Thicker Than Blood - The Complete Andrew Z. Thomas Trilogy (59 page)

Rufus gave Luther a hand, helped pull him to his feet.

"All right, son. Once you get that copper plating screwed into the arms, what say we call it a day? I’ll help you and Mom peel the shrimp."

The downstairs runs the length and breadth of the hundred and eighty-six-year-old house, unique to the island as the vast majority of residences sit several feet above ground to protect them from the flooding nor’easters and storm surges of hurricanes. Consequently, this basement has been underwater numerous times since its construction.

It served as slave quarters in the 1830’s.

Servant quarters at the turn of the century.

One of the most extensive wine cellars in North Carolina in the 1920’s.

A decade ago Rufus wired several rooms and passageways for electricity.

The rest are lit by candle or not at all.

The stone in one of the rooms is charred black all the way up to the ceiling.

In another the rock is stained burgundy.

Though Luther has spent a great deal of time down here, he’s still prone to losing his way, particularly when he ventures beyond the cluster of rooms near the stairs, a maze of confusing corridors that were lined with wine racks eighty years ago. Broken glass and pieces of cork can still be found in some of the nooks and crannies.

Now Luther slips soundlessly through a
pitchblack
corridor, feeling his way along the wall. His parents are busy upstairs preparing food. He’ll join them shortly.

At last his fingers register the break in the wall—the alcove where Andrew and the women wait.

Luther stops, leans against the stone, listens.

No one is talking. He hears breathing. Chains clinking.

The little blond has been chained facing the doorway. Perhaps tomorrow he’ll come back when the light slips through so he can watch her from the shadows. But it’s enough now to know that she sits there, just a few feet away, sharing the darkness with him.

53

HORACE Boone pulled off Kill Devil Road and parked his Kia in the sand behind a yaupon shrub. Reaching into the backseat, he grabbed the flashlight he’d purchased earlier this afternoon at Bubba’s Bait and Tackle.

It was nearing 10:00
p.m.
on a cold and glorious November Monday, the sky more milky, star-ridden than any night in the last three years. Loading his precious purple notebook into a small backpack, he climbed out of the car, shut the door, stepped out into the road, blending seamlessly into the dark in black jeans, hiking boots, and a chocolate-colored fleece pullover.

The night was windless, the first killing frost of the season beginning to blanch blades of grass and island shrubs. He started walking, past the mailbox, down the shadowy drive, the ceiling of live oaks and Spanish moss shielding the starry sky. Horace almost turned on the flashlight but then decided it might be prudent to arrive unannounced.

He broke out of the grove and there loomed the House of Kite—crumbling masonry and rectangles of orange
windowlight
embossed against the
blackwater
sound. Andrew Thomas had come here twice last week, presumably in search of Luther Kite. Before abandoning Ocracoke and his dream for good, Horace felt an inexplicable pull to see this manor for himself.

He crept along the perimeter of the live oak thicket until he faced the side of the house. The yard was a field of waist-high weeds. He dropped to the ground, crawled through them, the icy fingers grazing his cheeks.

The moon lifted out of the live oaks, lit the sound.
 

Horace scrambled to the corner of the great stone house. Rising, he palmed the granite, fuzzy with frosted fungi. Two steps and he peered through a tall and narrow window. The room was dark, empty. Bare bookshelves abounded. Embers glowed in a distant corner.

Horace crept to the other side of the stoop where he knelt finally beneath the only lighted window on the first floor.

He crouched in the sandy soil to rest.

The night aged silently.

He gazed up briefly into the stars, his breath clouding now in the damp southern chill.

When he’d caught his wind, Horace turned and faced the house.

He rose up slowly to the window ledge, stole a glance inside.

He ducked down instantly, back against the stone, replaying what he’d just seen—a living room steeped in firelight, decaying furniture, and a pale-faced man with long black hair sitting directly across from him on a couch, staring through the window into nothing.

Horace heard footsteps. He stood, peered back through the glass in time to see the long-haired man exit the living room into a foyer, where he stopped beneath a staircase. Plucking something off the wall, he reached forward, opened a little door, and stepped through into total darkness.

Two seconds later, it hit Horace between the eyes—he thought of Andrew’s manuscript,
Desert Places
, and his descriptions of a man with long ebony hair and a pale "baby ass-smooth" face.

Horace smiled but fear tempered the excitement—he’d found Luther Kite.

And it suddenly occurred to him.

What if Andrew had never left this island?

What if Andrew Thomas was dead along with the blond who’d been with him?

Horace sat down in the shadow of the House of Kite. For twenty minutes he watched the moon rise into the sky, mulling over whether he should do the
safe
thing—leave immediately and contact the police—or the ballsy thing that might make him famous.

By the time Luther reemerged from the door beneath the staircase, Horace had made his decision. From the window he watched Luther trudge upstairs. A moment later, the last light on the second floor went out. Now, aside from the dwindling firelight in the living room hearth, the house stood still and dark.

