Trifles and Folly 2 Page 6

  If the garage ever had inside lighting, no one had replaced the bulbs for a long time. The glow of streetlights provided some illumination near the edges of the garage, but farther in was very dark. Ryan led us to a service stairway, then down to a lower level that was pitch black. Our flashlights didn’t make much of a dent, and I really hoped he knew where he was going.

  “This way,” Ryan said. We followed him to a rusted fire door that led down a narrow stairway never intended for the public. The paint peeled on the walls and the cement steps were stained with substances I didn’t want to examine. It occurred to me that ghosts might not be the only things to worry about in a place like this. Vagrants, junkies, stray dogs, and rodents wouldn’t be pleasant to run into either.

  “This takes us down into the sub-basement,” Ryan said. “It’s where the utilities run. But on the other side of the sub-basement there’s a door that opens into an old brick corridor, and from the blueprints I’ve been able to find, it’s a good bet that will open up into what’s left of St. Roch’s cellar.”

  It was cool down here, but still heavy with Charleston humidity. I could hear water dripping somewhere in the distance. Like most cellars, the sub-basements smelled of mold and neglect. From the heavy layer of dust, it didn’t look like anyone had been down here for a long time. That was probably a good sign. I was worried enough about supernatural threats. I didn’t want to have to worry about getting mugged, too.

  Ryan’s crew had obviously done this kind of thing before. They each carried the heavy, military-style indestructible flashlights that could easily double as a weapon. I noticed that Kurt and Penny had sheaths on their belts for respectable-sized knives. Down here in the dark, I found their equipment reassuring.

  “In case you’re wondering, the company that built this garage went bankrupt, and it’s been tied up in legal wrangling for years,” Ryan said. “The bank foreclosed, then even that fell through. The title is so muddied it’ll take years to straighten out. So there’s no one to care that we’re here.”

  Maybe not among the living, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching us. We moved carefully around the old boxes and crates that had been stored in the sub-basement and were nearly falling apart. Ryan led the way toward the door at the far side of the room, and we followed, brushing away cobwebs as we went.

  Karen and Kurt shone their lights on the doorway while Ryan put some muscle into yanking the stubborn door open. I noticed that Penny had a hand on her knife, making me wonder what the group had encountered in the past. Then again, in these parts, anything from feral cats to coyotes to wild pigs were possible, though I didn’t think we’d have much problem with the pigs this close to town.

  Nothing but cold, musty air rushed out as Ryan hauled the door open. Penny had moved up to the front with Ryan, and she looked like she was used to being on patrol. We slipped through the doorway and found ourselves standing in an old brick corridor. The walls were wet and covered with slime. Underfoot, stepping stones kept us from getting our sneakers wet, but brackish water lay on the bottom of the corridor floor. Cobwebs were thick as cotton candy, and I saw that Ryan and Penny produced telescoping poles from their backpacks to battle with the webs and clear the way.

  I fought down claustrophobia. Ryan had assured me that one of their group’s safety precautions was that one member always stayed home and knew the details of every outing so that help could be summoned if the team was late to check in. I had left a message for Sorren and a packet for Maggie at the store, which I could retrieve before she got there if everything went well. Still, the knowledge that we were underground in a very old tunnel in the dark made me fight with myself not to run away screaming.

  “We’re heading in the right direction,” Ryan called back to the group. “We should have about ten more feet before this opens into St. Roch’s lower levels.”

  I did my best to make sure my shoulders didn’t brush the tunnel walls. The closer we got to the old church cellar, the stronger my sense of being watched grew. Something knew we were down here. Someone was watching, waiting to see what we were going to do.

  We came to an abrupt stop. Our flashlights formed a pool of light where we stood, but the tunnel behind us was completely dark. “There’s a door here, but it’s nailed shut. This is going to take a little doing,” Ryan said.

  Ryan and Kurt pulled gloves and crowbars from their packs and handed off their flashlights as they went to work on the boarded up door. We were definitely crossing the line between trespassing and breaking-and-entering. Kurt and Ryan wielded the crowbars as if they had done this kind of thing a lot, leveraging their weight against the old boards and rusted nails that creaked and groaned in protest.

