The Other Tree (11 page)

“Are you okay?” asked Chris. “You’ve been weird since—”

Chris cast her mind back to when she first met Luke.

“Well, you seem weirder than—” Chris began.

The lights suddenly went out, plunging the hallway into thick darkness.

“Should we be worried?” asked Luke.

“Everything’s fine,” a voice carried from down the hall.

Almovar shuffled down the corridor, a hurricane lamp dangling from each hand.

“These blackouts never last long,” said Almovar.

I remember differently
, thought Luke. Only it never made a difference at the seminary. Cold showers, long dark nights in meditation, no phone calls, no television. Then again, the other novices had thought he was odd in that way.

“I’m sorry,” said Chris. “We don’t want to waste your time, but we’ve come all this way…”

“You know,” said Almovar. “Aside from very affordable weddings, we’re also a bed and breakfast. I don’t suppose you require accommodation for the night?”

Chris and Luke exchanged a look, each thinking something completely different and misinterpreting the other as being in complete agreement.

“We would love to stay,” said Luke.

“Uh, how much is it?” asked Chris.

“Separate rooms?” asked Almovar.

“Yes,” said Luke.

“No,” said Chris.

“We’re religious,” said Luke.

“What’s the price difference?” asked Chris.

“Very religious,” said Luke.

“Eighty US dollars per single room,” said Almovar. “A hundred for a double.”

“Then again, we’re practically married,” said Luke, putting an arm around Chris.

Almovar smiled, perking up as he handed a hurricane lamp to Chris.

“Would you like to join me for dinner?” asked Almovar. “I have some lasagna in the oven.”

“How much?” asked Chris.

“We’d love to,” said Luke.

“Complimentary,” said Almovar. “I’d be glad of some company.”

* * *

A long wooden table stretched the length of the banquet hall. Coloured banners drooped from bugles hanging on the walls, and suits of armour stood at attention beside the arched doorways. A faux bearskin rug lay before an enormous unlit hearth, while a small gas radiator buzzed enthusiastically nearby.

Silver candelabra illuminated the end of the table where Almovar sat with Chris and Luke, casting a flattering light over their lasagna.

“It’s a very impressive castle,” said Chris. “How long have you lived here?”

“Almost forty years,” said Almovar. “I had this place built, you know.”

He smiled wryly.

“A youthful folly, I suppose,” said Almovar. “Medieval castles, trapdoors and turrets, secret passageways, hidden rooms. It all seemed so romantic. I always wanted it to look in disrepair, but I didn’t want it to actually
be
in disrepair. You always think of plumbing as something that happens to someone else.”

“It’s still a marvellous castle,” said Chris.

“You seem to be quite the collector,” said Luke.

“I used to travel constantly,” said Almovar. “It’s much more convenient these days, but in some ways it seemed easier then. The Arabian caravans, the impossible bustle of Shanghai, the islands of the Adriatic. If you were lucky, you just packed a suitcase and went.”

“It sounds like an extraordinary life,” said Luke. “The things you’ve seen.”

Almovar looked down at the scratched surface of the table.

“You reach a point in your life,” he said wistfully, “when you start to tire a little of seeing things, and being changed, without in turn being able to change and enrich others.”

Almovar looked steadily at Luke.

“Don’t underestimate the importance of having people in your life,” said Almovar.

Something in Luke’s face became subtly mask-like, and the temperature dropped ever so slightly.

“So,” said Chris. “What kind of things do you collect?”

“Anything that interests me,” said Almovar. “Renaissance furniture, nomadic carvings, medieval armour and weapons, rare texts, antique timepieces…”

“What kind of rare texts?” asked Chris casually.

Almovar’s eyes suddenly fixed on Chris, and something flashed briefly in them, almost like recognition.

“It’s getting late,” said Almovar. “I have a few things to attend to, and I suggest you retire to your room. It’s inadvisable to wander through the castle at night.”

Almovar took Chris and Luke’s empty plates as he left the banquet hall. Rain pattered softly against the stained glass windows.

Chris and Luke followed the stairs to the third floor, the glow from their hurricane lamp casting eerie shadows across the flagstones. The door to their room was marked with a polished silver nameplate, engraved with “The Sapphire Guest Room.”

