What Moves the Dead (37)

“It was not Angus.”

“A servant, then.”

I just looked at him. He growled and stalked back to the corridor, lamp in hand. I went after him, not wanting him to vanish into the depths of the catacombs alone. What if Madeline is in there? Waiting?

I looked down and stopped short with a hiss.

“What?” Denton turned, the flame reflecting an orange pinprick in his eyes.

“Look at the floor. Look at the dust.”

It had been years since the dust of the corridor was disturbed. Perhaps decades. I could not remember how long it had been since Roderick’s father died. It lay in a thick carpet across the floor.

Two lines of footprints stood out in stark relief. Someone with small feet had shuffled through here, not long ago. Their feet had dragged along the floor, leaving smeared lines, but every few feet, the imprint of bare toes was unmistakable. Then they had come back the other way.

Denton swallowed convulsively. “Someone came this way.”

“Someone. Yes. And then came back.” I took a step back, toward the main crypt. Gratitude flashed across his face and then the two of us rushed back the way we had come. (We did not run. If we ran then we would have to admit there was something to run from. If we ran, then the small child that lives in every soldier’s heart knew that the monsters could get us. So we did not run, but it was a near thing.)

The door was still open. The floor here was too overwritten with too many footprints to hold any clues as to who had gone where. I went to the crypt door, trying to think. Heavy wood, with ornate iron scrollwork, as Gothic as the rest of the damned manor. Madeline had been a little shorter than I was. If she had reached out to the door …

“Denton.”

“What?”

I pointed silently. Next to the iron ring, just where someone’s arm would fall if they leaned their weight against the door, was a metal cross. Caught along the edge were a dozen fine white hairs.



* * *



I expected Denton to argue, to tell me that it must have been the shroud brushing against the door. But he stared at the white hairs for a long, long moment, and then he breathed out all at once and squared his shoulders. “I see.”

“She walked into the catacombs by herself. And walked out again later.” And had done so on two feet, and operated the door.

He nodded once, not taking his eyes off the door.

“Denton,” I said, “I think we must face the possibility that Madeline is…” I struggled for a word, and finally settled on “… conscious.”

“It’s impossible,” he said, almost casually. “But that hasn’t stopped anything so far, has it?”

“Why is it impossible?”

“Because she’s dead. And mushrooms aren’t conscious.”

“Suppose she isn’t dead. No, listen to me. You said people drown sometimes and they come back long after they should have been dead, yes?”

“Hours after, Lieutenant. Not days.”

“Suppose the fungus kept her alive. It lives in water, yes? So it can survive drowning. What if it did something so that its host survived, too?”

Denton finally did look at me, opening his mouth, then closed it again. I could practically see him thinking it through. “Brains die from lack of oxygen,” he said slowly. “If this fungus could somehow provide oxygen … absorb it and pass it to the brain … yes, all right. It’s a damfool notion and I shouldn’t believe it for a second, but if it’s already in the brain stem, why not?”

“Madeline wakes up, a few days after her neck is broken,” I said. “She gets up and walks into the catacombs. Miss Potter and I come down and then leave, and she comes back to the crypt and finds the door unbarred. She opens it and goes out.” I gestured up the steps.

“Which means she’s somewhere in the house.” Denton sounded amused, but I recognized it as the humor that men get when they see the line of cannons pulled into position. Ha, yes, of course the enemy has cannons, why wouldn’t they? Oh, and we’re out of bullets, you say? Ha!

“Yes.”

“Where would she go?”

“Where do you think?” I started up the stairs. “Where would you go, if somebody broke your neck? She’d go after Roderick.”

This time we did run. We pounded up the stairs. Denton led the way to Roderick’s chambers. Our bouncing lamps filled the halls with shadowy giants. If we weren’t careful, we’d spill the oil and burn the whole damn place down.

The upper hall was already lit, not by candles but by a pale, sickly light through the window at the end of the hall. Christ, it was dawn already. How long had we sat drinking and trying to get our minds around this? How long had we spent in the crypt?

How long had Madeline been alone with her helpless brother?

Roderick’s door opened outward into the hall and stood ajar now. Denton and I shared one frantic glance and then both of us tried to jam ourselves through the doorway simultaneously. I was marginally faster and so I was the one who burst into Roderick’s room, pistol in one hand and lamp in the other, to find Madeline.

Sitting on Roderick’s bed.





CHAPTER 12


Her head was bent over at a terrible angle, neck horribly askew. She had to turn her whole body to face the door, while her head flopped sideways. She hitched up one shoulder to keep it partly upright and something about that small gesture was so dreadful that it stopped me in my tracks.