The Skeleton Key (8 page)

I checked nearly every panel in the oval lobby, even the mezzanine door again, right behind Samantha, who sat eerily motionless and silent on the steps. I was about to give up when finally I felt a shift of air at the wall beneath the mezzanine stairs. Intrigued, I held my palms to the wall and noted a faint draught coming through. I flicked my torch on and shone it against the section of wall.
Yes.
There was a rectangular doorway, just tall enough for someone my height to walk through. It was hidden so cleverly by the low wooden panels that I'd looked at it before and failed to spot the slight edge. I ran my fingers over the wall, as if reading braille, and moved the torch beam across, searching.

And then I found it. A keyhole.

My heart quickening, I pulled the key from my pocket.

Yes.

The skeleton key fit perfectly and I felt triumphant as the lock turned, the house finally revealing another secret to me, but though it was unlocked the door would not open. I leaned against it with my shoulder and pushed, but it wouldn't budge.
Come on
. I took a step back and then shoved against it with more force. It shifted only an inch.

Hmmm.
‘Samantha?' I said, and her head appeared over the edge of the steps. ‘Can you please help me with this? If you're not, err, busy?'

She padded over to me, her expression vacant.

‘There's a door here, but I need your help to open it,' I explained, and she shrugged her assent.

‘Thanks,' I told her and put the torch down at my feet. ‘Now, on the count of three, let's both push the door as hard as we can. Okay?'

Another shrug.

‘One . . .' I said, readying myself. ‘Two . . . three!'

We rammed our shoulders into the stubborn door, and though Samantha did not appear very strong she must have given it a good push, because the door flew open in a cloud of century-old dust.

I coughed, falling forward into the open doorway. ‘Wow! Thank you. We did it!' I picked up the torch and shone it inside the dark entry, covering my mouth from the dust. It was a narrow corridor of some kind. Samantha didn't seem particularly interested in it – or anything else for that matter. I thanked her again as she walked away to sit on the mezzanine stairs.

Goodness. She really took the whole depressed vampire thing to a new level.

I pulled the key out of the lock, pocketed it, and stepped inside the cold, dark corridor.

Oh boy.

The space felt a bit damp, I thought, and like the chandelier it was draped with cobwebs. I sure hoped there weren't a lot of spiders around. I had developed something of an aversion to spiders recently. Holding my coat closed around me, I walked slowly, casting torchlight just beyond my feet to guide the way. The floor was laid with stones and it was a little uneven. Gradually it wound to the right, towards what I thought was the back of the house – though I quickly felt disoriented enough in the small space to be uncertain. The light from the lobby chandelier was long gone and only the torch lit the way. Occasionally the stone floor seemed to slope a little, and I came close to tripping several times. I had to watch my footing.

And that was why I didn't see her until I was practically at her toes.

Oh!

I looked up and before I could stop myself, I let out a short, sharp scream. It was the woman in black, faceless and silent, standing in the corridor with what looked like a candle in a silver candleholder, held in the frail fingers of her right hand. I stared into the featureless shroud and swallowed. The candle she held lit itself as I stared –
actually lit itself –
and in the low light, perhaps because of the dust in the corridor, the flame appeared green.

After what seemed like an eternity, my heart started beating again. ‘Is your name Elizabeth? Um, Mrs Elizabeth Barrett?' I managed to ask the figure, my frightened voice barely audible. It was as if the air in the corridor snuffed out the sound.

Though her mouth – if she had one – did not move and she made no sound, I sensed an acknowledgement. Somehow, I knew. It
was
her – Dr Barrett's widow.

Elizabeth Barrett turned and walked down the corridor away from me, that unnatural candlelight illuminating our path. She seemed to be leading me somewhere, and I found myself following and quickening my pace. Yet even when I dared to come up to her shoulder, squeezing close in the narrow corridor, I could not see her face beneath the layers of her widow's veil.

‘Elizabeth?' I said again, but she did not respond.

We walked for a time along the twisting corridor, me trailing just beyond the hem of her long black mourning dress, her strange candle lighting the way. Time seemed to pause, or at least shift at an odd pace. Sometimes I felt sure I'd followed her for hours, and passed the same cobwebs, the same stretch of wall and stone.

