Gravestone (14 page)

30. Iris

I look at her shriveled bone of a hand marked with spots and bruises, which shakes as it takes the teacup off the table. I’m guessing Iris is old. Like maybe a hundred.

“This is a hard place to find,” Mom tells her as we sit on a sofa covered with tiny white hairs that belong to either a dog or a cat.

“Not if you’re looking in the right spot,” Iris says in a raspy but dignified voice.

She’s got an accent. A
proper
accent, almost British or something like that. Or maybe it’s just that I think anybody who talks proper sounds British. She’s sure not from around here.

Even her outfit makes her look … different. She’s wearing a black turtleneck and black pants. Perfectly matched and fitted, strange almost for someone so old to be so fashionable.

She didn’t offer us anything to drink and barely even suggested we sit down. I can already tell that I don’t want to work for her. The only difference between her and a crabby old man is her gender.

“I don’t suppose you were told the job description? Most of the time that’s what scares the children away.”

Children?

“I was just told that this would be a good job for someone who needed work,” Mom says as she shifts on the couch. “Chris is willing to do pretty much anything.”

“Chris, is it?”

I nod.

“I’m Tara Buck—Tara,” Mom says.

She still isn’t used to using her maiden name of Kinner. I still like the sound of Buckley myself even if I don’t like who it belongs to.

“It’s good that Chris is willing to do, as you say, ‘pretty much anything.’ Because every day and every week there is something new to do at the inn.”

“How long have you run this?”

“My dear,” Iris says to my mom, as if she’s a child too—maybe we’re all children compared to her—“the inn keeps me, not vice versa.”

The room we’re in is modest and orderly, nothing too strange or weird. Everything is very woodsy in terms of colors and decorations and feel. A painting above the fireplace sums up this room and probably this inn—a picture of a tiny log cabin perched at the edge of a very high cliff.

That’s this place, dummy. Someone drew this from far away, as if they’re taking a bird’s-eye view of it.

The woods must hide how high up we are. Which is a good thing because I don’t particularly love heights.

“When are you available, Chris?”

“Well, I’m not sure—I can’t drive—so I mean, it’s up to my mom.”

“When would you like him, Miss …?”

“It’s Iris. And does he finish sentences, or does he have a speech impediment?”

“I finish sentences,” I say.

“Good. Just wanted to know what to expect.”

“When will you need him, Iris?” Mom asks again.

Iris brings the teacup to her mouth and takes a long time to sip it. Then she sets it back down and looks at us. Her hazel eyes are a bit unsettling in their steady stare, as solid as super glue.

“This Saturday, to start. Eight in the morning will do.”

“That’s fine. And for how long?” Mom asks.

“As long as it takes.”

I wonder if I get a say in any of this.

“And what will he be doing?”

“Tara, you must understand. This inn is a special place for special people. It’s hard to get to for a reason. It is a place to rest. A place to hide. We have unique guests here who sometimes want to be left alone and sometimes need tending to. My job is to do whatever is required of me. And I need someone to do what is required of him.”

I glance at my mom to see if she is as confused as I am.

Thanks, Mom. Great job choice. It’s going to be nice when Iris “requires” my left thumb for her creepy experiments in her dungeon.

“Yes, I understand—we understand. It’s just—any ideas to share so Chris knows what to bring or what your expectations are?”

“Chris already looks strong and fit. That’s one thing. He seems to do a good job keeping quiet, which is another thing. Chris?”

“Yes?”

“Can you keep secrets?”

I want to laugh. This whole town is built on secrets. I’m carrying a backpack of them myself.

Yeah, I can keep freaking secrets.

“Yes,” I say.

“What does that mean?” Mom asks.

“As I said, we have unique guests who stay here, Tara. And discretion is wise when it comes to them.”

Mom sits on the edge of the seat and shakes her head. “When you say ‘unique,’ what do you mean?”

“You don’t have to worry.”

“Chris is respectful, if that’s what you’re going for.”

“Respect and caution are two different animals,” Iris says. “They’re both wise for a place like this.”

“I can keep my mouth shut, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Iris seems surprised by my sudden answer. Yet I see a slight smile on her face.

And for some weird reason, I think of another smile. Another slight smile that popped up surprisingly. The first time I saw Jocelyn smile.

“I don’t want to have to worry about my son being around strangers,” Mom says.

“There is no need to worry. Chris will be safe and sound in this place. Nobody will harm him here.”

I think of the bluebird and want to beg to disagree, but this time I keep my mouth shut.

“But Chris cannot bring guests to the inn. That is unequivocally forbidden. Is that understood?”

I nod. I’m doubting that Newt’s going to want to come up and stay the night at this place anyway.

“Chris is a hard worker,” Mom says.

“Then he will be able to earn the money. For Saturdays, I pay two hundred dollars.”

What?

“Two hundred, for—is that for the day?” Mom sounds as shocked as I am.

Iris just nods, not even bothering to watch our expressions.