  The old wood splintered and gave way. Behind the boards was another door, but its old lock broke easily. The door swung inward, hinges creaking.

  “We’re in,” Ryan murmured, and I could hear the excitement in his voice.

  One by one, we filed into the chamber. Our lights shone over the walls, and I understood why whoever had built atop the old church had left the basement. We were in a crypt.

  “Wow,” Karen said as her flashlight played across the stone slabs. “Do you think all the people down here died from Yellow Fever?”

  “Yellow Fever, smallpox, measles—all the epidemics were bad,” Kurt said, pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose.

  “I’m surprised the families didn’t protest,” Penny said. Even she looked a bit subdued by our discovery.

  “Maybe there wasn’t anyone left to care,” Teag replied. “Back then, epidemics wiped out whole families.”

  A loud bang made us all jump. “What was that?” Karen asked, her voice a few notes higher than before.

  Ryan shone his light in the direction of the noise. “Looks like a piece of stone fell. Not too surprising given the way we had to battle our way in.” He studied the ceiling for a moment, but considering the age of the crypt, it looked to be in good shape. “Don’t let your nerves get the best of you,” he said, but I could hear an edge in his voice.

  The tunnel had been cool, but the crypt itself was cold. Even with my hoodie, my arms were cold. I caught a glimpse of motion and turned, but there was nothing behind me.

  “Is this it?” Penny asked. She had made a slow circle of the chamber, shining her light across the walls. “There are four small passageways that lead off from the main room, but I can see from here that they’re dead-ends. Probably more tombs.”

  Ryan shrugged. “St. Roch’s was a burial church. It didn’t have a congregation, so it didn’t need a lot of space. People only came here to die or attend a funeral.”

  There wasn’t enough space for anyone to get lost, so for a while, we all meandered at our own pace, studying the names on the marble tombs and looking around. Most of the inscriptions looked hastily chiseled, and I guessed that the stonemasons hadn’t wanted to spend any more time here than necessary.

  “Look at that,” Teag said in a voice pitched for only me to hear. He pointed to an inscription carved into the stained marble. I pray you remain at rest, the epitaph said. Not the most common thing for a tombstone.

  “Hey, this is weird.” Karen had crouched down to have a look at one of the other slabs. “This says ‘Rise not, until the final trumpet call.’”

  “One over here says, ‘Sleep soundly, and wake not,’” Kurt added.

  “Are they all like that?” Penny asked. Even she sounded a little concerned.

  Karen stood up and glared at Kurt, who was right behind her. “Hey, quit poking me!”

  Kurt spread his hands. “I didn’t touch you.”

  I caught motion again in my peripheral vision and turned to follow it. This time, I glimpsed the shadow of a woman who looked a lot like Theodora. I signaled to Teag and began to move toward the nearest of the four small passageways.

  Behind me, I heard what sounded like a shower of pebbles. “What the hell!” Penny snapped, batting at the air in front of her. �
�Where did that come from? I just got hit with a handful of rocks. Quit playing around!”

  “Nobody threw anything at you, Penny.” Kurt sounded annoyed. “Get a grip.”

  I had a theory, and I was betting that it was one that Ryan and his team wouldn’t like. Falling rocks, mysterious pokes and gravel sprays were all well within what a cheesed off poltergeist could do. The feeling that we weren’t welcome here was growing stronger by the minute, but unfortunately, so was the conviction that there was something in the crypt we were supposed to do. I closed my hand around Theodora’s ivory disk, and the shadow came into sharper detail. The ghost looked straight at me, and then deliberately turned and walked away, as if she expected me to follow.

  Theodora’s shadow led me into the right-side corridor, which was only a few feet deep. Both sides of the walls were covered with tombs, and those that had inscriptions were as unnerving as the ones in the outer chamber. Answer no call to rise but the Almighty’s. Surrender to the final sleep. Let no one disturb your rest. There were more, but I got the idea. Whoever buried these people was not entirely sure they were going to stay dead.

