“This must be the earthquake-damaged section,” Cochran whispered to Plumtree, who was holding the gold box in both hands.
She stepped carefully over the uneven floor to the window’s, which were panes of clear glass inset at the centers of stained-glass borders.
“We’re in the, what was it, the Daisy bedroom,” Plumtree said breathlessly, peering out at the grounds, “or near it. You can see the sign we reconnoitered at down there to the left. This here would be where she was sleeping on that night in 1906, when Dionysus knocked down the tower onto her.”
Cochran flexed his hand, then waved it experimentally in the still air; and it seemed to be free of any supernatural tether now.
“It must be here,” he said, “whatever we’re supposed to find.”
Two big, framed black-and-white photographs were hung on one raggedly half-plastered wall. Still hesitantly holding his hand out to the side, Cochran walked over to the pictures, and saw that they were views of the house as it had stood in the days before the top three stories had fallen; and the additional crenellations and pillars and balconies, and the peak-roofed tower above it all, ashen and fortress-like and stern in the old gray photographs, made the structure’s present-day height and red-and-beige exterior seem modest by comparison.
“The House of Babel,” said Plumtree, who had walked up beside him with her hands in the pockets of the leather jacket. “I guess that’s how the god looked at it.”
“There was a fireplace over here,” called Pete softly from the other side of the room, “at one time.”
He was standing beside a chest-high square gap in the wall, through which the exposed floor joists of another room were visible on the far side. Pete crouched and looked up at the underside of the gap. “You can see the chimney going on upward.”
A piece of white-painted plywood had been neatly fitted in to cover the spot where the hearth would have been, and Cochran crossed to it and then knelt down on the floor beside Pete’s knees to take hold of the edge of the board. Pete stepped back.
“I’m certain this must be bolted down,” Cochran said softly.
“Think of young King Arthur,” said Angelica behind him, “with the sword in the stone. You’re, the—the guy with the Dionysus mark on his hand.”
Cochran yanked upward on the board, and nearly fell over backward as it sprang up in his hands. He shuffled his feet to regain his balance, and leaned against the board and pushed it forward onto the floor joists of the next room; then for several seconds he just peered down into the rectangular brick-lined black hole he had exposed. He dug a penny out of his pocket and held it over the hole for a moment, then dropped it; and he waited, but no sound came back up.
At last he stood up and quickly stepped away from the hole. Instead of stepping over to look for themselves, Angelica and Pete and Plumtree stared at him.
“Well,” Cochran said, “there’s—it’s very fucking dark down there, excuse me. But there’s rungs, starting a yard or so down.”
“Rungs.” Angelica quickly crossed to one of the windows and stared out at the shaggy palm trees nodding out in the rain. “Damn it, we were just going to get… gas, and beer, and batteries,” she said harshly. “Kootie’s ordering a pizza. I’m not—hell, I’m not even dressed for climbing down into some goddamn—unlit—spidery catacombs in a haunted house.” She turned around and glared at Plumtree. “If only,” she cried out, “you hadn’t killed Scott Crane!”
Plumtree opened her mouth and blinked, then snarled, “And who did you kill, lady? ‘If only’! Back in your shanty house in Long Beach, you told me that each of you was responsible for the death of somebody, and had guilty amends to make. You told me you can’t get rid of the guilt and shame without help, that that’d be like thinking one hand could fix what it took two to break, remember? I’ve had stinking beer cans wired to my ankles, and I’ve been taped into a chair and then thrown onto a backyard faucet hard enough to crack my ribs, and, and I get the idea that it’s a big honor for me to be allowed to eat with you all.” Her voice was shaking, and her lip was pulled back to expose her lower teeth as she went on, “So tell me, bitch—who did you kill?”
Angelica stared at Plumtree blankly. Then she said, “Fair enough. Okay. I was a psychiatrist in private practice, and I used to perform fake Wednesday-night seances to let my patients make peace with dead friends and relatives; and five Halloweens ago one of the seances, right in the middle of it, stopped being make-believe. A whole lot of real, angry ghosts showed up, and among other things the clinic caught fire. Three patients died, and five more are probably still in mental hospitals to this day.” She took a deep breath and let it out, though her face was still expressionless. “One of the ones that died was in love with me; I wasn’t in love with him, but I—didn’t really discourage him. Frank Rocha. I killed Frank Rocha, through carelessness in the expertise I was trained for, the expertise he had paid me to use. His ghost troubled me for two years, and the police have been looking for me ever since.” She smiled tiredly and held out her right hand. “I do apologize, Cody. Are we friends?”
Plumtree was shaking her head, but apparently more in bewilderment than denial. She took Angelica’s hand and said, “I never had a friend before.”
“It’s a tricky flop,” said Cochran shortly. He could feel a jumpy restlessness in his right hand, and he knew it wanted to point toward the brick chimney hole in the floor. Climb down before it pulls you down, he thought. “Somebody give me a…a Bic lighter or something, since we don’t have the Dunhill anymore.” He sighed and ran his hands through his hair, patted the gun under the windbreaker at the back of his belt, then walked over to the hole and sat down on the floor beside it, swinging his legs into the dark empty space.
Plumtree pulled a red Bic out of the leather jacket pocket. “Here, Sid—and I’m right behind you.”
“So are we, so are we,” sighed Angelica.
Cochran slid himself forward, down into the hole, so that his toes and the seat of his jeans were braced against opposite brick surfaces and most of his weight was on his elbows. The angular bulk of the holstered .357 jabbed him over his right kidney. “Just a bit lower than you’d like,” he said breathlessly through clenched teeth, “there’s a rung you can get a foot onto. Then I guess you just drag your back as you go down until you’ve gone far enough to get your hands onto the rungs.”
He heard several sighs behind and above him, and then Pete’s voice said, “I’ll go last, and pull the plywood cover back over the hole.”
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
Roma, tibi subito motibus ibit Amor…
—Sotades of Maroneia in Thrace,
c. 276 B.C.
THE shaft was wide for a chimney, but the rough brick sides kept snagging the elbows of Cochran’s windbreaker no matter how carefully he kept them tucked in against his ribs, and after Pete pulled the board over the top of the shaft there was no light at all, and the close amplification of panting breath and the gritty scuff of feet on iron rungs emphasized the constriction; Cochran was terribly aware that even if he unhooked his gun holster and pressed his back flat against the wall behind him he would not have had room to bring his knee up to his chest.