car came to the main floor.
Before him was a blank concrete wall, perhaps eight feet across. Moving to its end, he found a second wall.
The sound of the elevator seemed to come from behind the concrete. He pressed his ear to the wall, listening.
The sound was louder. He went on, coming to another corner, and then the fourth.
The shaft! He’d found the bottom of the elevator shaft!
He pressed his ear to the wall again, just as the grinding of the machinery ceased. The car had come to a halt. A second later he was sure he heard the door open.
It sounded close, though he couldn’t judge exactly where it came from, whether above or below.
What if whoever was there saw light coming from under the basement door?
The thought galvanized him, and he darted back through the basement, switching off the lights as he went, coming at last to the foot of the stairs. Darting up the steep flight as silently as he could, he flipped the switch next to the door, then froze, waiting in pitch-blackness, straining to hear any movement on the other side of the door.
His pounding heart and gasping breath seemed to echo
through the basement, and he was certain that anyone in the little chamber beyond the door could hear him clearly.
Seconds slipped by, each of them seeming endless. Slowly his panting eased and his heart slowed to its normal pace.
From the other side of the door he heard nothing.
At last, terror gripping his soul, Josh groped in the blackness, found the doorknob, and twisted it.
Easing the door open no more than a crack, he peered out into the faint light that barely suffused the darkness of the butler’s pantry.
Everything seemed to be exactly as it had been a few minutes earlier, when he had stolen down the stairs from the second floor. He opened the door wider, slipped through it and pushed it silently closed behind him. His slippers making no sound on the wooden floor, he crept back through the dining room, pausing once more at the door to the foyer.
He watched, and listened.
Nothing.
At last, taking a deep breath, he darted from the shelter of the dining room door, dashed across the foyer and raced up the stairs to the second floor.
Before he’d even released his breath, he was back in his room, the door safely shut behind him. As he slowly released the air from his lungs, he went to the window and peered out into the faint moonlight.
Outside, everything looked peaceful.
But something told him it was not. Somewhere, he was certain, something was happening. Either inside the house or outside of it.
He would stay awake tonight, and watch.
Watch, and listen.
When the doors of the elevator opened, Hildie stepped out into a brightly lit hallway completely lined with glistening white tile. She turned right. Three paces down the corridor she came to a door and paused to peer in through the small window that broke its otherwise blank façade.
Inside, George Engersol was hard at work, wearing a
surgical mask and gown, his hair covered by a pale green cloth cap.
Quickly, Hildie moved on to the next room, where she scrubbed her hands and arms, then donned the same kind of scrub suit that George Engersol was wearing. When she was ready, she backed through the swinging door that separated the anteroom from the operating theater.