Fortress of Ephemera: A Gothic Thriller (23 page)

“It's called a dulcimer. The coins are hidden inside it. All of them. Just break the damn thing open, and they're yours.”

A Pyrrhic Escape

Noah Langley had forced my hand from beyond the grave. With his last words, “Fifth page,” he had not divulged to me the location of the Lydian croesids. (But how I wish he had!) Instead, he'd pointed me to the spot in his codebook where he'd begun to record the locations of all the traps and tunnels hidden within his overstuffed empire.

If the robbers had bothered to gaze above the dulcimer to the ceiling, they would've spotted, as I did then, an un-patched hole, as wide and as circular as a sewer grate. It was, of course, indicative of a severe roof leak, one that Noah had no doubt taken years to fix, given that within his notebook he'd labeled the trap in the music room as a
multi-floor shaft
. Water, and water alone, had rotted into the wood and plaster over time—over a decade or more, I should think—until the rooms directly above as well as below had obtained matching holes in their ceilings and floors. The hole in the floor of the music room, according to Noah's cryptic notes, had been disguised by an Oriental rug. I'd seen that it lay directly in front of the dulcimer.

Brady shot after the instrument ahead of the others. As a result, he fell through the floor alone, along with the entire rug. (Noah had widened the hole to roughly twice the diameter of a sewer grate, or else water had widened it naturally by pooling on the floor.) His disappearance had taken the blink of an eye, as they say. A loud scream issued from below. Miss Buxton raced to the edge of the hole and looked down.

“Brady!” she cried.

I spun toward the door, intending to flee through it, but Willie blocked my path, sword raised. “Are the coins inside that thing or not?” I stumbled backwards, nodding at him. “The coins!” he cried to Miss Buxton. She lifted her gaze from the hole and locked onto the dulcimer.

The edge of Brady's flashlight, which I still held in my hand, grazed the giant harp. I tipped over the instrument so that it fell between myself and the helmeted robber. At the same time, he executed a mighty downstroke with the sword, slicing through the strings and carving into the floor. I can still hear the harp's dying notes as I turned my back on it and fled.

Ahead was an open door leading into a dark, adjacent room, but there was no trail I could see leading toward it.

I crashed into the clutter, tossing aside this, kicking away that, abusing various musical instruments in a steady cacophony.

“They're not here!” Miss Buxton cried. My glance found her smashing the dulcimer against the wall by the neck, its body busting to bits. “Get him, Willie, get him!”

By chance I approached one of two grand pianos situated back-to-back with their lids propped open. With my one arm, I raised the stool by a leg and hurled it at my pursuer. I caught Willie squarely atop his noggin, but the Norman helmet served him in good stead, for the blow barely slowed him down.

I reached the adjacent room, where the darkness that engulfed me offered so much comfort that I elected not to switch on the flashlight but instead plow blindly into the inevitable material chaos.

Yet it did not take very long for Miss Buxton's lantern, as it approached steadily from inside the music room, to begin filtering light upon my surroundings. Willie's frame emerged in the doorway, backlit by the lantern.

I coughed on and off because the dust and the spider webs were unusually thick here, as if the room hadn't been disturbed—much less cleaned—in years. Willie scanned for me. Rodents of some kind chittered at my feet. The light continued to intensify. Willie stepped into the room.

I'd ducked behind what I could see only now was a great mound of children's marbles, one that overflowed a wide barrel. An eight year-old's El Dorado. I tucked the flashlight into my waistband in order to scoop up a handful of the marbles, and I pinged Willie's helmet and chain mail with them, and I kept on throwing handfuls until he'd backed out of the room, frightened or confused or both.

I waded through dense clutter in search of better ammo, better weaponry, or a better hiding place, whichever presented itself first. Scores of mildewed stuffed animals stared at me from built-in shelves, which meant I had to be in the children's day nursery. I stumbled upon a row of old potato sacks, each overflowing with various types of balls: baseballs, tennis balls, golf balls, rubber balls, and so on. When Miss Buxton, her lantern, and her flintlock appeared in the doorframe, I hurled balls at her until she darted behind the mound of marbles and out of sight.

But she soon popped up again, holding in front of herself, like a shield, an advertiser's sandwich board, which I can only assume had been stored back there for some unknown reason. She aimed her gun at me, resting the barrel on the top edge of the board. I ducked behind a pile of bicycles and bicycle parts—objects whose metal might deflect a bullet—and peeked out.

Brady's revolver had been in his grip when he fell through the hole. I could still see that moment playing out in my mind. So there was only the ancient flintlock to contend with now, and I recalled what Noah had told me in the wine cellar: that he only had three shots remaining. He'd fired one bullet inside the armory, missing Willie. Shot number two had gone off inside the music room when Miss Buxton murdered the fireman.

“I can count, you know,” I said. You've only one bullet left.”

“One more than you,” she said. “And I'll spend it wisely.”

“If you were wise, you'd retreat from this building whilst you still can.”

“Not without the coins—or the runner-up prize of your last breath!”

Willie reappeared in the door frame. As Miss Buxton turned up the kerosene lamp to its brightest setting, he charged at me through the clutter, sword raised. I searched for another exit. The door to my left I suspected was only a closet. Willie slowed from the weight and depth of the accumulations, yet would be upon me within seconds.

Behind me was another door that I fervently hoped led into the hallway. I waded toward it as fast as I could, but in passing a great heap of some kind, one that reached to the very ceiling—or so I recall—my movements set off a junk avalanche, and it knocked me down and buried me.

For a time I was disoriented, unsure even as to which way was up. As I shoved clutter away from my face instinctively, shards of light would come and go, hints as to where
up
was. I found my feet and stood. The debris had receded around me until it was only waist deep.

