By Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
Chapter Thirteen "Underneath"
Missy felt two cold, wet hands clamp down around her mouth just as she lowered herself into the basement and her feet touched the invisible cement flooring.
"Shhh," a voice hissed in her ear. And then the hands moved away from her mouth. Missy, for all her temerity, almost screeched right then.
"Sarah, what're you thinking, coming in here?"
"Let's look around," Sarah replied, moving away from Missy and touching things lightly that lay scattered around the basement.
"But I can't see anything," Missy protested softly.
"Your eyes will adjust."
Indeed, Missy's eyes sharpened and she began to be able to make out dim shapes in the musty room. When the lights came on in the rest of the house, reflected light from outside combined with light sifting down through chinks in the floorboards provided more than enough illumination for them to scout out the contents of the basement. They could also hear the adults in the house moving about above their heads and talking, although they couldn't make out what they were saying.
The place was littered with intriguing detritus. Elaborately carved candles three feet stood on tall wooden spindles covered with stiff drippings. A wall of cubbyholes sat behind a rough stone altar that was covered in runic symbols and which had been worn smooth with use and age. Missy shivered to consider what kind of sacrifices might have been offered up there. Many of the cubbyholes held rolled up scrolls made of parchment or goatskin. Sarah and Missy both avoided the black box atop the sawhorses. It seemed to radiate an ill will all of its own.
"Oh my God! Look at this!" Missy pointed to a mummified severed hand, stuck on a sturdy pin over a board marked with the degrees of the compass. North, South, East and West. Right now, the mummified hand was pointing South East. That was the direction in which Sarah's house lay. "This is creepy."
Over their heads they could hear a big argument roiling into a yelling match. Evidently, tempers hadn't cooled since the unsuccessful invocation of whatever it was that lay sealed in the black box.
"I tell you, we no longer need the Casket of Augersaal!"
"But our whole effort has hinged on acquiring it!"
"With the girl and the gods, we have all that we need!"
"That's patent nonsense! Madam P. would never let us have her!"
"Oh, its not up to Madam P., you ignoramus. We merely have to convince---"
The voices evidently took their argument into the kitchen, for they grew less comprehensible, but no less loud.
The girls looked at each other for a moment, and then continued their exploration of the reeking basement.
Sarah discovered a purple glass globe filled with smoke. When she touched the glass, the smoke began to shift and form a shape inside the ball. After a moment, it solidified into a small purple harp being plucked by ghostly purple fingers. Sarah thought that she recognized the tune, even though it was nothing they had ever sung in choir or at the church her family used to attend.
"Missy," she asked quietly. "Do you recognize this song?"
Missy trotted over from her ghoulish fascination with the severed hand and bent close to the globe to listen. She repeated the tune softly as the fingers played. Unconsciously, Sarah began to do the same. Soon, the song from the globe began to change, responding to their singing, it seemed. Their eyes lifted from the globe, and Sarah began to substitute words for the notes in her part of the song. She didn't understand what the words could mean, but that didn't stop her from singing, although very softly:
"When the moon melts And the Gods of Autumn roam Evil and good are equally felt And nothing certain is known."
The harp began to glow within the globe, dimly, and then bright enough to read a scroll by. If the girls hadn't been so entranced by the song, they might have stopped singing for fear that the light might give them away. They could see each other's faces turning purple in the glow. They weren't sure what the song was doing, if anything, other than exciting the little hand in the globe. Their eyes were becoming glazed, as if they were under some sort of enamoring spell themselves.
Behind them, so quietly that they did not notice it at all, the Casket of Augersaal was beginning to waken. A thin line appeared around the edges of the casket, green like a Christmas trim, but this was an eerie shade of green, the color of a sick toad. The casket lid began to widen away from the rest of the box in gaunt imitation of a sickly grin.
The rest of the house was now so silent that the pair could have heard a soundless owl land. The girls put their hands out, as if to warm them by the glow of the purple ball. Now they had shut their eyes, and their voices twined together in a seamless harmony, the harp leading. The years of choir practice together helped them to block out all distractions and concentrate on the unbidden song, whose words came from they knew not where. And then, without warning, another energy entered the song. Not another voice, for there was no more singing than before, which Sarah and Missy, even in their distracted state, would have noticed. Just another energy. The casket behind them clamped shut like an oyster when disturbed--looking to all the outward world tight and lifeless. But still the song beat on with and altered energy.