Judging by this place, where everything seems old and outdated, I can’t see Iris having a lot of money.

Two hundred bucks for a day? Can I start now?

“We’ll see how this first Saturday goes and proceed from there. How does that sound?”

“Great,” I say.

Iris smiles again. Maybe she likes my outspoken nature. She gives me this look, and for a second I think I’ve got her wrong. She’s not a crabby old woman. She’s just—

Careful?

My mom thanks her, and then Iris stands as if she’s got other things to do than chitchat the day away. That’s another difference between Iris and other old people, especially around here. Most of them have plenty of time to burn. Iris acts like she’s got other duties to attend to.

I look down a hallway and wonder if anybody else is staying in the house. If someone “unique” is back there.

When we get outside, we hear rain falling above us onto the covering of trees. Even though it’s winter, the trees are still dense enough to cover us.

“When did it start raining?” Mom asks. “The sky was clear when we came up here.”

“This mountain never ceases to surprise me,” Iris says. “The longer I’m up here the more accustomed I am to seeing anything.”

“Do you go into town much?”

Iris merely shakes her head. Maybe that’s what she needs me for, though she knows I don’t have a license.

“I look forward to seeing you next Saturday, Chris. Be safe.”

As we walk to the car, I scan the area and find it—the bluebird, surely the same one that bit me, perched on the edge of a limb not far from our car.

I watch it carefully before getting into the vehicle.

I think of Iris’s last words to me.

Be safe.

I wonder exactly how she expects me to do that, and if she has any clue about the mess that’s waiting for me off this mountaintop.

31. Below

There’s gotta be a way to get to it, if something’s really there.

I’m searching the cabin, not that there’s much to search. Mom is working tonight, and I have no big dates or parties to go to.

I plan to see once and for all if this house has a basement.

My hunt begins in the back of the cabin, in the laundry room. There’s an old washer and dryer back here, probably installed when this house was built thirty-something years ago. I check them out, look behind them, see the mounds of dust and cobwebs, think it might be nice to clean those one day just for our health and well-being. There’s a tube going out of the wall, but that’s nothing unusual. I examine all parts of the wall and the floor. Not much to examine except faded paint and cracked tile and dirt and grime.

There’s a small closet that I’ve never really noticed by the back door. A half closet for coats. Maybe this is an elevator.

And maybe Batman’s going to come out and show you his hidden lair right under your house.

There are a few coats in here. A pretty cool hunting coat, another hip-looking denim jacket. I’m guessing these weren’t installed with the washer and the dryer. Again I check out the walls and the floor. No type of door or opening or anything unusual. Just some dirty boots on the bottom of the floor.

I keep this up, going into the kitchen and inspecting each of the cabinets and the dishwasher and the back of the oven and all of that. Nothing. I look underneath the stairs that jut up right in front of the main door.

Nope.

I’ve been scouring the cabin for an hour and am starting to feel pretty stupid. Maybe there’s an empty area below this floor that was never intended to be used. Or maybe there were never any voices or laughter in the middle of the night.

You heard them and you know it.

I check the only other room downstairs, my mother’s. I move a dresser but find nothing. I move her bed but find nothing. For a minute I sit on the edge of the bed and listen. It’s getting darker outside, and another storm is supposed to be coming.

There’s still the bathroom.

Maybe the bathtub has a special button you push that allows you to be sucked down the drain like at some big water park.

You know it’s sad when your own thoughts mock you.

I turn on the light and glance around. A tub, a toilet, and a sink. I might as well be thorough. I kneel and open the doors to the cabinet and look at the handful of towels and toiletries belonging to Mom.

There’s nothing unusual.

I’m about to close it when something makes me pause.

Every cabinet I’ve seen has pretty much looked the same except for this one. I take out the towels and notice that the plumbing for the faucet is strangely warped, like it was built around something. It’s bent and goes around the edge of the interior of the cabinet, allowing more space.

The thing that caught my eyes was the scuff marks. The scraped sides.

Then I see it.

No way.

I see the square outline of something—I don’t know what. The back of the cabinet is the same color as the rest, but the four sides of it look—

Detachable.

I nudge it. Then nudge it a little harder. There’s nothing behind it.

After a few tries, I shove it hard with my palm.

This time a portion of the drywall gives.

This isn’t drywall. It’s a door of some kind.

Right now I know that maybe I should call Mom or call somebody, but I doubt that anybody can help me.

I insert my hand into the opening and feel the cold.

For a minute I think. But it’s not a very long minute.

I run out of the bathroom to find a flashlight.

And maybe something else.

Something for protection.

The knife belongs to Uncle Robert, just like the gun I found in the same duffel bag. The gun is lost somewhere on the side of a mountain close to the place Jocelyn died. I think about that gun and what I should’ve done with it. What I could have done. Instead, in my grief and terror, I dropped it.

One of the ten thousand things I regret.