‘Where are you leading me?' I finally asked and she stopped abruptly, causing me to almost fall on top of her.

She turned sideways suddenly and vanished, through a door or wall, or perhaps simply into thin air, leaving me alone in the corridor deep within the bowels of the mansion. ‘Mrs Barrett?' I cried, pounding my fist against the stone walls of the corridor. ‘Where did you go? Where were you leading—'

An unnerving rumble cut my words short. I froze in place as the floor beneath me spoke.

Krrrrrraaaaiiiiik.

My torch flickered. Was the battery . . . dying?

This can't be happening.

The torchlight flashed on and off, and then everything went dark.

‘No!' I cried.

The corridor was completely black now. Had Elizabeth gone through a door I could not see, or had she just disappeared?
You can always retrace your steps
, I thought, yet something within me doubted it and when I reached out, to my horror, there was nothing there. Nothing at all. My fingertips clawed at the damp air. How could I retrace my steps if the walls had gone? How had the walls suddenly vanished?

Don't panic. Don't.

But I did. I sure did.

‘No, no, no . . .' I began muttering, feeling the corridor close in on me in the darkness. I began to quiver, the useless torch shaking in my hand.

‘Help!'

I felt something cold descend in the cramped corridor and a familiar white shape began to materialise out of the blackness in front of me. I held my breath for a moment, waiting.
Is that . . .?

And to my great relief, Lieutenant Luke appeared in uniform before me, the details of his features gradually taking shape. Still slightly opaque, he took off his dark blue cap and bowed his head to me.

‘Miss Pandora,' he said by way of greeting, his eyes glowing blue. I slipped gladly into his embrace, his ghostly arms enveloping me.

‘Thank goodness,' I muttered into the gold buttons of his frockcoat. ‘I tried calling you so many times. I thought something terrible had happened to you. You left so abruptly. I can't tell you how relieved I am.' I held him tightly, savouring his embrace. ‘I think I'm lost. And my torch won't work. And . . . what is this place?'

‘You are lost?' he said, sounding concerned.

My torch flickered on again in my hand, though I hadn't done anything to fix it. As it blazed, I looked at it, perplexed. And now that I could see again, the walls were there. The corridor was narrow, the floor uneven and sloped. Everything was just as it had been before Mrs Barrett disappeared, except now Luke was with me. ‘Well, I thought I was lost.'

The house is playing tricks.

‘You called me and I didn't come? I am sorry, Miss Pandora,' Lieutenant Luke said.

I looked into his sincere, bright eyes. In the torchlight I saw that his jaw was clenched, his brows turned up at the centre.

‘I'm so glad you came back.'

‘Please believe me. I would never leave you like that on purpose,' Luke said.

He was talking about our date. ‘But what happened? You were with me in Central Park and then you just vanished.'

At my question he took a breath – or rather something that looked like one – and he shook his head. ‘Miss Pandora, I do not know,' he replied. ‘I was there in the park with you just now, and then I felt a pull towards the mansion, a very powerful pull. My body began to dissolve back into ghost form, and I ended up here, seeing you and feeling your distress.'

‘But it's been a whole day,' I observed. ‘It's Friday night now.'

‘Is it?' he exclaimed, evidently shocked.

How odd
, I thought. ‘You don't recall anything at all?'

Luke replaced his cap, and it sat at an appealing angle, bringing to mind a star of the silver screen, caught in the spotlight of my unreliable torch. He appeared to think for a moment, then shook his head. ‘No, I do not recall anything. It is peculiar, I agree. Though now I can see you have changed your dress,' he said, observing me. ‘I thought I was with you only moments ago.'

‘No. That was yesterday.' I frowned. ‘Huh. Well, I'm very glad you're back. Maybe we shouldn't try getting you outside the mansion again for a while?' I gave him another appreciative squeeze. Even as a ghost he felt awfully good. ‘I did push you into it. Maybe you weren't ready or . . .'

‘Miss Pandora, it is not your fault. You were only trying to help me to be free of my confines here.'

His confines.
It did seem unbearably sad to imagine Lieu­tenant Luke being trapped in this mansion forever. How could that be right?

I looked around, shining the light up the corridor in both directions. ‘What is this place? Do you know?'

