She walked toward them and crouched down, running a finger along the blade of one shovel lying on the floor, smooth from use. The finger came back brown with dirt.
“Have you ever seen a wooden shovel before?” Eustace asked her.
“Not necessarily,” Cordelia said, picking it up by the long handle, worn glossy from countless hands, and setting it right with the others. “Doesn’t seem like it would be very effective.”
Eustace pointed to the crowbars nearby. “Those are metal. Why use shovels that aren’t?”
Cordelia shook her head, turning to shine the light on a pile of several dozen empty glass jars, before angling it deeper into the corridor before them.
“Come on,” Cordelia told her sister, moving ahead.
“This level of creepiness isn’t enough for you?” Eustace asked from behind. “Did you see the jars?”
“Canning, Eustace. They’re for canning. Pickles and such.”
“You don’tknowthat,” Eustace insisted.
Cordelia spun to face her. “What happened toIt’s an old house, Cordy?Have you ever seen a bat, Cordy? Let’s investigate, Cordy? You were all balls and bravado a few days ago.”
Eustace sniffed. “I realize this is a novel experience for you, having lived in Texas all your life, but I call Colorado home now, and I know what kinds of things take up in basements. I don’tdobasements.”
“You do now,” Cordelia told her, spinning back around and heading into the dark.
Eustace quickly caught up once she realized her sister was taking the light with her.
To their right, a wall opened into a crowded room used for furniture storage—some stacked chairs in need of refinishing, asmall table with a busted leg, several headboards and footboards and pairs of rails to mattresses long gone. Amid them, a dark wicker pram with a curling handle and huge wheels held court ominously.
“Well, that’s not disturbing at all,” Eustace said in Cordelia’s ear.
“It’s clearly out-of-date,” Cordelia noted. “I’m sure they just put it down here because they upgraded to a newer, safer one at some point.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Eustace said dryly.
“I just don’t understand why it’s all sectioned off like this,” Cordelia continued. “Why all the little rooms and passages? It makes no sense.”
“Unless you’re running an illegal business out of the basement,” Eustace suggested. “This would be perfect for a grow room. You could get a whole operation going down here.”
Cordelia rolled her eyes. “You are not starting an illicit cannabis farm in the basement of our great-aunt’s house.”
“Just a suggestion,” Eustace said coolly. “Don’t decide right now. Medical marijuanaislegal in this state.”
“You may be onto something, though,” Cordelia said. “What if our relatives were into bootlegging or something like that? It might explain where the money came from. Maybe that’s what all those jars were for.”
“If you’re right, then I bet they falsified the ledgers upstairs to cover it up. I’ll try and find some entries that allude to whatever they were up to,” Eustace volunteered.
“Good idea,” Cordelia said, nearing a yawning doorway to their left at the very back of the basement. Here, farthest from the staircase and its overhead light, the darkness became all-consuming.
Cordelia began to feel a familiar tingle tracing its way through the air, similar to the feeling that would come over her near the crypt, only fainter. If she took the vibrating chorus she felt beforeand spread it out, she could tease each voice from the next, like singling out a hair. That was what she was feeling now—a single call echoing through this basement. A single voice. A single note.
Rounding into the room, Cordelia stopped as she let the light fall on each wall and corner.
“What the holy hell?” Eustace asked, stumbling in behind her.
The middle of the floor was clear, with everything pushed against the walls. Symbols, like the ones they’d seen drawn across their aunt’s face, were etched into the stone in a spiraling pattern. The immediate wall was lined with old shelves, crammed with items barely recognizable in the dark—a reserve of candles, used and unused, the leaning spines of unmarked books, bunches of twigs, jars of ingredients long forgotten, and piles and piles of animal bones. Some were haphazardly thrown onto the shelves, and others were still arranged—in whole or partial skeletons. Cordelia couldn’t miss the splayed wings and tiny ribs of a fully constructed bat—bones like jointed white spider legs.
She reached for a disconnected jawbone, missing several teeth, though one powerful incisor remained. It was no bigger than her hand. “Cat?” she asked, shoving it back on the shelf in disgust.
“Or raccoon,” Eustace figured. “Butwhy? And why somany?”