The knife is a folding kind, but that doesn’t mean it has a small blade. This is the kind you can cut a deer open with. I touched the blade once and felt it cut my skin. It’s that sharp.

The knife is in my pocket. I’m wearing a sweatshirt because—because to be honest, I have no idea where I’m going to go after I slip through this opening. Maybe I’m going to find something like the hatch from
Lost.
Or maybe it’s going to be an alternative universe like
Donnie Darko,
because really, I’m dead. I died on that hill just like Jocelyn. Or maybe I’m going to see a white rabbit and follow it and end up finding Johnny Depp smiling below, wondering what took me so long.

I’m a product of the culture, or at least I used to be. Now I really do feel like I’m in a time warp, an alternative universe, a black nightmare.

I’ve pushed away the covering to the back of the cabinet and am about ready to climb in through the narrow enclosure when I hear Midnight barking. Her bark is more like a little cough. She never does this, so I go out to the main room to see what’s wrong.

Midnight is on the couch, just barking. I pet her for a few minutes and tell her that everything’s fine. Maybe she can feel my fear. Or maybe she smells something coming through that opening.

Yeah, like the smell of death.

I go to the fridge and get the little baggie full of treats for her. I’ve been feeding her little cut-up hot dogs. I saw this on a program once. One of those dog-whisperer shows where a kooky guy gets the dog to do anything. His trick: hot dogs. Lots of them.

“It’ll be fine, girl, just stay right here.”

Back in the bathroom, I pause for a moment as my flashlight scans the opening. All I can see is a black wall. It doesn’t look like there’s much of a passageway there.

I slide in and then put my arms and head through the place where the piece of panel was. It’s a door of sorts, a kind that swings upward and only can be opened from the back. Once I’m through it will fall back in place.

I slide in a little more and then slip.

For a second, I’m falling headfirst into some dark hole.

I know dark holes. I’ve become pretty well acquainted with them.

This time I grab on to the edge of the opening and prop the rest of my body up. My legs and gut are still propped in the cabinet so I’m able to balance and not fall in.

I bring the flashlight over and aim it down, my head drooped over some opening where the cold air is coming from.

This really is a hatch.

There is a square hole that’s large enough for a person to fit through. Along the side of the wall facing me is a set of metal rungs going down. I see the bottom. All I can see is dirt.

Maybe a lot of people would stop now. And I realize the people in scary movies do idiotic things.
Hey, let’s go for a late night swim. Hey, the moon looks great if we go to that abandoned cliff. Hey, I know there’s a serial killer around, but can’t we still just make out a little longer?
Those idiots are all goners, and you know that the moment they do something so stupid.

But I can’t remember seeing this in a horror movie. I seriously doubt Desmond is going to be in my basement, and if he is, then maybe that will explain everything.

I think back to the little cabin I found in the woods above our place. The opening I fell through, the one with a similar ladder attached to its side. The passageway leading into the darkness below. I wonder if the two are connected in some way.

After trying to see if I can fit in the narrow tube going down, I stop moving and have an awful thought. If someone or something’s down there, they’ll be able to grab me before I can see them.

Nothing’s down there, just like nothing was in the cabin above the house.

I wiggle backward and force myself through the cabinet. I can just imagine Mom coming home now and seeing my head sticking out below the bathroom sink.

Are you really that
bored, Chris?

My legs arch, as does the rest of my body as I struggle to find the rungs of the ladder. Soon I have one hand attached to a cold strip of metal while the other has the flashlight. I scan the bottom to see if anything is moving.

Before I’m too far down, I check the door and make sure it’s secure. In case Mom sees it and suddenly has the crazy idea of trying to go through it herself.

Only one of us needs to be that stupid.

The ladder ends as the hole opens to what must be our cabin’s basement. On the opposite side of where I’m climbing is a wall that has another built-in ladder on it. I swing like a monkey from one side to the other and then finish climbing down on the opposite side, which I presume is the edge of our house. It’s cold down here, and I know that I’m now underground.

When I get down I scan the area with my light, trying to keep my hand from shaking. I pat my jeans pocket and make sure the knife is still there. For a moment I just take in my surroundings.

There’s really nothing to take in.

It looks like an unfinished basement. The walls surrounding me are cement, the ground a soft dirt. There are no doors or windows or openings coming in. Except for the rather large and ominous opening on the other side of where I’m standing.

I try to figure out which direction is what. If I’m guessing right, the opening is toward the back of the house, which means it’s a couple stories underground.

What if it connects to the other passageway?

There’s a part of me that thinks this is pretty cool. In the same way I think a movie that gets me to stop breathing is pretty cool.

There’s another part of me that wants some answers.

I listen and can’t hear anything. No voices, no laughter, no wind.

Then I hear Midnight barking.

That’s when I realize that it’s pretty easy to hear what’s going on above.

That’s also when I realize beyond any doubt whatsoever that the laughter I heard the other night was real, and it came from where I’m standing right now.