“No, look,” she said, as we stood in the foyer, with our backs to the front door. “If we went outside, you could see that the walls are built in proportion on the outside, so no secret passages there. Then you simply move forward,” she said, leading me through the house. “The sitting room is out. No missing spaces, so to speak. I’ve already checked the dining room.” She shrugged. “I suck at cards.”
We moved farther back into the hallway.
It was old and had these neat woodcarvings.
“Now I wonder what’s behind that wall,” she mused.
Was this a quiz? “It’s the stairs.”
“No. The stairs are toward the front.” She tilted her head, studying it. “That back part doesn’t line up.”
I leaned forward to look.
“See?” She continued, starting to get a little excited. “The kitchen doesn’t go that far back into that space.”
No kidding. I knew Creely was smart, but this was something else. “You think it’s something?”
I checked the kitchen. It didn’t extend back this far. It was true—there was some missing space. “I’ll bet something
“Yeah, but how do we access it?” she asked, taking a look into the kitchen.
“That wall is really plain.” It would be hard to hide anything.
“Doesn’t mean they didn’t.”
I heard her checking things out in there while I worked finding anything unusual about the hall paneling.
There were lions with claws bared, fighting what looked to be centaurs. It was like they were in a jungle with these wild looking flowers and plants that sprouting up everywhere. They were as big as the animals. Then you had the cosmos above, with swirling planets and stars.
After a while, Creely joined me. We did a systematic check. It was slow going, and I almost started to doubt, when Creely touched a lever. It had been perfectly hidden in the scrollwork of a toothsome creature holding a battle shield.
“Amazing,” I said as the door swung open on a dark room.
“Logic. These things are never in plants or bunnies,” she said, moving past me, feeling for a light.
There wasn’t one.
Oh great. I was about to go into a hidden, dark room with someone who may be possessed. I blew out a breath. Problem was, I needed to see this through. I’d have to be on my guard.
We heard the back door to the kitchen open, and then my mom’s voice as well as Grandma’s.
“Quickly,” Creely said.
I unhooked the Maglite from my switch star belt and followed her into the secret room.
Chapter Sixteen
The air was stuffy and stale.
“I’m shutting the door,” Creely warned, before it clicked closed behind her.
Darkness enveloped us, save for the beam from my flashlight. “Do we know how to get out?” I asked, shining my light over the wood paneling she’d closed.
Creely’s rusty laugh cut through the gloom. “That wasn’t your goal, now was it?”
Yeek. I hoped she was joking. It was hard to tell sometimes with biker witches. The truly awful thing is that I wouldn’t know whether or not she was out to kill me, until she tried.
It was eerily quiet.
Creely moved slowly through the murky darkness. I had to keep my head about me or I’d put a switch star through her by accident.
A thick burgundy carpet covered the floors. I didn’t see how we were going to get under it in order to check for a marker. Dark wood bookshelves lined the walls. I shone my light up.
The room had two stories worth of shelves, with a walkway on the top level. There must have been a rolling ladder at one point. I didn’t see it now. The room didn’t have any windows. It wouldn’t. We were in the very center of the house.
Unease prickled at the back of my neck. I didn’t like the lack of exits. It made the place feel closed in, tomb- like.
An ornate wooden desk dominated the center of the room. Creely eased into the leather chair behind it. She struck a match and lit one of the thick white candles on the desk.
“You think you ought to be setting fires in here? I asked, coughing a little against the sharp smell of the match.
“At least I’m keeping my cigars in my pocket,” she said, lighting two more candles off the original one.
Fine. As long as we didn’t burn the house down.
Creely took a look at the desk. I kept an eye on her while I searched for any more passages, or any interesting books.
And back it went. I’d seen enough dark texts to last me a lifetime.
I turned in a slow circle, my light hovering over the dusty volumes on the shelves.
“Take a look at this,” Creely said, hunched over an old journal with a cracked green leather cover.
“What’d you find?” I asked, moving to look over her shoulder.
“I don’t know. It was behind a false panel in the desk.” The first page revealed it was the personal journal of Stuart T. Russell.
“Hey,” she said, swiping my light and turning the book around so she could get a better angle. “That’s the guy who built this place.” She paged through the journal while I tried to see. “He was a fancy pants railroad baron.”
“You know about him?”
“I like his taste in architecture.” She shrugged. “This isn’t a well-known building, but it’s been on my list of places to see. It says here that Russell broke ground in 1889. Finished in 1891. Ha.”
“What?”
“You want to know what’s funny about that?”
“I will if you tell me.”
“He was a freak about the occult. They like to do things in threes. Three years to build. Three spires along the top of the house. Three main paths in the garden.” She glanced back at me. “Don’t tell me it was a mistake that the herb garden is laid out in a pentacle.”
I’d been too busy looking at the markers.
She pressed the book open to a page filled with pen and ink drawings of spiders. They were creepy looking, certainly ugly with their long legs and fangs. Occult symbols for death and rebirth were etched into their bulbous bodies.
“What is it with spiders in this place?” I asked, running my finger over the yellowed page.
“Spiders are an occult symbol in themselves,” Creely said. “They’re linked to treachery and death in a lot of cultures. Think of the Greeks and how Athena turned Arachne into a spider. Or how the Christians have linked spiders to an evil force that sucks blood from believers.”
I liked this place less and less all the time.
“What’s the point in all of this? A smart guy like Russell had to have a game plan. What did he want?”