The room was small, but comfortably furnished. Bamboo scrolls painted with peacocks and leaping fish adorned the stone walls, and the floor was covered with a thick blue rug. A four-poster bed dominated the room, with powder-blue drapery hanging from the canopy.

Chris dropped her pack onto the floor and sat on the bed, while Luke wandered over to the stained glass window beside a Victorian dressing table.

“The castle’s too big to search in one night,” said Chris. “And we can’t afford to stay much longer.”

“Weddings
can
be very expensive,” observed Luke, trying to see through the coloured glass.

“I mean time. SinaCorp is skipping along a stairway of money, and we have less than twelve hours to find the book.”

“He seemed very unfriendly when you mentioned it.”

“Secret passages and hidden rooms,” said Chris. “I’ll bet it’s hidden somewhere.”

“That narrows things down.”

Chris started to pace the room.

“If I were a recluse and wanted to hide something in my castle,” she muttered. “I’d probably put it in the conservatory, guarded by aggressive, toxic plants.”

“You’re not very good at this,” said Luke. “If I were a young recluse, travelling the world, buffeted on the winds of isolationist freedom, I would want a safe place to return to. Private, quiet, concealed. Where I could retreat from the world, inaccessible in my hidden stronghold.”

Luke traced a fingertip on the window glass.

“Underground,” he said.

Where people put things to be forgotten
, thought Chris.

We bury things, sometimes for reasons of sanitation, but sometimes to forget them. Allowing the earth to consume painful reminders—hopes blighted, mistakes made, and loves lost. Sometimes we mark the graves, unwilling to relinquish that final bond. But sometimes we let the wilderness reclaim them, hoping the memories, too, will fade.

“I didn’t notice any severed heads around,” said Chris.

“You’re thinking of Vlad the Impaler,” said Luke.

“No, I mean moose, and tigers, and geese.”

“Geese?”

“They can be vicious.”

She stopped pacing and looked at the hurricane lamp, burning low.

“I think we’d better conserve that.”

Chris leaned across and blew out the flame.

* * *

The thunderstorm had settled into steady thrumming rain, and the castle slept. Chris lay on the bed, staring up at the shimmering reflection of rain sliding on glass.

“I’ve never seen you pray,” whispered Chris.

“I’ve never seen you floss. I assume you do it,” said Luke from the floor, muffled behind a pillow.

“What do you pray for?”

“World peace.”

Chris looked at her watch—the glowing hands showed just past two in the morning.

“What do
you
pray for?” asked Luke.

“I used to pray for selfish things, mostly,” said Chris. “I guess I stopped when I found that nothing happened.”

“That’s not what prayer is for.”

“I know; it’s supposed to change
you
, not the things around you.”

I think that’s why I stopped
, thought Chris.

Chris swung her feet to the floor and felt for the lamp. She lit the short wick, turning the flame down to a low bud of light. Luke was already on his feet, looping his pack over one shoulder.

The hallway was pitch black, and the shadows seemed deeper with the lamp turned so low. Chris and Luke trod carefully along the corridor, down the curving stairs, and into the main hall. Shadows spidered across the ceiling, and light glinted from tarnished swords and shields. Chris and Luke crept into the banquet hall, towards the gaping fireplace with its man-high mantelpiece.

A marker of things buried, or stereotypical kitsch
, thought Chris.
Here goes
.

Chris stopped in front of the hearth and pulled on a corner of the heavy bearskin rug, peeling it from the stone floor. The rug flipped over, revealing a solid oak trapdoor with a circle of iron looped through the top. The smell of damp synthetic fur rose from the underside of the rug.

Luke suddenly looked up, his gaze darting around. The shadows. There was something wrong with the shadows.

Chris pulled on the metal ring.

“Give me a hand,” she said.

Luke’s heart pounded.

“Luke!” Chris whispered.

He joined her in heaving on the trapdoor, which lifted with a low creak. Chris and Luke strained to lift the ring farther, and the door fell open with a soft thud.

Chris shone her flashlight through the hole in the floor, illuminating a rusty metal ladder extending into the darkness. She passed her flashlight to Luke.

“Keep it on me,” said Chris as she started climbing down.

“Chris!” Luke glanced around at the shifting shadows.

After several moments, he saw her wave from below.

“Throw it down,” said Chris.