‘It appears to be one of the lower passageways,' he said. ‘There are many hidden corridors here.'

‘Before you disappeared you said there was a powerful force that you could feel in Spektor,' I reminded him. ‘Tonight when I got home from work I found a woman dressed in mourning clothes in the mansion. I saw her hanging from the chandelier in the lobby and then she led me here but she disappeared and I became lost.'
Or the house made me feel like I was lost.
‘Was it her that you felt before you disappeared? Does she have something to do with this?'

‘I do not know, Miss Pandora.'

‘Celia told me that she was likely the ghost of Mrs Elizabeth Barrett, Dr Barrett's widow. Does that ring a bell at all?' I asked.

‘A bell? Did a bell ring?'

I was confused for a second. Ours was quite a generational gap at times. ‘No, I mean, does she sound familiar to you?'

‘Oh yes, Mrs Barrett is certainly familiar,' Luke explained. ‘I remember them both from when they were alive. Mrs Barrett was a nice lady, though lonely even when Edmund was alive. He spent a lot of time in his laboratory, down here. She was greatly saddened by her husband's passing. And the circumstances were mysterious.'

Yes. Spontaneous combustion, supposedly. Celia had told me.

‘It was a most unfortunate event,' he said.

Indeed. ‘You know, I think she was trying to lead me somewhere and then something happened.' I had a thought. ‘Do you know where Barrett's laboratory might be? It's down here somewhere, is that right?'

We had explored the mansion many times together, but I had never explicitly asked Luke to take me to it.

‘I believe I do know, but I do not wish to get too near it. It is in the basement.'

The mere mention of it gave me tingles of anxiety and excitement. I remembered Celia's warning,
Don't ever go
beneath
the basement.

‘But would you guide me there, if I asked?' There I was, pushing him again. I seemed unable to stop myself. ‘I really want to see it,' I found myself saying. ‘I have a feeling it is what Mrs Barrett wanted to show me.'

She had been trying to lead me somewhere, hadn't she? I couldn't help but think it had something to do with her sudden appearance in the mansion.

‘And I'd really like to get out of this corridor,' I added. ‘I think it tried to trick me.'

T
his is it.

After emerging from the strange, twisting corridor and going back up the lift, the way we were familiar with, Luke and I made our way through Celia's antechamber and down the stone staircase on the other side. We followed the stairway down several floors, and I noted an odd instinct to turn back (one I ignored), then Lieutenant Luke led me through a short, hidden corridor to a large wooden door.

‘I believe it is here,' Lieutenant Luke said. He looked uneasy.

I was out of breath and frankly I didn't fancy my chances of finding the doorway on my own, yet I sensed that the corridor I'd been lost in earlier – the corridor I hadn't wanted to continue along – led precisely here. Perhaps it hadn't wanted me to find what was behind this door? Perhaps that was why I felt these conflicting urges to explore the basement or simply run off?

I fished the skeleton key from my pocket, Lieutenant Luke's presence comforting at my back. The lock in the door looked rusty. Biting my lip, I bent at the knees and carefully pushed the key inside. It took a moment of jiggling, but eventually the key slid all the way in. Luke and I exchanged looks. I took a breath and turned the key. The tumblers inside the lock shifted with a series of audible squeaks. I pushed on the heavy door with one shoulder, the movement bringing up a puff of dust. It made me pause to cough, though Luke, at least in his current form, seemed unbothered by it. On seeing that I would open the door, he immediately passed through it to check what was on the other side, and when I pushed the door fully open and stepped in, he was already standing stiffly next to a long metal table.

‘Are you okay, Miss Pandora?' he asked. His eyes glowed blue in the dark space.

I nodded and covered my mouth. ‘I don't think anyone has been down here for . . . for decades at least,' I said through my fingers. ‘Probably more like a century.'

So this is Barrett's laboratory. The one he spent so much time in, hidden away from his lonely wife . . .

I held the torch in front of me and, squinting, took a step forward. A table held some rectangular object, covered in a dusty cloth. Another table held what looked like glass bottles – no, beakers. Luke was standing next to what appeared to be a large stainless steel tray in the centre of the room, though it was bare. Actually, it wasn't so stainless, I noted. Maybe they hadn't invented ‘stainless steel' back when this thing was made.