Horace came to his feet, moved quietly toward the stoop, and climbed four steps up to the door, his legs gone weak and rubbery. Regardless, he reached for the doorknob. It turned but the heavy door would not open. He leaned his weight into it, gave the wood a bump with his shoulder. It didn’t budge.

Horace walked back down into the yard and jogged through the beach grass around the side of the house, the smell of
woodsmoke
strong at the chimney’s base. There were no windows on the north end—just a wall of granite pushing into the sky.

The moon was high enough to set the backyard alight with its sickly-gleaming radiance. The Pamlico Sound stretched out before him, a black chasm, hugely silent and smooth as volcanic glass.

Horace proceeded toward a stone porch with a jaw-dropping view of the sound, climbed several steps to the back door, and looked through screen and glass into a kitchen.

He pulled on the screen door. It opened. He tried the next door knob and though it wouldn’t turn, the inner door appeared not to have been soundly closed.

He thrust his shoulder against the door.

It jarred open.

Horace stepped into the kitchen and carefully shut the door behind him.

There didn’t appear to be a single light in operation in the entire house.

Nor was there any sound.

The kitchen reeked of raw fish and vinegar.

Horace inched forward. The splitting linoleum creaked.

Three more steps and he reached the intersection of two hallways, one leading to the front door, the other running the whole of the first floor into a room whose only light source emanated from the weak brown glow of those dying embers he’d glimpsed from outside.

Horace crept across a dusty hardwood floor, through the corridor that led past the staircase into the foyer.

Something popped.

Horace flinched.

It was just the fire, feeding off pockets of sap in the logs.

He entered the living room and stood before the hearth, basking his hands in the rising heat. Shadows flickered in delicate motion on the walls and ceiling. Flames hissed softly. Even through the
woodsmoke
he could smell the age and neglect of this ancient house.

Horace turned and let the fire warm his back, staring through the long room at the staircase. The itch of curiosity dragged him toward the foyer, away from the heat and light and sound.

He found himself standing in the darkness under the stairs, facing a locked door, the top of which came only to his eyes. From his pocket he took the flashlight. Its beam revealed a deadbolt in the door.

I saw Luther take something off this wall.

Horace shined the flashlight around the perimeter of the door. To the right of the doorframe, a shiny key hung from a nail.

He jammed it into the deadbolt.

The door swung inward and a cold dank draft swept up out of the darkness and enveloped him.

He smelled stone and water, mold and earth, as though he stood at the entrance to a cave. Though he’d yet to cut the darkness with his flashlight, there was no question in his mind that this door led to someplace underneath the House of Kite.

And the hair on his arms stood erect and some primal siren sounded in his brain, but mistaking terror for adrenaline, he walked down into the darkness because he’d never felt more alive.

54

HORACE kept the beam of the flashlight trained on the rickety steps. They creaked as though God Himself were standing on them—twenty-two in all—and it grew colder the farther down he went so that his breath was pluming again by the time he reached the bottom, a dusty vapor in the
lightbeam
.
  

At last Horace stood on a dirt floor.

He shined the flashlight back up the staircase. The door at the top felt miles away.

The basement lay in pure silence and blackness. Horace imagined sitting at a table in the Ocracoke Coffee Company the following morning, near a window with the early sun streaming in. He would write this scene over coffee. It would be amazing. It would be safe.

Horace swiped the beam in a slow circle to gain his bearings.

What he saw unnerved him—doorways into nothing, stone passageways, shoddy wiring snaking up the walls. He shivered, stepped back from the steps, and shined the flashlight down the widest passageway, one that ran behind the staircase into seemingly infinite darkness.

It occurred to him that a person would have to be mad to enter that tunnel, and for a moment, he strongly considered heading back up the steps, through the kitchen, into the moonlit yard. The comfort of his bed at the Harper Castle B&B seemed more enticing than ever but he steeled himself, gripped the flashlight, and proceeded into the passageway.

He progressed slowly, letting the beam graze every surface.

The corridor appeared to narrow the deeper he went.

Horace passed a doorway, shined a light through it. In the brief illumination, he glimpsed a big oak chair in the throes of construction, dripping with wires and leather restraints.

He lost his breath, leaned against the wall to get it back.

When the sound of his own panting subsided, he listened.

Water dripped somewhere in the distance, beyond the ellipse of light.

He heard something move behind him, spun around with the flashlight.

There was nothing there but the sound repeated.

When the beam hit the floor he saw the fat rat sitting on its haunches staring at him, eyes glowing like luminescent beads.

It scampered back toward the stairs and Horace moved on in the opposite direction, the passageway now turning and branching and turning again, passing through alcoves and various rooms—one with a low ceiling, filled with empty wine racks, another with the burned and splintered remains of a bed frame. There lingered a foreboding, a dread attending these rooms and tunnels. Horace could feel it. Awful things had happened here.

He approached yet another corner, disorientation setting in. The basement seemed to extend beyond the boundaries of the house and he doubted whether he could readily find his way back to the stairs.