But eventually Will began to feel restless and found that he couldn't sleep. To pass the time, he resumed his investigation of the library, wondering who had lived in the house. He went from shelf to shelf, reading the titles on the ancient hand-tooled spines, which mostly had esoteric religious themes and must have been written centuries ago. It was an exercise in frustration, because he knew all the pages inside would be nothing more than confetti and dust. Nevertheless, he was fascinated by the obscure names of the authors and the ludicrously long titles. It had almost developed into a contest to try to find a book he'd actually heard of when he came across something curious.
On a lower shelf, a set of matching books appeared to have no titles at all. After wiping off the grime, Will could see they had covers of deep burgundy, and that the tiniest gilt stars were picked out at three equidistant points on each of their spines.
He tried to take out one of the volumes, but unlike the other books, which had disappointed him with the usual avalanche of silt from their disintegrated pages, this one resisted, as if it was somehow stuck in place. Even more strange, the book itself felt solid. He tried again but it wouldn't move, so instead he selected another in the series and attempted to lever that one out, with the same result. But he noticed that the entire series, which occupied about a foot and a half of the shelf, had shifted ever so slightly as he'd applied more force. He felt a flush of elation that, at last, he'd found something he might be able to actually read and, puzzled as to why the books seemed to be glued together, used both hands to pull at them.
They slid out in one block, all the volumes together, and Will placed them on the floor by his feet. They felt heavy, and the pages even appeared to be intact. But he couldn't pry away any of the individual books. He felt the tops of the pages, picking at them with a fingernail to see if they would part. Then he rapped a knuckle against them. They gave a hollow sound — and it dawned on Will that the books weren't made of paper, but of wood, carved very precisely to resemble the roughly cut leaves of old volumes. He felt around the back and found a catch, which he pushed open. With a creak, the top flipped up. It was a lid with an invisible hinge. These weren't books at all. This was a box.
With a rush of excitement, he hastily plucked out the layer of tattered cloth he found inside and peered in. The dark oak interior contained odd-looking objects. He lifted one out.
It was obviously a lamp. It had a cylindrical body, approximately five inches in length, to which was attached a circular housing with a thick glass lens inside. At the rear of the cylinder was some form of sprung arm, and there was also a switch of sorts behind the lens.
It was highly reminiscent of a bicycle light, but it was sturdily made — from brass, Will guessed, given the green patches that he observed on its surfaces. He tried the lever, to no avail, and pulled at one end of the cylinder where there were two slight indentations. With a pop, the end came off, revealing a small cavity inside. If it was indeed a light, then it would need batteries, but even so, Will couldn't work out how such a small battery could power it, or where the wires were.
Stumped, he called over to this brother. "Hey, Cal! Don't suppose you know what this is? Probably just a piece of junk."
Cal ambled groggily over, but his face lit up as soon as he saw the object. He snatched it from Will's hands.
"Hey, these are brilliant!" he said. "Got a spare orb on you?"
"Here," Chester offered, swinging his legs over the edge of the table and climbing off.
"Thanks," Cal said, taking the orb. First he removed all the dust from the device, turning it upside down and tapping it, then blowing inside.
"Watch this."
He dropped the orb into the cavity and pushed down until it clicked.
"Pass me the top."
Will handed it to him and Cal pushed the end of the cylinder back on. Then he rubbed the lens on his pants to clean it.
"You move this lever," he told Chester and Will, "to adjust the aperture and focus the rays." He held it so they could see as he tried to move what appeared to be a lever behind the lens housing. "It's a little stiff," he said, applying as much pressure as he could with both his thumbs. Then, as the small lever gave, he grinned. "Got it!"
Light leaped from the lens, an intense beam that Cal played around the walls. Although the room was already quite well illuminated from the light orbs they'd placed at various points on the bookshelves, they could see how bright the lantern's beam was in comparison.
"That's awesome," Chester said.
"Yep. They're called Styx lanterns — pretty rare, really. This is the best thing about them," Cal said, and, pulling open the spring-loaded flap of brass at the back of the light, slotted it over his shirt pocket. He took his hands away and moved his chest from Will to Chester, the lantern clamped firmly in place as its beam flashed in their faces.
"Hands free," Will observed, blinking.
"Absolutely. Very useful when you're on the move." Cal leaned over to look at the contents of the box. "More of them! I can rig up one for each of us."
"Cool," Chester said.
"So…" Will began as the thought occurred to him, "so this house — all the way down here — was for the Styx!"
"Yes," Cal answered. "I thought you knew that!" He made a face, as if it had been blindingly obvious all along. "They would have lived here. And Coprolites would have been kept in the huts outside."
Will and Chester exchanged glances.
"Kept? What for?" Will asked.
"As slaves. For a couple of centuries they were made to mine stuff the Colony needed. It's different now — they do it in exchange for food and the light orbs they need to live. The Styx don't force them to work like they used to."
"That's nice of them," Will said dryly.
11
Mrs. Burrows was in the dayroom of Humphrey House, an establishment that purported to be a haven of recuperation, or "a respite from your day-to-day worries and strife," if you believed the brochure. The dayroom was her domain. She had commandeered the largest, most comfortable chair and the only footstool in the place, and, to sustain her for the afternoon's television viewing, had stuffed a bag of hard candy down the side of the chair. One of the orderlies in the home had been persuaded to pick these up for her on a regular basis from the town, but they were rarely shared with any of the other patients.
As Oprah came to an end, she flicked through the other channels in a frantic haste. She ran through them all several times, only to find there was nothing on that remotely interested her. Thoroughly frustrated, she stabbed at the mute button to silence the television and leaned her head back against the chair. She missed her extensive video library of films and favorite shows much as a normal person might mourn the loss of a limb.
She sighed a long and forlorn sigh and the irritation receded, leaving in its place a vague sense of helplessness. She was humming the theme from Murder, She Wrote in a mournful and desperate way when the door thumped open.
"Here we go again," Mrs. Burrows muttered under her breath as the matron breezed into the room.
"What, dear?" inquired the matron, a rake-thin woman with her gray hair tightly pulled back into a bun.
"Oh, nothing," Mrs. Burrows replied innocently.
"There's someone here to see you." The matron had made a beeline for the windows and now heaved back the curtains to flood the room with daylight.
"Visitors? For me? Mrs. Burrows said unenthusiastically as she shielded her eyes from the glare. Without leaving the chair, she attempted to get her feet into her slippers, a tawdry pair of stained, fake suede moccasins with the backs trodden down. "Hardly likely to be family — not that there are many of them left, not now," she said, a little soulfully. "And I don't imagine Jean has stirred her stumps to bring my daughter all the way here… Haven't heard a squeak from either of them since before the New Year."