Surely there had to be electricity down here? I groped around in the low light, swinging my torch from side to side.

There. A switch by the door.

I grabbed it and found it surprisingly hard to pull up the switch. After a bit of resistance it flicked into place. There was a loud, quick buzz, then all was silent for a second.

What the . . .?

The space began to light up. Tubes and metal coils were strung between glass beakers, many of which now lit up like Christmas lights, flashing red and green. The room filled with a steady, rhythmic mechanical hum. It was rising up from the equipment. Some of the beakers had begun to steam. I jumped back as a large wheel next to me started to turn, cobwebs caught up in it like spinning yarn.

‘Maybe I should shut that off.' I leapt for the switch. Who knew what the equipment was for or what it might do? I pulled the switch down, using all the strength in my arm, and in seconds the room went quiet and dark.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

‘I think I've found the light switch,' Luke said.

My torch was still lit (thank goodness) and I walked over to him and flicked on the switch he'd found. A huge circular light came on over the steel table in the middle of the room.

‘Is that a surgery table . . . or . . .?'

Weird.

The whole place was weird. There were stacks of books and papers strewn about, and glass containers of all kinds. Everything was coated in a thick layer of dust and the liquid in most of the beakers had dried up on the bottom, though some of them still had just enough left to let off some bubbling steam. Jars were filled with dark liquid, like formaldehyde. I noticed a whole green frog floating in one, lifeless and alien looking. One item in particular gave me shivers – a large metal chair, fitted with thick leather straps and buckles. Spikes on the chair seemed connected to cables and electrodes of some kind. I shuddered to think what it was used for.

‘Dr Edmund Barrett's laboratory. I've heard so much about it. I didn't know what to expect,' I said.

According to Celia, Barrett had hidden this space away from his wife. She hadn't known the nature of some of his experiments, or perhaps she had known and disapproved of them or was distressed by what he was doing. In any event, it seemed he'd sealed his laboratory away where it was hard to find.

‘Look,' Luke said.

At one end of the room was a doorway, set ajar. I joined Luke and peered into a small study, charred black on two of the four walls, from where a fire of some kind had whipped through. Or perhaps not whipped through, exactly. Was this where Barrett had died, supposedly of spontaneous combustion?

‘I think this is where Dr Barrett passed into the other world,' Lieutenant Luke said, echoing my thoughts.

I nodded. ‘It certainly appears so.'

Celia told me his journals had been destroyed in the fire, along with all of Dr Barrett – except his feet and shoes. When they'd found him there had been nothing else but ashes left, apparently.

Books were scattered about the study in haphazardly stacked piles. I wondered if someone had tried to tidy the space after the fire, or if Barrett had simply stored his books that way. One interesting book sat on the edge of the lightly charred desk, though it was in reasonably good condition.
Transcendental Magic, its doctrine and ritual
by Eliphas Levi, it said. The title intrigued me. I picked it up and tucked it under my arm, thinking it might make an interesting addition to Celia's library.

‘Miss Pandora, can we leave now?'

I looked at Luke and saw his concerned expression. ‘What is it?'

‘I do not wish to seem a coward, but I do not like this place. I feel that I should not be here.'

I felt it, too. The urge to leave. Yet my desire to learn more about Barrett and the house outweighed the instinct to flee. ‘Is it not safe?' I asked.

‘For me, I fear it is not.'

Lieutenant Luke had not wanted to seek this place out at all, I reminded myself. Now that I knew where it was and that the skeleton key fitted the lock, I could return at another time without him. (If I could find it again.)

‘We can go if you like.'

He nodded and I wondered again what he was afraid of.

Luke followed me out through the laboratory. I turned the light off as we went, and locked the door after us. How intriguing to think that the man who had designed this strange and extraordinary house had spent so long locked away in that space, and yet no one had wanted to – or dared to – make use of all that equipment and all those books since.

‘Enough exploring for now. Come with me,' I said and took Luke's ghostly hand, which felt cool and misty in mine.

