Phantom (9 page)

Otherwise ...

* * *

7. In the Ruins

... there would be death here.

No one thing sparked the thought in Ned's
mind, but he couldn't doubt it. He had followed the track bed of
the old rail line and climbed the hill to reach this gloomy spot.
It was the long way, Ned knew from a previous scouting mission, but
it was his decision to approach the place from the back. The hill
wasn't steep, but it was thickly covered with bushes and brambles,
so the going had been slow, and there were always enough trees to
obstruct the view ahead-making it hard to know how far he had
wandered from a straight line on the way up. He had started this
expedition shortly after lunch, but already the afternoon seemed to
be winding down and he had only reached the outside wall. It was a
mass of gray-brown bricks, at least ten feet high but rotting. The
wall stretched away to the right and left as far as Ned could see.
Even on a hot day like this the bricks were cold and clammy to the
touch.

He followed the wall for what seemed a
considerable distance before it curved sharply. Beyond that bend,
Ned found a tree that had fallen down, its upper branches caught on
the top of the wall. Blown over in a storm, probably, Ned thought.
He figured it was the best point of entry he was likely to find, so
he took it. Parasite suckers had claimed the tree, smothering it
with hundreds of viney arms that made it difficult for Ned to find
a place to put his feet. Slipping, wedging his sneakers into the
tangled, decaying mess, he pulled himself up the trunk of the tree.
Ned stopped when he got near the top of the wall. He reached out,
but his whole body began to slide and he quickly clamped his
fingers around a sucker as fat as a bullwhip. His position was
precarious: he needed both hands and feet just to stay where he
was. How could he get onto the top of the wall only a yard or so
away? Not far, but too far, it seemed. Ned looked down and was
alarmed to find that the distance of ten feet to the ground looked
far greater from up here. Perhaps he could ease his way back down
the tree trunk a few inches at a time. But when he tested his
maneuver Ned rediscovered the principle of many old traps. The
suckers all grew up the tree, of course, pointing in his direction,
and it was virtually impossible to go back down against them. He
couldn't see what he was trying to do and his feet could find no
hold. Ned felt like a foolish kitten stuck in the tree of
curiosity, but he knew that no firemen would ever come to this
place and get him down.

He looked at the wall again. Maybe it wasn't
as much as a yard away. Besides. it was the only way to go. Ned
hauled himself a little higher, narrowing the gap slightly. This
would have to do; any farther and the clump of dead branches and
slimy suckers would make it too tricky to use the top of the wall.
Ned knew he shouldn't do it, but he looked down again. It was more
like fifteen or twenty feet to the ground-no, he told himself, that
can't be right. He was letting his imagination get the better of
him. Still, it was obviously enough of a drop to break bones. Don't
think about it.

What he had to do was this: reach out in one
swift but sure movement, grab the top of the wall and pull himself
onto it. The most dangerous part would come when he let go of the
tree with his other hand and swung it across to the wall. Then all
that would hold his body over the gap would be one hand and the
toes of his sneakers pressing hard against the slippery suckers.
One way or another, Ned was about to find out how strong he
was.

But he almost didn't. The first time he
gripped the top of the wall a brick tore loose in his hand. Ned let
it fall at once and clung fiercely to the tree, waiting for the
surprise, the shock to die down in him. For some reason he had
given no thought to the possibility that the wall itself, that
massive presence, might be unreliable. Now his whole calculation
was thrown in doubt. Question: What would Ken Holt, boy detective,
do if he were in this situation? Answer: Try again.

Ned did, and this time the bricks held. The
rough edge of the masonry dug up the skin on his forearm, causing
Ned to regret that he hadn't worn long sleeves. He barely paused,
however, before letting go of the tree. His upper body arched
across the open space, his toes pulled free of the suckers and
pushed off, and after a brief scrambling flurry Ned was lying face
down on top of the wall. A little sloppy, he thought, but who
cares? He felt as if he had just conquered Everest, and for a while
he didn't move, enjoying the sensation of having arrived where he
was.

