"Steve!" Claire.
He felt his stomach knot up a little, turning to watch her approach. She caught up to him outside the door to the mansion's grounds, wearing a concerned expression. "Are you all right?" she asked, studying him uncer– tainly, blinking rain out of her eyes. Steve wanted to tell her that he was aces, that he'd shaken off the worst of it and was ready to get back to the zombie smackdown, but when he opened his mouth, none of that came out. "I don't know. I think so," he said truthfully. He man– aged a half smile, not wanting her to worry too much but not wanting to talk about it, either. She seemed to understand, swiftly changing the topic.
"I found out that the Ashford twins have a private house hidden behind the mansion," she said. "And I'm not a hundred percent sure, but the keys we're looking for might be there. I think there's a good chance." "You found all that out from the, uh, Rodrigo?"
Steve asked doubtfully. It was hard to imagine that an Umbrella employee would give that up to the enemy. Claire hesitated, then nodded. "In a roundabout way," she said, and he suddenly had the impression that there was something she didn't want to talk about. He didn't push it, just waited. "The problem is getting to the house," she continued. "I'm sure it's locked up tight. I was thinking we might poke around the mansion a little more, see if we can find a map or a passage…"
She pushed her dripping bangs out of her eyes, smil– ing. "… and, you know, get out of the rain before we
get wet."
Steve agreed. They went through the entrance to the manicured grounds, stepping over a few corpses along the way. He filled her in on his idea about the Lugers, which she thought they should definitely pursue – al– though she also pointed out that with the Ashford familyrunning the island, Umbrella's cute little puzzles didn't necessarily need to be logical. They stopped at the front door to do what they could about their clothes, which turned out to be not much. Both of them were drenched, though they did their best to squeeze out the excess. Fortunately for both of them, their feet had stayed dry; wet clothes were a pain in the ass, but trying to get around in squelching boots seri– ously sucked the root. Weapons up, Steve pushed the door open. Shivering, they stepped inside…… and heard a door close, upstairs and to the right. "Alfred," Steve said, keeping his voice low, "betcha money. What say we put a few holes in his sorry ass?"
He started for the stairs, the question rhetorical. That loony craphound needed to be dead, for more reasons than Steve could count. Claire caught up to him, put a hand on his shoulder.
"Listen, some of the stuff I found back at the prison… he's not just crazy, he's seriously deranged. Like serial killer deranged."Yeah, I got that," Steve said. "All the more reason to take him out ASAP." "Just… let's just be careful, okay?"
Claire seemed worried, and Steve felt protective all of a sudden, big time. Oh, yeah, he's going down, he thought grimly, but nodded for Claire's sake. "You got it." They moved quickly up the stairs, stopping outside the door they'd heard close. Steve stepped ahead of Claire, who cocked an eyebrow but said nothing. "On three," he whispered, turning the knob very slowly, relieved that it was unlocked. "One-two-three!" He shouldered the door, hard, bursting into the room and sweeping with the machine pistol, ready to shoot the first thing that moved, but nothing did. The room, a softly lit office lined with bookshelves, was empty. Claire had gone in and turned left, past a couch and cof-fee table on the north wall. Disappointed, Steve stepped after her, expecting another door to another hall, so sick of the stupid mazes all over the place that he could just shit… He stopped and stared, exactly what Claire was doing. Perhaps ten feet away was a wall, a dead end with two empty spaces set in a plaque at about chest level, indentations shaped like Lugers.
Steve felt a flush of adrenaline, of victory. He had no rational reason to believe that they'd just found the way to the Ashford's private residence, but he believed they had, anyway. So, it seemed, had Claire. "I think we've got it," she said softly, "betcha money."
EIGHT
OH, WOW. THIS IS… WOW, CLAIRE THOUGHT. "Wow," Steve whispered, and she nodded, feeling en-tirely out of her depth as she took in their new environ– ment. Had she said serial killer crazy? More like a serial killer convention.
There'd been another puzzle after the Lugers had opened the wall, having to do with numbers and a blocked passage, but they'd ignored it completely with both of them pushing, the passage wasn't blocked for long. Outside once again, they could see the private house, perched on a low hill like some brooding vulture in the pouring rain. It was a mansion, really, but nothing like the one they'd just left – it was much, much older, darker, surrounded by the decrepit ruins of what had once been some kind of a sculpture garden. Stone cherubs with blind eyes and broken fingers watched them wend their way toward the house, gargoyles with eroding wings, shattered pieces of marble underfoot.
Creepy, definitely… but this is so far beyond creepy, it's not even in the same category.
They stood in the foyer, unlit but for a few strategi– cally placed candles. There was a smell of must in the air, an old smell like dust and crumbling parchment. The floor was plushly carpeted, what they could see of it, but so ancient that it had been worn threadbare in many places; it was hard to make out any color beyond "dark." What had once been a grand staircase was directly in front of them, sweeping up to second and third floor bal– conies; there was still a kind of shabby elegance to its time-blackened banisters and sagging steps, as there was in the dusty library to their right, in the faded, or– nately framed oil paintings hanging from flocked walls. The word haunted would have described it per-fectly… except for the dolls. Tiny faces stared out at them from every comer. China dolls of fragile porcelain, many of them chipped or dis– colored, dressed for high tea in water-stained taffeta. Plastic children with roll-open plastic eyes and pursed pink mouths. Rag dolls with strange button faces, bits of stuffing poking out of withered limbs. There were jum-bled piles of them, stacks of them, even a few featureless cloth babies impaled on sticks. There was no sane order to their placement that Claire could see.
Steve nudged her, pointing up. For just a second, Claire thought she was looking at Alexia, hanging fromthe eaves – but of course it was another doll, life-size, this one dressed for her bizarre lynching in a simple party dress, flowered hem floating around her slender synthetic ankles. "Maybe we should…" Claire started… and froze, lis-tening. The sound of someone talking filtered down to them from upstairs, a woman's voice. She sounded irate, the cadence of her speech rapid and harsh.
Alexia.
The angry voice was followed by a kind of pleading, whining tone which Claire immediately recognized as Alfred's. "Let's drop in for a chat," Steve whispered, and with-out waiting for a response, he headed for the stairs. Claire hurried after him, not at all sure it was a good idea, but not wanting to let him go it alone, either. The dolls watched them ascend in silence, staring after them with lifeless eyes, keeping their vigil and their peace as they had for many years.
Alfred never felt closer to Alexia than when theywere together in their private rooms, where they'd laughed and played as children. He felt close to her now, too, but was also deeply distraught by her anger, want– ing desperately to make her happy again. It was his fault, after all, that she was upset.
"…and I simply don't understand why this Claire person and her friend are proving to be such a trial for you," Alexia said, and in spite of his shame, he couldn't stop watching her with adoring eyes, as she gracefullyswept across the room in her silken gown. His twin was breathtakingly refined in her displeasure.