He lowered it to Mark, who held it steady while first Pat and then Kathy went down. Pat had caught the fever. Forbidding as the dark hole appeared, she would have fought anyone who suggested she remain above. Josef was the last to descend. He brought the flashlight with him, and handed it to Mark. Not until then did Pat see the nature of the place into which they had descended.
The room had once been virtually airtight, every crack carefully sealed. It was so no longer. The insidious damp of Maryland soil had crumbled the mortar between the stones; water had seeped in and dried and seeped again, so that the lichen-stained walls bulged ominously in places. The damp had affected the objects in the room too. There was nothing left of the bed except a low, irregular platform, and even less remained of what had lain upon the bed. Its shape was due more to suggestion than to actual form; but enough was there to bring a suppressed cry from Kathy.
"It's okay," Mark said-but his own voice was not quite steady. "Could be worse."
He turned the flashlight beam full on the bed.
The rotted remains of a sheet or blanket covered the shape below, but things protruded here and I here:.1 rounded curve of skull, the end of a long bone-a femur, probably, Pat guessed.
"Human," she said softly.
"Oh, yes." Mark said, turning the light away from the pitiful remains. It illumined smaller piles of decay and stopped at one. There was little to distinguish this heap from the others-once pieces of furniture-but Mark stepped to it and fumbled in the debris for a few minutes before producing a handful of metal disks.
"Buttons," he said. "Stamped 'CSA.' He put his uniform on the chair before…"
"A Confederate soldier," Josef muttered. "Then this room was something like a priest's hole. The Trumbulls concealed fugitives-"
"And spies," Mark said. "You guys are really dense. Didn't you understand all those hints in Mary Jane's letters? She couldn't be explicit, not at the time she was writing, but her friend knew what she meant. This was one of the stations on the Confederate spy circuit. The location is perfect-isolated, only a few Billet from the river-"
"With the Bateses right next door?"
"There was a wall," Mark said. "Remember? The houses aren't that close. On a moonless night one man, creeping through the underbrush, wouldn't be seen or heard. The very fact that it was so close to the Bateses would disarm suspicion. People would think they wouldn't dare. But it was typical of the Turnbulls-that damn-your-eyes bravado."
"This man was no spy," Josef said. "He was in uniform. A fugitive from one of the nearby battles, perhaps. Wounded, hidden by the Turnbulls… Come on, Kathy, stop sniveling; it's only bones."
Kathy gulped and wiped her face with her fingers.
"She's got more sense than you have," Mark said in disgust. "You still don't get it, do you? Not just anybody's old bones. They're his."
"You don't mean-"
"Yes, I do mean. They're his. That's Peter Turnbull- what's left of him."
Ten
I
Prove it," Pat said. Then, as Mark took a step toward the rotted bed, she exclaimed, "No, don't… don't."
"I bet I could prove it," Mark said. "He was probably carrying identification. A watch, a locket with his dear old mother's hair… Or, speaking of hair, maybe some of his-"
"For God's sake, Mark." Even Josef was shaken by this callous speech. "You are without a doubt the most ghoulish-"
"What's ghoulish about this?" Mark demanded, in tones of honest surprise. "This is just leftovers, like old clothes. Compared to what we've seen lately, this is clean and normal."
"You have a point," Josef admitted. "And, since you have been right about everything else, I suppose you're right about this. Would you care to explain to us idiots why Peter Turnbull's bones are lying here, unburied and unconsecrated, in the cellar of his own home?"
"Not exactly unconsecrated," Mark said. "She covered him up. And… there were flowers."
From the tatters of the blanket he lifted a cobwebby coil, a fragile ghost of vegetation. It crumbled into dust as he touched it, but a hundred years ago it might have been a wreath.
"She covered him?" Josef repeated, sounding like the idiot he had called himself. "No, it's no use; I cannot possibly follow your… Mark. This is where it comes from, isn't it?"
"Yes," Mark said. "This is where, and this is why. If you'll just wait a minute-"
"Wait? Here? When that cursed thing may… Or does it only come at one a.m.?"
"Well, now, I wouldn't swear to that," Mark said. "We're getting awfully close. In fact, I've got most of it figured out. That's what this is all about-figuring out what really happened. It didn't want-"
Mark's sentence ended in a choked gurgle as Josef grabbed him by the collar.
"Are you telling me, you unprintable delinquent, that you want the thing to come? That you deliberately, with malice aforethought, brought us down here so that it would… Let's get out of here."
He released his grip and turned to Pat.
"No, wait," Mark gasped. "It's all right. I can handle it. We've got to have a confrontation, right here, where it happened, that's the only way… Ah. Here we go." He pointed; his voice shook with an uncomfortable blend of triumph and revulsion. " 'Look, here it comes again.' "
He stepped forward, in front of the others. Josef gathered Pat into one arm and Kathy into the other. "If we survive this," he muttered, "I'm going to kill that boy."
Pat leaned against him, incapable of speech, as the indescribable aura invaded the room. Mark's flashlight was dimmed by the ghastly whirling light. As the light strengthened, two burning blue spots formed in its core.
Pat felt cold stone against her back. They had retreated as far as they could, and still the thing came on, moving forward with horrible, jerky movements.
Mark stood his ground. The light was strong enough to cast shadows, horribly distorted shadows, like parodies of the forms that shaped them-strong enough for Pat to see that the shadow stretching out from Mark's feet was, surely, that of a man inches shorter, broader of shoulder, with close-cropped hair instead of Mark's unruly mop.
A voice spoke, softly. It had to be Mark's, though it sounded nothing like his. Pat was unable to make out the words; but at the sound the whirling light stopped its forward progress with an uncanny, horrid suggestion of human surprise. The voice rose in volume, and changed, in tone and in rhythm.
"Don't you get it? It's all over; we know. You can't stop the truth; you can't hurt anybody; you're dead, dead and damned. Go back to wherever you belong. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, and all the saints, and…"
Mark went on, mouthing an insane litany of mixed-up religious formulas, invoking every deity he could think of. Pat lost track of what he was saying; for, incredibly, the thing began to shrink and fade. For one fantastic moment-and she was never sure whether she really saw it, or whether she only imagined it-just before it went forever she saw it clear, in its true shape: the form of a woman, so emaciated as to be virtually skeletal, her straggling white hair framing a visage completely without color except for the blazing blue eyes.
Then it vanished, taking all light with it, even the feeble beam of the flashlight. A rumbling crash shook the very earth, as if the darkness had solidified and fallen upon them.
Pat would have been thrown to the ground if she had not had the support of the wall and Josef's arm. Choking, she thrust out both hands against air thick with dust.