When Ned finally looked
around to survey the new territory, what he saw took his breath
away. Lynnhaven's old spa was situated in a gentle hollow at the
top of the hill, and Ned was evidently perched on the outer wall's
highest point, for the entire inner acreage sloped gradually away,
giving him a disturbingly good view of the place. The main
building, a grotesque double-winged structure with turrets, stood
on the far ground several hundred yards away from Ned, looking like
the shattered castle of some demented and defeated prince. The vast
expanse in between was a jungle of choked and twisted vegetation,
broken up by an astonishing network of lower inner walls. It was a
honeycomb, a maze—but no, as Ned studied the scene more carefully
he could see definite patterns emerging. This was no random piece
of work. Here the walls were built to form an equilateral triangle,
there a perfect circle and, further over, a rectangle. Other shapes
suggested themselves to his eyes, but in many places the growth of
stunted trees and layered vines made it impossible for Ned to be
sure. It was clear, however, that all the inner walls were
connected, forming a multitude of geometric figures running to the
outer wall in places and also right to the main building. To Ned's
mind the whole remarkable panorama conjured up images of forgotten
history and legend—a small medieval town with its royal palace,
say, or an ancient Inca stronghold and sacred temple. Strange
people once dwelled here, and perhaps strange creatures too, for
which there were no names. Now all were gone and dead—yes, that was
it.
There would be death
here
. Even from outside the walls Ned had
sensed it, the afterglow, the radiation of death that lingers so
long.

But it didn't bother him now. Ned felt as if
he had just set foot on a new continent, and he all but trembled
with the excitement of it. This was more, much more than the ruin
he had expected to find. It was a puzzle on a monumental scale, and
it raised Ned's exploration to a dramatic level of challenge.

Not far from where he sat, another wall
offered access to the interior. When he reached it Ned was pleased
to find that the inner walls were only about eight feet tall, a
height much easier to cope with. Taking care, he could stand erect
and walk on the tops of the walls from one end of this incredible
place to the other, back and forth, until he had seen anything
there was to see. Then he could easily find the best place on the
outer wall from which to jump down.

The first few areas of the estate that Ned
inspected were disappointingly alike: snarls of thorny weeds, man
high, filling the divided spaces so that he had to look hard along
the base of the wall to see the ground. They were like enormous,
vile salads, Ned thought, and there was no way of even guessing why
the walls had been laid out the way they were or to what use the
enclosed sections had been put. He did notice, however, that every
inner wall had a door or an archway built into it. Many of these
openings were bare, but quite a few of the original doors remained
intact—heavy slabs of bleached, warped lumber. There were no
passageways or lanes between walls; one area opened directly to
each of those that surrounded it, and thus all were connected. The
plan may have been very clear and simple, Ned thought, but you
would still want a map to find your way around down there,
especially if you were going from the main building to a
crescent-shaped pocket like this one, where only a couple of people
could fit in at a time. What was the point of building such a tiny
enclosure—or indeed what was the point of building the whole place
like this? Ned walked on, but the more he saw the less sense it
made to him. Didn't Peeler and Cloudy say people came to the spa to
do something about their health? But this place didn't look like
any hospital or clinic Ned had ever seen.

Nor was it uninhabited.
Almost as soon as he moved away from the outer wall Ned heard the
noises—a stirring here, a brushing whisper behind him, the soft
tramp of steps taken off to one side. Now and then he would turn
quickly, in time to see a branch still shaking or to catch a
glimpse of some undefined figure moving in the undergrowth. At
first it meant nothing to Ned. Just animals, he told himself. But
the sounds worked away at his mind and eventually he stopped, cold
and nervous. What about the swamp people—could they be up here, a
gang of them hiding out in the abandoned ruins? He looked all
around, but the only thing he noticed was that the outer wall now
seemed to be dangerously far away. Ned had gotten himself pretty
much into the center of the ruins. He continued on toward the main
building, half expecting a crowd of deformed savages to leap out of
the flora at any moment and pull him down from the wall. Don't
think about it, just hurry up and get out of here.
Otherwise ...

