Locked.
No matter. He knew how to deal with the situation. Kyle wandered around to the back of the mansion to where the construction crews had been discarding the wood and metal pieces they’d been replacing inside the house, along with a few inexpensive tools. From the pile he selected a crowbar.
Halloran returned to the shed and forced the point of the iron bar into the opening between the doorjamb and the hasp of the lock. One strong heave, and the door swung open with a muffled crack. Kyle stepped inside. It took only a few moments to gather the supplies he needed: a couple of heavy-duty flashlights, a pickax, and a shovel.
The mansion’s front door gave more easily than the trailer’s had. Once in, he flipped on one of the flashlights to light the way. The mansion was set back a good way from the road and who in his right mind would come out there at that time of the night? It was creepy enough in the daylight, never mind after dark. Goose bumps rose on his arms the moment he stepped inside.
He found the steps to the cellar and descended into the darkened basement. He crossed the floor, damp muck sucking at his heels, darkness surrounding him, pressing in on him from all sides.
If he’d been sober, he might have noticed the heavy silence that enveloped the house in its smothering embrace. He might have noticed the sudden rush of electrical tension that filled the spaces between that silence like a living entity, making the hair on the back of his neck stand at attention.
But he remained blissfully unaware.
The dark maw of the staircase leading underground suddenly loomed in the floor before him, and he jerked to a stop, almost stumbling down the steps. The gloom from the tunnel mouth seemed thicker than the darkness around him, and he shined his light down the steps, cutting through it with the precision of a scalpel. Dust motes swirled in the beam, and he could see where the passing of others earlier in the day had disturbed the thick layer of dust on the floor.
A vague sense of unease slowly seeped its way through his pores. He had the sudden feeling that someone was watching, and he turned quickly, shining the light back across the room in the direction he’d come.
The room was empty.
For a moment he toyed with the idea of giving up his crazy scheme and going home. But visions of gold danced before his eyes, and the notion was soon forgotten. He’d come this far.There’s no stopping now, he thought.
Taking a deep breath, he strode down the steps into the darkness below.
In Room 310, the old man lay trapped in that twilight realm that hovers between sleeping and wakefulness. He lay on his side, curled into a fetal position, a thin trail of spittle falling from his slightly parted lips to the surface of his pillow. Every few moments he was wracked by spasms that made him quiver as if volts of electricity were being passed through his body. His eyes flicked back and forth beneath the protective skin of their lids.
In his dreams, he stood in a narrow stone tunnel, a little behind and to the left of a tall, hulking man who, in turn, stood before a brick wall that sealed off the passage in which they stood. The man’s emotions rolled off him in waves; he was full of rage and spite. He stood there, smashing at the wall with a pickax, determined to break through to the other side. The old man watched as the youth lifted the pick yet again, those powerful arms swinging it toward the wall with tremendous force. As the stroke fell, time seemed to slow, and he watched in horrid fascination as the pickax swung silently downward. He could see that much of the barrier had already been destroyed, and he knew that if the man succeeded in breaking through, the ancient adversary would be free to walk the face of the earth.
He could not allow that to happen.
Unwilling to admit defeat, yet knowing that he was probably too late, he screamed out in desperation, hoping against hope to delay that final blow.
“Stop!!!”
Kyle’s swing faltered, the handle slipped in his hands, and he came close to smashing his kneecap into oblivion as the heavy head of the pickax bounced off the wall before him and came rearing back in his direction.
“Fuck! You could have crippled me!” he said savagely as he turned to face the speaker, his anger overcoming his fear at being discovered.
What he saw as he turned brought his cursing to an abrupt halt, however.
The corridor behind him was empty.
“Hello?” he called in a suddenly shaky voice.
His cry echoed back at him along the length of the tunnel, ghostly whispers of sound.Hello, hello, hello ….
“Who’s there?”
Who’s there, there, there….
“Shit!”
Shit, shit, shit….
Kyle turned away. “Must have been my imagination,” he mumbled to himself, dismissing the incident from his mind with the overconfidence of a drunk. He could see that it would only take another swing for him to break through the barrier and as he hefted the pickax once more, visions of gold returned to dance in his mind.
He brought the pick up and back down again in a solid swing.
The stroke was directly on target.
With a loud crash, the stones before him gave way, revealing a hole a foot or two in diameter.
“Yes!” he cried exuberantly, this time not even hearing the echoes as they bounded away in the darkness behind him.A couple more minutes, and I’ll be rich! He dropped the pick and retrieved his flashlight from where it had been propped up on a nearby stone to provide him light.
He shined the light into the hole.
A horrible, hideous face lunged out of the darkness at him.
“Christ!” he screamed, his sudden fear making his voice high and shrill.
He dropped the light, not hearing the small sound of breaking glass as it struck the floor, and grabbed the pickax, bringing it up over his shoulder ready to strike at the thing should it emerge from its hole.
Kyle was too stubborn to run away. He waited there in the darkness for a moment, his ears straining to hear the slightest sound from the thing ahead of him. He trembled with fear yet held his ground, prepared to smash the thing’s ugly face as soon as it stuck its head out of the hole.
Nothing happened.
After a few minutes, he cautiously bent down and felt around at his feet for one of the other lights he’d carried in with him. His heart racing in his chest, he slowly moved closer to the hole and shined the light back inside.
The face was there again, and he almost jumped away a second time when he noticed something he’d missed before. The eyes of the thing were coated with a thick layer of dirt and dust.
“What the hell?” he whispered.
He stepped closer, putting his head inside the hole, closer to the thing itself. He could see more clearly, and, after another minute, he started laughing softly. His laughter grew from a light chuckle to a total, uncontrolled braying, until he was laughing so hard that tears ran down his face.
The thing was a statue.A fucking statue! he thought to himself.I was scared of a statue! His laughter echoed inside the enclosed space. He failed to hear the raw edges of hysteria in its tone.
Feeling much better than he had a moment before, Kyle pulled his head back out of the hole he’d created and once more hefted the pickax. Five more minutes of work made the hole large enough for him to step through.
Shining the light around the room, Halloran could see that the chamber he stood in was little bigger than ten by ten, with the same distance between the ceiling and the floor. The statue seemed to be the only object in the room.
He moved around it, his steps stirring up small clouds of dust. The statue was made of some kind of dark, unfamiliar stone. It didn’t seem to be worth anything, as far as he could tell, no rubies for eyes or anything like that. After another close look he dismissed it from his thoughts and turned away.