Cries of “Ewww! Disgusting!” greeted this statement. The storyteller lowered her candle, annoyed. “They did not. It was cool in the attic and the lid kept the smell in.”
“Nothing keeps a smell like that in,” said the practical girl. In the doorway, I had stifled a sigh. It was impossible to explain to her that some people didn’t want accuracy, they wanted adelicious frisson of terror. I knew I couldn’t explain it, because I’d been like her myself. Instead I went in and shooed everyone to bed in case the headmistress came by to check for lights under the doors. Fear of the headmistress, at least, was far more real and solid than ghost stories.
Ghosts aside, the moral was clear about not closing doors that would lock behind you. The gunpowder shed was not nearly so small and cramped as a trunk in the attic, but it would still be a dangerous place to be trapped. It would be impossible to force the door with those metal plates. You could yell for days and, unless somebody happened to come along at precisely the right moment, nobody would hear you.
But I’d heard Halder talking to someone in the shed. And then he closed the door and locked it, with a lock that couldn’t be opened from inside.
The second shudder went all the way down my spine, and I felt myself break out in gooseflesh despite the increasing warmth.
My god. What if he reallydoeshave a prisoner down there?
I took a step back from the door, holding my sketchbook up in front of me as if it were a talisman to ward off evil.
Could he… had he… could there be someone down there, right now, in the dark?
Stop that.I shook my head, summoning the spirit of that practical girl.You thought it sounded like he was talking to himself, remember? And if there was a person being held down there, you certainly wouldn’t throw live chickens to them every few nights. That’s not how you feed a human.
Besides, who would Halder want to keep prisoner?My employer flew into rages, certainly, but unless Fitch the entomologist had come to visit, I couldn’t think of anyone. Granted, that wasn’t proof. I had learned next to nothing about my employer, and certainly he could have murderous passions I didn’t know anything about, but…
Maybe it’s the previous illustrator, my treacherous imagination whispered.
Oh, come on. He isn’t Bluebeard. And the studio’s been empty for a year, Mrs. Kent said as much. Do you expect me to believe that he’s kept my predecessor alive in a shed for a year by throwing them occasional live chickens?
When I put it to myself in those terms, it did seem a bit ridiculous.
It’s just a damn padlock. People put them on things they don’t want other people getting into. It doesn’t mean there’s anyone locked inside. You’re piling up assumptions and you still don’t have any more information than you did yesterday.
I walked around the back of the shed, where the roof dipped down so sharply. Yes, all right, the shape made sense now when I thought about a staircase going down. And when I looked in the direction of the stream, the woods did slope down in that direction, so maybe this section was high enough to hollow a space out above the water table. Given the red clay everywhere, I’d expect the room to be awfully damp and prone to flooding, but I was no architect.
Let’s see… it looked like the stairs went down maybe six feet, so then the room should be straight down from about… here.
I stood at a spot just behind the back wall of the shed and studied the ground.
Yep, that was ground all right.
It didn’t look like anything much. Pine needles, last year’s leaves, a small rock with an even smaller tuft of moss. There was a rather sadPolystichum acrostichoidesfern, which didn’t look sturdy enough to hold up the weight of the Latin name. In a painting, I would have rendered the whole thing with a wash of yellow ochre, maybe with a hint of Tuscan red mixed in, and not bothered with details.
I stomped my foot, wondering if the earth would sound hollow,like a wall with an opening behind it. It sounded exactly like I would expect ordinary dirt to sound.
I moved over a dozen yards and stomped again experimentally. It also sounded like dirt. I went back to the original spot and stomped a few more times. Was it just slightly louder? Was there a tiny bit more resonance? I couldn’t tell.
I lifted my foot to try again and a sound burst out of the ground that nearly stopped my heart in my chest.
It was a dry, rasping scream, the sound of a fiddle bow drawn inexpertly across the strings, and yet there was some quality to it that undoubtedly came from an animal throat. I leapt back, horrified, feeling as if I’d accidentally stepped on a cat’s tail and heard it yowl—but of course there was nothing there, nothing but the ground and the dead leaves.
I looked around wildly for a source, feeling as if the familiar woods had suddenly turned alien and strange. Iknewthese trees and I knew what lived in them. I knew the cries of whippoorwills and owls, the shrieks of katydids and frogs, but I did not know this.
Another scream rose from the ground, practically under my feet, a sound of misery infinitely prolonged.
My nerve broke and I ran.
Fortunately, no one saw me bolt out of the woods and into the house. If Mrs. Kent had seen me tear past, I would have had to explain… what exactly? I heard a noise in the woods and it scared me?
I needed tea desperately. My hands shook a little as I filled the kettle.Logically. Think logically. You are a naturalist, not a spiritualist to jump at knocking shadows. What does logic tell us?
Logic was having a hard time telling me anything through the screaming of my nerves. I gritted my teeth.What would your father think?
My father had been a brilliant naturalist. He had taught me to look and see what was there, not what I expected to see. If there was some terrifying creature underground, he would have been… well, not the first to seek it out, since botany was his first love, but he certainly would not have shied away from it.