  A flicker of movement toward the back of the chamber caught my eye, and I glimpsed Theodora right before something pushed me off balance. I almost cried out, but I didn’t want to call the others. Teag was standing guard at the end of the corridor, so I knew no one had gotten past him. Our ghostly friends were getting pushy.

  I avoided falling by putting an arm out to steady myself against the tomb wall. Just as I regained my balance, I felt another shove. I was being herded toward the right-hand corner, and the ghost wasn’t being subtle.

  This time, as I straightened up, I saw a small nook to one side of the top mausoleum drawer. The burial spot was inscribed with the name Theodora Wellright, and the epitaph, Let the final death take you, my love. I shone my flashlight into the nook and saw a dark wooden box. There was no way I was sticking my hand in there, so I used my flashlight to ease the box out to where I could reach it.

  “We need to get out of here,” Teag said. “Everyone’s getting jumpy.”

  “Just a couple of minutes,” I said. The wooden box was about as wide across as my hand and about three inches deep, maybe seven inches long. I wasn’t about to risk getting a vision down here with Ryan’s explorers around, so I used the towel to grab the box. I was just heading over to put the box into Teag’s messenger bag when everyone’s flashlights suddenly went dead.

  Karen screamed. I heard Kurt cry out in dismay, and Penny cursed. “Stay calm, everyone,” Ryan said. I could hear him cranking up an emergency light.

  The air grew even colder, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Something was coming my way, and it felt dangerous, corrupt. Teag gave an angry shout as a presence bore down on us. I dropped the garlic bulb onto the ground and stomped hard on it, crushing it and releasing its pungent odor. I heard Teag stumble, and instinctively, as the malicious spirit came at me, I held the wooden box up as a barrier.

  The cloth slipped, and my hands touched the weathered wood. A vision flooded my senses. I saw a middle-aged man dressed in black. He wore a white clerical collar, a priest. The priest grappled with a man I had never seen before, and judging from the second man’s clothing; the time was again early in the seventeen hundreds. The priest held something in his hand, and he brought his right hand down against the other man’s chest. The stranger arched back, shrieking in agony, and reached out to grab the priest by the throat. Blood soaked the stranger’s ruffled shirt and spattered the priest’s pristine collar. The stranger’s teeth were bared, showing his long fangs. He struck with his right hand, slashing the priest on the chest. The vision went dark.

  The presence let out an unholy screech that echoed deafeningly in the stone and brick chamber. Theodora’s ghost glided past—or maybe through—me like an arctic wind, standing between me and the presence. With one last angry wail, the presence blinked out. Theodora’s ghost turned to me, then dissipated.

  The flashlights blinked into life, flooding the crypt with light.

  “What the hell was that about?” Ryan demanded, and I could hear fear beneath his anger. In the confusion, I slipped the wooden box into Teag’s bag.

  “Kurt’s down.” Karen’s voice sounded panicky.

  Teag and I came back to the main chamber to find Karen and Ryan kneeling over Kurt. Kurt looked pale, and his breathing was rapid. “I think he’s just fainted,” Ryan said.

  Kurt groaned and began to come around. When he realized where he was, his cheeks colored and he stared up at the others with a sheepish expression. “What happened?”

  “Damned lights failed,” Penny replied. “You must have lost your balance.” She was obviously trying to help him save face, but Kurt’s cheeks reddened even more.

  “One minute I remember shaking my flashlight to turn it on again, and then I felt really cold, and it was like something pulled my plug,” Kurt said, struggling to his feet without accepting the helping hand Ryan offered. “My knees just buckled, and I don’t remember anything after that.”

  “Who knows what kind of bad air could be down here,” Teag said, leading the way toward the door back to the tunnel. “After all, the room’s been sealed up for a long time. You’ll feel better once we get aboveground.”