Missy was the first to sense that something was radically wrong, and that they should hardly be singing in the basement of Mr. Plimsoul's gang's house in any case. She came to her senses, opening her eyelid just a slit. What she saw in that final moment stayed with her for the rest of her life.
Eva had her arms out, akimbo, ready to seize Sarah by the throat. Each end of her snake-boa was writhing with an evil ecstasy, moving in and out just inches away from Sarah's face, wide mouths agape, and fangs literally dripping with venom. The song clotted in Missy's throat, but the scream she ached to express just wouldn't come.
Sarah sang on obliviously. It was not until a dark hand from over Missy's right shoulder grabbed the purple ball, turning the harp back into a piff of mist, that Sarah opened her eyes with a jolt. The snakes wrapped themselves around her throat, and Eva's slender hands held themselves tightly over Sarah's mouth.
Missy screamed.
"That's enough." A rough hand slapped Missy in the face. "We will have silence."
Mr. Plimsoul turned her around in front of him. Missy could see the closed casket over his left shoulder, far in the periphery of her vision. It seemed as if something had changed about it, but she wasn't sure just what. He seemed somewhat surprised to see Sarah and Eva materialize out of the blurry darkness in front of Missy. But he didn't let this surprise show more than momentarily. Only Eva registered it.
"Missy Quicknass," Mr. Plimsoul continued, recognizing her as one of the students from Ridgefield High. "What brings you to this house? Answer quick, Quicknass. And tell the truth."
Missy grew rigid in his grip. She didn't know what to say; she had no idea what was really going on. Behind her, Missy heard Sarah struggle from Eva's grasp, freeing her mouth and saying. "She followed me. I sneaked over here, and she followed me."
Now Eva spoke, annoyed that a child could elude her grip. "Do tell, child. And why, then, did you come breaking in?"
Suddenly, Missy and Sarah simply seemed to be in the hands of two neighborhood grown-ups. Despite the incantations and the grumbling dwarf, Mr. Plimsoul and Eva seemed to be just two ticked off adults who were upset by a pair of meddling kids interrupting their private argument. As usual, Sarah didn't want to give any authority figure a straight answer. But, in this case, she didn't really know the answer herself. Why had she broken in, really?
"I don't know."
Mr. Plimsoul look skeptical. "Come, Sarah, isn't it? That answer will hardly do."
"But I don't know. Not really. We saw you arrive with that, that box, and we were curious."
"So, you were spying as well."
"No!" Sarah tried to dig herself out. "We were walking down the roadway, and we just happened to see you pull up."
Missy refused to be cowed. "You and that ugly dwarf. Why did you grab us?"
Mr. Plimsoul fielded an answer. "How were we to know that you weren't a pair of desperate hooligans? As you have discovered, there are a great many peculiar and precious antiques in this house. And there's been a lot of looting and tomfoolery in town. No doubt you've heard of some of the dockworkers' mischief from the radio in the past weeks. You were in the cafeteria when Bart Hecatomb reported rioting from the window ledge."
"Yes," admitted Sarah, who with her own recent experiences of being misunderstood and marginalized--especially by that nasty Bart Hecatomb--understood some of Mr. Plimsoul's tetchiness when it came to his property.
Eva let Sarah go entirely. She spoke to her with a honey smoothness, and her boa returned to such quiescence that even Missy began to doubt that it had snarled and nipped at her friend just a few feet away just a few moments ago.
"Come, dear one," she began, each word more dulcet than the last, "let us go upstairs, you and I. We have much to discuss. Besides, it is past time for dinner. You must be hungry."
Sarah admitted that she hadn't eaten since breakfast.
"Your parents must be worried about your whereabouts." Sarah thought that might not be true, but that her Granny Pansy undoubtedly was worried.
"If they're back from running around for the Political Committee," she offered.
Eva and Mr. Plimsoul shared a small, satisfied smile.
"Sarah!" snipped Missy. "Don't talk about your parents like that--not to these people."
"Sarah, darling," purred Eva. "Come up stairs with me."
Sarah and Eva turned to go up the stairs. As they did, Mr. Plimsoul's hand went back over Missy Quicknass' mouth. He had never loosened his grip on her arm after all.
END OF CHAPTER THIRTEEN