The Dark Closet (15 page)

Finally
, he stood in the great expanse and stretched his arms for distances they could not rightly reach until the walls met his hands. He felt a latch, and the wall swung silently back, revealing in the gloom a set of very narrow stairs. In the dark he groped for the knob of the door at the top of the steps. It  took him some time to get it to turn—it seemed almost rusted into place—but it finally turned. The door opened only part way hitting something that kept it from going any further. When Crossett looked up he saw a patchwork of light in the naked roof that hung over this alcove above the closet. The snow filtered in and drifted to the floor as an undulating white carpet over whatever was piled irregularly beneath. He ran his hand over the lumps and felt cold metal, not just an item here or there but many, many things, he realized, all in a huddle on the floor. His mind cleared a little as curiosity began to drift into it. Leaning against the partially opened door, he reached for several of the metal items and brushed the newly fallen snow away. Beneath was a layer of ice encrusted with the layers of other past snows, but he held his hand over it and breathed on it and finally he was able to pick off pieces of the ice to bare what was beneath.

He already
had an idea what it was he had found, but he had to make certain. He held the pot up to the shafts of evening moonlight from the deteriorating roof. Its heavily tarnished surface did not hide its silver gadrooning and casting. Crossett gave the door a loud unearthly bang trying to get it to open further, and then stood still, mystified, frightened. It was the sound he had been hearing at Winterhurst, the sound he could not hunt down and find. A sound that belonged to Wightefield not Winterhurst. An echo really at Winterhurst, an echo sounding against the window panes, a mere echo of prescience, an emissary of the future when Crossett would bang open a mysterious door. Mysterious if it existed at all.

He came to as from a dream
and looked down at his feet, using his coat to brush away the latest snow from the pile there, and discovered the entire Wightefield silver collection: tea pots and coffee pots and chocolate pots, trays, porringers, ladles, beakers, tankards, casters, bowls, flatware, tongs, cups. He sifted through it all, quickly looking beyond the pile of silver, looking back down, then slowly up again.

There on the floor
behind it lay a tattered, filthy, ragged dress and apron. Even in the dim light Crossett could see the skull and bony hands and feet of the imprisoned slave. Wrapped about the skull were still the fragments of a dust scarf. Here was the keeper of the Wightefield silver. She had indeed guarded it well, even into the next century, even from the descendant of the man from whom she was directed to hide it. Directed by her mistress to take the silver to this hidden alcove when the Union soldiers appeared, she had been entombed with it when her mistress Lamerie was killed and Wightefield laid to ruin. Instinctively, Crossett ran his hand along the edge of the door on the inside to find that it, too, like the closet door below had no inner door knob. The impressions of her pounding fists had laid themselves upon the fabric of the present, rippling its flattened surface with the repercussions of the past. The banging of her fists on the door to be released from the alcove went unheard until the day she died. But their frantic echoes could be heard for a century at Winterhurst.

The caudle cup he was holding dropped from his hand as he
heard her voice. Someone was calling again, but he could not make out the words. The voice, however, he was sure was Lamerie’s. Thank God! Of course she knew he would be here!

“Lamerie! I’m
in the house! Can you hear me?”

There was
a response, but he could not quite make it out. She sounded very far away, as if she were in the woods surrounding the house her voice muffled by the many barren trees there. He yelled at the broken roof above him.

“I’m upstairs in
a closet in a bedroom! I can’t get out, Lamerie! Help me!”

He though
t she said, ”I’m coming,” or was it “You’re cunning?” Her voice sounded a little closer but it was not strong. It sounded wispy, ethereal. He slid through the alcove door, picking his way through the mound of silver and down the isthmian stair of the closet door below.

“Hey!
Let me out! Goddamit, I’m getting out one way or another!” He lunged at the door, which bulged with the weight of his person but did not give way. He lunged again with no result. Then he heard the shuffling and whispering once again, and in a rage he charged the door with a bang, its knob giving another great rattle in the meantime, and before he knew it he was in a free fall through the door. Something large and soft caught the toe of his boot as he stumbled out and sent  him face first into the room. Before he had time to wonder what had entangled his feet, a great weight fell on his back, squeezing a grunt from his chest. Something hard and cold slid along his hand, so sharp he did not realize he had been cut until the blood warmed his hand and arm and dripped along his face as he raised his arm. Something heavily metal rattled against another solid piece of metal as Crossett struggled to face his assailant.