Luke tossed the flashlight down to her and, with one last look around, descended the ladder. The rungs scraped against his palms, and the rivets creaked as he climbed down. His feet touched the floor after only a few metres, and he turned to see Chris shining her flashlight around the room.

They stood in a chamber carved from the limestone, the bare stone walls gleaming dully in the torchlight. Horizontal alcoves had been gouged from the rock, and a marble coffin lay in each compartment.

“Is this what I think it is?” asked Chris, swallowing nervously.

“A crypt,” said Luke.

“Oh,” said Chris. “I was thinking vampire’s nest.”

Luke ran the beam of his flashlight across the words engraved onto each coffin.

Petric Almovar, 1915-1972

Maria Almovar, 1918-1974

Cedric Almovar, 1940-1977

Hannah Almovar, 1948-1962

Goric Almovar

Each coffin was cut from smooth, pale marble, veined in amber and thick with dust. Chris touched the stone lightly, and drew away.

“I guess it’s here somewhere,” said Chris, turning away.

Deeper in the chamber, the walls were covered with high bookshelves, spilling with leather-bound books, yellowing manuscripts, and delicate rice-paper booklets with blue fabric covers. Documents spilled from wooden chests onto the floor, merging into pools of shadow. A nautical captain’s desk sat in the middle of the room, neatly laid out with papers and dried-up ink pots. Chris searched the overloaded shelves, while Luke dug carefully through the piles on the floor.

The chamber brimmed with parchments, grimoires and ribboned scrolls, books bound in soft scarlet leather and iron rings, thick tomes filled with intricate woodcuts and cryptic languages. The hurricane lamp sat on the desk, burning lower as the soft sound of shuffling papers filled the room. Luke sifted through a driftwood chest and paused at an ancient, oversized manuscript, bound in a plain calfskin cover. He leafed gently through the pages, skimming the cramped lines of delicate calligraphy, trying not to linger on the lavishly illuminated tableaus.

“I think this might be it,” said Luke.

Chris looked across at Luke.

“Might?”

“Well it doesn’t say ‘Apocryphal Book of June,’” said Luke, pulling out his pocket translator. “But I… It’s not in Latin… I think it’s in Hebrew…”

Luke typed frenetically into the pocket translator, glancing at an illuminated page depicting a fully crowned tree, with a man kneeling before it, surrounded by snakes.

“Well, what’s Hebrew for Ju— Aargh!”

Chris broke off, knocking into the desk as a sharp stabbing pain shot through her ankle. The lamp wobbled, and the shadows in the room whirled for a moment before Chris grabbed the lamp, steadying herself.

“What happened?” Luke rose quickly with the text in his arms.

“I think something just bit me,” said Chris, leaning against the desk with a pained expression.

“Like a mosquito?”

“Maybe a megafauna mosquito.” Chris winced as she pulled up the leg of her jeans. “One you’d have to swat with a frying pan.”

Chris pulled down her sock, exposing two neat puncture marks just starting to well with blood.

“Is that a snake bite?” She sounded offended.

“Maybe a very small vampire?” said Luke. “You wouldn’t believe the kinds of stories I hear from people wanting me to bless holy water for them.”

Luke crouched to inspect the wound, gently taking Chris’s ankle.

“We’ve got to get you to a hosp—”

There was a sudden loud thud.

It sounded very much like a trapdoor slamming shut. Luke raced to the ladder and clambered up, pushing on the now-closed trapdoor. It didn’t budge. He pulled out his mobile phone. No signal. He took a breath.

“Hey!” he called.

“Luke,” said Chris. “I think he knows we’re down here.”

“We can explain! Chris needs medical attention!”

“I think he knows that, too,” said Chris, sliding slowly down the desk to sit on the floor.

Luke thumped on the trapdoor with his fist, suspecting that the muffled thudding would barely make a sound through the thick wood.

“We need a compression bandage,” said Chris, sweat starting to form on her forehead.

She fumbled for her pack, pulling out a roll of bandages.

“It’s going to be okay,” murmured Chris, the world starting to turn interesting shades of purple.

Luke wordlessly rolled up the leg of Chris’s bootcut jeans as high as it would go and removed her sock. Carefully, he wound the roll of bandage tightly from the puncture down to her foot, and then slowly up her calf and thigh. Chris tried to keep her breathing steady, an odd burning sensation starting to crawl up her leg.