Two large hands closed around my neck, and Willie's Norman helmet filled my vision.

“The coins!” he cried.

He knocked me down. I was on my back with him strangling me from atop. I hadn't the strength, nor energy left to fight him off.

Stay alive!
I told myself.
Just a while longer!
For I anticipated that soon, very soon, a contingent of armed police officers would make their way up that fireman's ladder and into the adjacent room.

It felt as if Willie meant to strangle me dead. In his maddening greed, I wasn't altogether sure whether he knew what he was doing. (It was at his hands at this moment that I suffered the major insult that would lead to a laryngeal trauma and my present inability to speak.)

We were surrounded by mildewed balls of yarn, I noticed, scores and scores of them, which leant me a hint as to what the cold metal was that I could feel at my fingertips: a clump of knitting needles.

I buried one in the side of Willie's neck, which as any military man knows, presents a goldmine of kill targets due to the multitude of organ systems compressed into a tight conduit.

Willie seized up immediately, spurting blood, for I had punctured the carotid artery. I rolled him off and stumbled to my feet.

Miss Buxton and I found ourselves facing each other from a distance of approximately six feet. We were both buried to the waist in miscellany. She trained the ancient gun on me. It was shaky in her grip. She couldn't hold the weapon with both hands. Her broken wing with the makeshift cast held aloft the kerosene lantern.

I gripped a scale model schooner, one in a small fleet within arm's reach, and I hurled it as hard as I could at the gun. But I failed to knock the weapon from her hand. In my exhaustion, I'd missed my mark by a wide margin.

I'd struck the lantern free instead, shattering the glass, spilling hot kerosene on the debris, setting the glutted, dessicated room ablaze.

In a matter of seconds, the fire burned beyond control.

The Top Floor

Miss Buxton's attention naturally veered from myself to the soaring flames. In no time at all, they were licking at her person.

If she had not possessed a last bullet with my name on it, I would've assisted the murderess as a matter of course (and at the risk of my own life). For she was still a mere woman, notwithstanding an evil heart. Instead, I extracted Willie's sword, which he'd planted in the debris Excalibur-like, and plowed my way toward the exit.

“Miles!” she cried. “Help me! Please!”

I could not trust her. I did not look back.

It was when I'd reached the hallway, where shadows from firelight flickered on the walls, that I first realized that the overdose of laudanum had begun to affect me negatively. As I made my way along the carpet, I could not find my usual balance. It had more to do with the alcohol in the tincture than the opium, I believe.

I halted at the open door to the music room and peeked inside. There were as of yet no policemen coming up the ladder through the window. But I could still hear voices outside below.

I was tempted, I'll share with you, Doctor, tempted mightily to hustle down that firemen's ladder. I longed more than words can say for an end to my nightmarish night. And now I feared the flames and the smoke that I could see roiling beyond the door leading into the nursery, a fear heightened by Miss Buxton's silence.

But there was a crippled, old woman on the top floor and a promise I'd made to her noble brother as he lay dying. I continued on, down the hall.

The light emitting from the open door to the music room faded, and the flashlight, I discovered, had fallen out of my waistband at some point inside the day nursery, likely in the avalanche, or during my tussle-to-the-death with Willie. I reached the servants's staircase by feeling my way in the dark along one of the walls using the tip of the sword. It was a desperate, draining strategy as it necessitated constant collisions with Noah's superabundant inventory.

I'd exhausted myself, once again, before even beginning to climb. But climb I did, or stumble upwards I did, into a deeper darkness.

It was when I'd reached the third floor and had turned to face the final flight of stairs that I saw a dim emanation of light from above. With each step, it intensified. As I obtained the fourth floor landing, I saw that a wall sconce in the hall had been lit. Others had been lit too, I decided, based on the sheer amount of light cast.

I had not taken more than a step or two across the hallway floor when a figure hidden in a dark alcove beside the staircase lashed out at me. I took a hard blow to the right side of my skull and fell to the floor.

I rolled onto my back and looked up. The figure hovered overhead from a distance of about a foot. At first glance, I thought I was face to face with one of Noah's monstrous creatures. But it was Howard.

To say that the man had been disfigured by the sulphuric acid would be a criminal understatement. For the impact had been positively catastrophic. One of his eyes had seemingly melted shut. His boiled skin had, primarily on the left side of his face, peeled away to the extent that I could see much bone beneath. A portion of the skin on his neck, as well as the collar of his workman's costume, had been eaten away too. His breathing was quite heavy, as it always is for a man in physical agony, and his words came out slurred, perhaps due to the lack of any lips.

“Thought you were rid of me, eh?”

“There's no time for banter.” I spoke with difficulty too, my voice raspy, hoarse.

“What do you mean?”

“There's a fire raging on the second floor. The fire brigade is outside, but I suspect it's only a matter of time before it all burns down. The entire mansion. There's just too much fuel.”

I began to sit up, but he menaced me with the head of an axe, not the medieval kind, but the contemporary. (It must've been the instrument he'd struck me down with.) I collapsed on my back again.

“Where's the rest of my crew?” he said.

“Dead,” I said. “Willie is, for certain, and I'll assume the same fate for Brady and Miss Buxton too.” At that moment, we both heard a set of footsteps bounding up the stairs. I dared to hope it was the police with guns drawn.

“Guess you assumed wrong,” Howard said.

The footsteps, I soon realized, were rather light, and so I wasn't entirely taken aback when Miss Buxton emerged on the landing. Compared to the condition I'd left her in, she was considerably worse for wear. The mink coat was gone, sacrificed, I assumed, to fend off the flames during her escape from the nursery. Nonetheless, her hair had been singed by fire, and soot marked her clothing, her forehead, one of her cheeks. She still carried Noah's ancient pistol.