He caught the piped edge of a shell jacket, his hand s
lipping along the swirling brocaded embroidery of its front, over the corporal’s badge. The two tangled for a moment. Crossett felt the jambiere of the right leg, its leather still as pliable as the day it must have been fashioned, sometime during the Civil War. As he groped for the neck, he felt the piping of the jacket’s high collar. The two lay locked in one another’s grip for some time until the assailant quickly let go, scuffled across the floor in search of something with Crossett right behind him. They laid their hand upon it together: a rifle. Even Crossett could tell from Twynne’s many, long-winded demonstrations of his gun collection that this was not a modern weapon. It was a musket.

Now he wasn’t sure whom he was
fighting, but when he felt the musket barrel in his rib cage he knocked it askew of its aim as it fired and fell on his opponent grasping for what he was sure was a saber he had heard earlier. He was not mistaken and managed to free it from its scabbard.

“Give
up!” he grunted. “By God, Twynne, if this is you, give up!”

But the saber brushed h
is coat, slicing a fine tear in it and Crossett knocked it back, grabbing for the attacker and pulling him forward at the same time. When they fell to the floor, he heard a long exhalation of breath as the long, hard blade slipped between his fingers gripping his opponent’s back. In the dimness of the room he could see only the rumpled form of a man face down, the details of his clothing unapparent.

The groan near the closet
turned his attention.

“Who the hell is over there?”
Crossett demanded from across the room where he stood next to the still form of the attacker.

“It’s
me, Crossett,” the raspy voice said. “Twynne—been shot.”

“Jesus Christ,” Crossett whispered. He crossed the room
in a few steps.

“
Where?”

“Side,”
came the barely audible answer.

“What happened?”
he asked as he gently felt Twynne’s abdomen.

“Outside. Saw something
in the woods. I’m probably bleeding to death.”

“
Not yet. How did you get up here?”

“Looking for yo
u,” Twynne whispered breathlessly. “Followed you up but you didn’t see. Fell on the door.” Crossett put his ear to Twynne’s mouth to hear him, so faint was his voice. “Couldn’t reach the knob to let you out.”

Crossett groaned.

“I’m going to carry you.”

“Who was it?” Twynne
whispered.

“I don’t know. I’l
l bet it’s Jake Hawkins dressed up like a crazy Union soldier, looking for jewels and silver in the name of his great-grandfather.” Crossett grunted as he lifted Twynne. “I thought it was you for a while with one of your Civil War muskets. I must be going crazy myself.”

When Crossett
opened the front door, the snowy lawn flooded with light. Twynne hung limply from Crossett’s side. Holding his free hand to his eyes, Crossett struggled to see the source, and then realized it was at least four sets of headlights. The spinning red and blue of two police cars sent a prism of color through the crystalline branches of the leafless trees.

“Mr. Mainwaring?”

“Yes. Mr. Forster is injured. Shot. 1855 musket rifle.”

“Call an ambulance!” the trooper called turning back toward the parked cars. The CB radios crackled in the night.

“Let’s put him down, Mr. Mainwaring. Stay here, sir.”

“Crossett!” Twynne whispered.

“Don’t talk Twynne. Just rest. An ambulance is coming.”

“Listen. It was research.”

“What are you talking about?” Crossett leaned closer to Twynne’s whispering mouth.

“Never write
an article ‘thout researching it,” he wheezed.

“
Sure. Sure. That’s good advice. Forget it.” He was afraid Twynne was becoming delirious.

“My reputation
is at stake.”

“Your re
putation’s fine. You don’t have to worry about anything. Just stop talking,” he said quickly.

“Never write an article
based on hearsay, but I did for Wightefield.”

Crossett’s features shifted. “What?”

“Had to check it out. Didn’t mean to get you so upset when I brought … Winterhurst into it.”

“You damn fool,” Crossett whispered
as he began to comprehend what Twynne was saying.

“It was a
perfect opportunity when I realized you .. you wanted …to …get to the bottom of the … ghost. I really had to come …here.”