I wanted to bring him up to my room so we could sit and chat as we used to, and perhaps even figure out what had gone wrong when we'd embarked on that ill-fated date of ours. I led Luke back up the staircase that snaked through this end of the house, the stone passages lit with heavy, wrought-iron torches, the flames throwing shadows against the old stone walls. ‘It's so interesting that Barrett built all these secret passages, don't you think? It's like the residential part of the house is totally separate,' I remarked as we climbed through the passages that connected the two halves of the house. ‘Barrett probably didn't want guests to stumble across what he was doing. Can you imagine? I mean, what or who did he strap into that chair? Or perhaps you saw all that in your time here?'

Luke was silent. I stopped and turned. ‘Are you okay?' I asked him, still holding his hand.

Lieutenant Luke nodded in reply, but the gentle vul­nerability in his eyes was too much to resist. I instinctively embraced him, tucking the book and torch into his lower back, my position on the stairs making us a similar height for once. ‘I'm sorry. Thanks for leading me to the laboratory,' I said. ‘I've been really curious about it.' I pulled back to look at him and in the low light of the torches in the stairwell, his beauty was otherworldly, illuminated as if by romantic candle­light. He still had that sense of tension about him. It had not faded entirely after we had left the lab.

‘Why did you want to leave so urgently?' I asked.

He looked conflicted and uncertain.

‘Maybe if you feel there is some . . . energy there, it's because it's in the basement?' I postulated. ‘Celia told me never to travel below the basement. I promised her I wouldn't.'

‘Your great-aunt is wise,' he told me gravely.

She hadn't told me why. I had to admit, I was curious.

‘Miss Pandora, promise me too that you won't go down there below the basement.'

‘Why? What is it?'

‘I cannot say,' Luke told me.

How frustrating, I thought. ‘Is this one of those super­natural rules?'

‘There are some things I am not permitted to say.'

But you are my spirit guide
, I thought. It was no time for a fight though, especially so soon after his return, so I held my tongue.

‘I'm just so glad you came back. I was really worried about you,' I told him, and put my arms around him again. He fitted his strong arms around my waist and hips and I lay my head on his shoulder for a moment. Now that I was holding him tight, I didn't want to let go. And the lab and all the things about this strange house that intrigued me so much seemed not to matter.

I closed my eyes and tilted my head to one side, and we kissed right there on the steps. With his cool kiss I felt that wonderful lift he gave me, that rising up inside, which was quite apart from the height advantage of the stair I was on, quite apart from the purely physical. With Lieutenant Luke's strong hands caressing my waist and his soft mouth on mine, I felt I was floating, I felt I was somewhere else entirely – not in a tight stone stairwell in an old house full of wonders and dark secrets.

Our lips parted and I had no time to enjoy the usual afterglow of our shared caress. I pulled back suddenly, coming back down to earth in an instant.

His ghostly form had stiffened strangely. ‘Luke? Are you okay?' I asked, opening my eyes.

He brought both his hands to his cap and appeared to squeeze his head.

‘What is it?'

Luke took a step backwards, nearly tripping on the stairs. ‘No . . .'

He took another step back, and opened his eyes.

His eyes glowed
green
.

‘Your eyes, Luke! What's happening?'

His stare was cold, terrifying and alien, and before I had the chance to say another word, he lunged forward, grabbing for my throat with both hands. I threw myself back onto the steps, evading his fingers, scrambled to my feet and ran up the stairs with a speed I did not think I was capable of. Something was seriously wrong with him.

I did not slow down until I was pushing up the lid of the casket, desperate for the safety of Celia's penthouse.

Bending at the knees, I closed the lid, careful not to let it slam, and then I sat on it, listening keenly while tears streamed down my cheeks. My great-aunt's antechamber was dark, except for the flickering candles. All was quiet below me. Lieutenant Luke had not followed. If he had, he might have been able to pass right through the floor if he wanted to, which was a terrifying thought.

Why had he tried to grab my throat? What was wrong with his eyes?

I closed my eyes tight and tried to calm myself, clutching the old book like a lifeline.

After a few minutes I finally stood up, and with a heavy heart left the hidden portal and made my way to the stone steps leading towards the penthouse. I glanced back at the casket one last time, and on seeing that the lid was safely in place, I opened the door and stepped into the hallway of the penthouse. I locked the door behind me using the skeleton key, hoping that would hold back any unwanted visitors. (Would it?)