Myerson squatted, lowering a lamp inside the well. “What do we have here?” Setting down the lamps, he reeled in the line hanging from the top rung of the ladder. At the end swung a fish full of money.
The pair of men smiled and whooped.
“This’ll buy a few sips of whiskey at the hotel tonight,” said Doyle.
“Oh, and a big steak dinner too,” said Myerson. “We’ll be sure to toast you, Caleb.”
They turned toward Lyman. During their brief celebration, he’d managed to crawl a few steps toward the passage.
“Now,” said Myerson, “about that justice Mrs. Tallmadge so stringently insisted upon.”
Doyle reached behind and drew a long knife from its belt scabbard. “I’ll be quick about it.”
“Think of your coat, Mr. Doyle.” The bonhomie had returned to Myerson’s tone. “You know from experience how wildly the blood spurts from an opened jugular. Yet here we have a grave already prepared.” He waved toward the cistern and the metal grate. “All Caleb needs to do is hop in, and we’ll do him the favor of closing the casket after.”
“Aw,” said Doyle, “I’m exhausted from carrying him. You throw him in.”
“No need. Caleb will deposit himself, won’t you, boy?”
Myerson walked around so he stood between Lyman and the passage. He drew his foot back, then swiftly kicked him. Lyman reeled backwards.
“That’s it, Caleb! Direct yourself toward your coffin.”
Lyman rolled onto all fours, tried to crawl anywhere but.
This time Doyle kicked him.
Then Myerson. Then Doyle again, until Lyman lay on the edge of the cistern, his arms crossed over his gashed and bleeding face.
“No more,” said Myerson. “No more cotillions on your semblance, Caleb. You go on now and climb down that ladder so we can lock you up snug.”
Lyman lay there.
“Either you do it—or we do it for you.”
Arms wobbling, Lyman pushed himself to his knees. One of his eyes was swollen shut. Blood streamed from his broken nose, splattering on the dirt. His breath rasped.
“Go on, boy.” Myerson and Doyle stood beside him, toes on the rim.
Lyman reached down for the top rung of the ladder.
“Go on.”
If Lyman had any thoughts at that moment, they barely rose above the most instinctual, the most base. In the cistern, at least, he would be away from them. Reduced to an animal level of pure sensation, Lyman was only aware of pain and the impulse to escape its source.
Yet as his head hung over the precipice of the cistern, staring with a single working orb into the darkness where the lamplight failed, he became aware of another feeling, another sensation. He’d encountered it before, on that very first night in the stone house. The whiskers of his beard bent and twisted from the air blowing upon them, and he intuited, deep down in the bestial awareness of his consciousness, that something very large sped toward him at very great speed.
With his remaining strength, Lyman shoved himself away from the cistern.
An enormous white mass rose straight from the opening, lifting up and above them as it filled the entire width, and clamped its jaws around Myerson’s head. For an instant it hung there, a marble pillar, talons tight against its bulk, tiny eyelids sealed shut, and then gravity seized it. It dropped out of sight, pulling Myerson with it.
Neither of the remaining men moved or uttered or blinked. Then a horrible sound echoed from the cistern, a ripping and rending, and two things happened in quick succession. Doyle screamed. Lyman lashed out with his foot, kicking the back of Doyle’s knee. Doyle’s leg folded, his body twisted, and he plummeted over the edge of the well, his transit mapped by the continuing howl. Then another sound issued from the cistern, as of a thick branch being snapped in a giant’s hands. The scream immediately ceased.
Lyman flipped over, injected with new stamina, and crawled on elbows and knees toward the passage and the stairs and the woods and any spot on the globe except that basement.
“No one should go.”
An inarticulate cry scrabbled from Lyman’s throat. He crawled.
“No one should go. I shall give thee what thou most craves.”
He reached the wall and turned, expecting it to be right behind him. But he only saw the mouth of the cistern, and the grate in the dirt, and the bag of money, and the two burning lamps.
“What,” Lyman said. It was everything he could summon. “What do you want?”
For a long moment, the only reply was the sounds of tearing and chewing inside the well.
“To be. Our good friend.”
Lyman shook his head. “No.”
“You want. A. Good friend.”
“I have friends.”
“Mr. Doyle, Mr. Myerson.” Something popped and crunched.
“Not those two. They weren’t my friends. I mean real friends.”
“Real friends? You want a good friend.”
“I’m leaving. I can make friends in a new place.”
“No one should go. I shall give thee what thou most craves—a good friend.”
“You’re just saying that so you can eat me,” said Lyman, “when you’re done with them.”
Pause. “Absolutely not.”
“And how am I supposed to believe you?”
“What an odd question.”
Lyman wiped his sleeve across his mouth, staining it. If the thing had wanted to devour him, it had not lacked for opportunity in the preceding weeks.
“We are brothers and sisters?”
“Not until I know what you want in return.”
Chomps and cracks and mastication.
“Why didn’t you grab me the first time I came down here? Or any other time for that matter. Like you did with them.”
“You were the right man for the job.”
“How? What job?”
“Patience, Tom!”
Lyman shuddered. “I am bargaining with the Devil, it seems.”
“Yes, as a matter of fact.”
“What then is the price of my soul?”
For a long moment, Lyman’s invisible conversation partner made no reply and the room grew so quiet that Lyman wondered if he was alone. But just as Lyman parted his lips to repeat the question, a whisper echoed from the cistern, the sighing voice rustling through the air like a breeze through falling leaves.
“A comfortable lunch.”
TWO
Minerva Grosvenor closed the thin volume and held it in her