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Ryan said with a glance toward Teag that told me he didn’t quite believe the explanation but was willing to let it go, for now. “Let’s get out of here.”

  We moved as fast as we could down the slippery stepping stones of the brick tunnel. I knew that the malicious ghost we had confronted was still down here. We’d made him back off, but we hadn’t destroyed him or banished him. And while whatever was in the box I had hidden in Teag’s bag had held the ghost away this time, it was no guarantee he wouldn’t come looking for a rematch.

  I halfway expected an ambush when we came back up the stairs into the abandoned parking garage. None of the cars our group had parked were new or expensive, but by comparison with the heaps left to rot in the old garage, they might as well have been an advertisement for carjacking. To my relief, the garage was still deserted. Given what Teag and I had experienced down below, I wondered if even the local riff-raff felt something dangerously amiss about the garage and stayed away.

  Ryan’s team looked worse for the wear. Kurt was still pale and shaky, though he tried to cover it. Penny looked angry, and I guessed she didn’t handle fear well. Karen seemed to be thinking hard, probably trying to come up with a scientific explanation. Ryan just looked glad to make it out in one piece.

  “What happened when the two of you went off?” he demanded. “We heard a god-awful noise.”

  “Spiders,” I said with what I hoped passed for embarrassment. “Had a couple of them go down my back. Sorry.”

  Ryan gave me a skeptical look as if he suspected there was more to the story. Penny just muttered something under her breath and rolled her eyes. “You’ll need to get over that if you do more exploring,” he said. “Creepy crawlies go with the territory.”

  They certainly did, but the kinds of things Teag and I usually ran into were much creepier than anything Ryan had in mind. “Thanks for letting us come along,” I said. “I imagine you’ll want to go back sometime and get a better look at the crypts we found.”

  Ryan shook his head. “Probably not, now that we know it’s just a burial site. We don’t want to disturb the dead. We’ll let them rest in peace.”

  That was the problem. Whatever Teag and I had tangled with wasn’t resting, and it sure wasn’t peaceful. And until we got to the bottom of it, I was pretty sure that the dead would be the ones disturbing us.

  Call for Backup

  Teag and I were too jumpy from the encounter beneath St. Roch’s to consider calling it a night, so we headed back to my house. We had just pulled up to the house when my cell phone rang with a text from Sorren.

  Cassidy—important information. Need to discuss. Time to talk tonight?

&nbs
p; Come on over; I texted back.

  I was not surprised to hear a knock at the door a few minutes later. Baxter ran for the door, growling and barking with as much viciousness as his fluffy six-pound self could muster. I opened the door to let Sorren in, and he immediately knelt down to talk to Baxter.

  “You’re a very protective, good dog,” he said in a very soothing voice as he made eye contact with Baxter, who was nearly beside himself. Immediately, Baxter sat down with a glazed, happy look on his confused little face.

  I shut the door and sighed. “If he ends up with brain damage from being glamored, how do I explain it to the vet?”

  Sorren rose and gave me a grin. “If he had a better memory, we wouldn’t have to go through this every time he sees me.”

  “You’ve probably given him doggy Alzheimer’s,” I said, leading the way into the living room. It was an old, friendly sparring match. I didn’t really believe that Sorren’s vampire compulsion hurt Baxter. In fact, there were plenty of times when I wouldn’t have minded being able to pull the same trick myself.

  “I’m sorry to have been out of touch; it took much longer than I expected,” Sorren said, with a nod to acknowledge Teag. “I was working on an Alliance situation in the Ural Mountains, and had no way to get or retrieve messages until I got back.” He paused. “I’m afraid my silence has put you in danger. Tell me what’s going on with the Wellright problem.”

  Sorren sat down in one armchair while Teag took a seat in the other. I sat on the sofa, and Baxter curled at my feet and fell asleep. Judging from the slight flush to Sorren’s complexion, I guessed he had fed recently. The bond between Sorren and my family is nearly four centuries old, and I believe him when he swears he would never and has never harmed any of my relations. Still, I feel better knowing he isn’t feeling peckish.