Ned stopped when he came to the circle. It
was much larger than it had looked from the outer wall. In fact, it
now appeared to be the single largest part of the place he had seen
yet. But that wasn't what stopped him. The circle had the same dark
green foliage as the other areas, but here it halted in the center,
forming a second circle of open space with a diameter of about ten
feet, as far as Ned could judge. He couldn't see the ground at that
spot, but the hole in the middle of the weeds was unmistakable.
Thus the circular wall seemed to be filled with an immense wreath.
But if this was puzzling, it had other, more unnerving features.
Ned heard the sound that came from the center hole—a steady, deep
slurping noise, as if the earth itself had formed a terrible mouth
there, gurgling, sucking .... And, rising through the air above the
vegetation, was a mist so thin Ned hadn't seen it until he had come
to the circle, a stream of pale vapor issuing from that giant,
unseen orifice .... An image came to Ned's mind of a mythical ogre,
a monster buried in the earth, pinned in place by the chain of
walls and dense ground cover, breathing smoke from the "Only part
of him exposed to the air, waiting for the chance to break free and
stalk the land .... Grateful that he couldn't actually see what was
down there in the center of the circle, Ned hurried on, trying not
to make the least sound that might disturb a sleeping giant.

As he drew closer to the main building he
became aware of a change in the sectored grounds. The jungle of
wild growth thinned out somewhat, and in places it consisted of
nothing more than brindle grass stitched through with the usual
brambles. Now Ned knew what it was that bothered him about this
berserk garden. Wherever he looked, whatever grew, the color was
not quite right. All of the greenery had a bluish-black tinge to
it. Ned thought his eyes might be playing tricks on him, or that it
was simply the way the sun hit the leaves in a thin, brittle shine,
but the more he studied the scene the more he became convinced that
these were bizarre and poisoned plants, varieties that continued to
grow but that had gone bad over the course of many years.

In the shadow of the mansion Ned saw the
remains of several small outbuildings—windows, doors and roofs all
destroyed. Perhaps they had once been cottages, bath houses and
changing rooms. A bent, rickety skeleton was all that was left of a
greenhouse. The inner walls ended here, about forty yards from the
main spa building, looping around to the right and left to join the
outer walls at the extreme end of either wing. The scrubby open
ground was broken only by wide stone stairs that led up to a
terrace and the tall, boarded-up doors of the spa. Large urns still
stood at various points along the balustrade. The lower windows
were all blocked up with sheets of corrugated metal, while the
upper ones were as open as the eye sockets of a skull, but
inaccessible.

Maybe I won't be able to get into the
building after all, Ned thought, but perhaps that isn't such a bad
thing. The place looked anything but inviting, and Ned had visions
of ghastly things lurking in dark corners within—an army of rats,
spiders as big as a grown man's hand, trapdoors that opened to
nests of snakes and swooping vampire bats ....

He stayed on the wall and decided to follow
it around to the place where it met the outer wall and the right
wing of the building. Ned took another look back at the route he
had just covered, and he felt both thrilled and relieved, like
someone who had just tiptoed through a perilous no-man's-land
between the edge of the world and the abyss of hell. Now all he had
to do was lower himself down from the outer wall and head for
home.

But then he saw that it might yet be
possible to gain entry to the spa building. The last window in the
right wing was only a couple of feet from the spot where the walls
touched and at about the same level as the coping stone on the
outer wall. The corrugated metal in this window appeared to be
loosely propped in place, not nailed tight. If it had been a matter
of hopping from the wall to the window ledge, with nothing to hang
onto, Ned might have decided it was too risky, considering that (he
drop to (he ground was about ten feet here. But this window, like
every one in both wings, had a low wrought-iron grille set in the
concrete casing—and that made it easy.