“You damn
fool. We both nearly got killed.”

Twyn
ne smiled like a drunk man as he slipped a little in Crossett’s grasp.

“Got to swear you won’t tell anyon
e, Cross. The Rambler passes from father … to son. Just like the Wighte necklace.” He swooned a little. “We preserve Barrow’s… heritage.” The ambulance came wailing up the long, icy drive. “You understand?” Already the paramedics were out of the truck and running toward Crossett and Twynne. “It’s a thing got started long ago and I … can’t stop it now. Not a word…eh?”

“Mr.
Mainwaring.” The trooper was with them now. “How did it happen?”

“
I didn’t see it. Mr. Forster says he was shot  in the woods. We heard some voices and he went out to check.”

“W
hy are you here, sir?”

“I have
the owner’s permission to be here. There’s a body upstairs in one of the bedrooms. He attacked me and in the struggle he fell on a saber. It’s Jake Hawkins, I’m sure. He thought we were trespassers and he has a reputation for saying he’ll shoot on sight.”

Several polic
emen entered the house, their flashlights fanning cones of light that reflected through the broken panes, dancing like broken bits of white paper on the snow-covered lawn.

“No, it can’t be
Jake Hawkins, Mr. Mainwaring. He died about two hours ago. At your place, as a matter of fact.” Crossett stared in disbelief. “He was working on your stairs, I understand from Mrs. Mainwaring, and he fell and broke his neck. That’s why we’re here. We were trying to locate you, and Mrs. Hawkins said you were at Wightefield.”

“Sarge!”
a policeman called from a broken upstairs window that looked out over the front porch. “There’s no body up here. No sign of a struggle.”

“What?” Crossett
exclaimed, looking up. “Ask Mr. Forster—“

“He’s pretty delirious—“

“Maybe Mrs. Hawkins saw him. She’s here on the grounds somewhere,” Crossett said nervously. “I heard her calling earlier.”

”
Sorry, Mr. Mainwaring. Couldn’t have been her. She’s at your house and has been for the last couple of hours.” He studied Crossett. “That’s a hell of a bump you have on your head. Better get the paramedics to look at you too.” He paused as he examined Crossett’s blank expression. “You know, the dark can play funny tricks on a person. Didn’t you guys even bring a flashlight?”

“They’re yours,” Crossett said uncharacteristically gently.

The glint from the stones marked a path to Lamerie’s eyes.

“Jake is gone. Renovate Wightefield and live there.”

The stone
s of the necklace slipped silently from Crossett’s hand to hers.

“With the silver, you have a fortune. You’ve waited long enough for it.”

It was a kinder word than he usually had for her. But it really was of no matter. She would not be seeing him again in the tawdry little apartment where she now stood. She was mistress to Wightefield now, and to no other. Her home was Wightefield and everything that went with it—social standing, old money, history, respect. All of the things she did not have before to go along with the name of one of the most prominent families in Barrow.

Lamerie covered with one hand the necklace in the other.
She smiled faintly. Christopher Mainwaring IV had divested her of Jake, but she would never know that it was he in particular who effected her realease. The universe is a strange and shifting leviathan. While Crossett was discovering Wightefild’s treasure, Jake was taking a deadly and lethal fall down a grand and winding set of stairs. She couldn’t help but feel that there was something mysterious about it, that ancestors were cleaning up the messes of their descendants because they were just that—their descendants. And they protected them as a mother protects her children. For them the fete continued, turning into light the black of night at Winterhurst, hundreds of wicks lighting the entire house, a splash of light on the horizon, music trailing its brilliance, laughter its glow. There were Mainwarings yet to come who would witness the creaking of the stairs, the tumble of a latch late at night, a whisper of cold air before a dancing fire, snow tapping on the window panes long after it had stopped, voices so slightly heard they were dismissed it seemed before they began, the sound of doors opening and closing in the far reaches of the house.

Wightefield’s ghosts had been laid to rest
, but Winterhurst’s had not. Wightefield no longer needed to bang and howl to Winterhurst to free it from the trespassing of others, whether they be spirit or flesh. Winterhurst stood now

alone with its own ghosts, who one day may bang and
howl to Wightefield for succor.