The Skeleton Key Read online

  ‘Lieutenant Luke? Are you here?’ I said to the empty space in a voice that sounded uncertain to my own ears.

  Usually, calling for him after dark was enough. But not now. Now there was no response except for the subtle creaking of the old house. I looked around me, frowning. The cobweb-covered chandelier was on its standard angle, with no one hanging from it. I walked towards it and gazed up at the filthy crystals, wondering. Had it really been Elizabeth, as Celia suggested? Why would she appear now, about a century after passing on? Had she simply decided to reveal herself, or was it something else? Was it related to Luke’s disappearance somehow?

  In my periphery I saw something stir by the curving mezzanine stairs and in seconds I had slipped the key into my pocket in favour of some rice, the torch held in front of me like a club. My breath caught in my throat and I stood rigid, ready for anything.

  A familiar figure rose on the stairs, standing up. ‘Oh, Samantha! You gave me a fright,’ I said, holding a palm full of rice to my chest.

  ‘Hi Pandora,’ she replied in her usual dejected tone and slunk towards me on bare feet, padding down the steps. Her blonde ringlets were dirty and her face appeared unwashed. She’d been sitting there so quietly I hadn’t even noticed her.

  ‘I haven’t seen you around lately. Are you okay?’ I asked.

  She shrugged. ‘Athanasia is away at the moment so I haven’t had much to do.’

  Samantha was a Fledgling, turned by Athanasia, and she now had a disturbing dedication to her every whim. Samantha was made to clean and polish the caskets of Athanasia’s little gang, along with other chores. She was treated no better than a slave, and even though she’d tried to rip my throat out once, in a blind hunger, it pained me to see her treated that way. I felt sad for her family, too. They would have no idea what had happened to their daughter.

  ‘They’ve not been saying very nice things about you,’ Samantha told me in a small voice.

  ‘Do you mean Blonde and Redhead?’ I’ll bet they haven’t been saying nice things, I thought. ‘Don’t worry about that. Are they home at the moment?’ I looked around to see if we had company.

  She shook her head. So they were out. Probably hunting. The thought gave me a little shiver.

  ‘Have they been treating you okay?’ I asked, though I was pretty sure I knew the answer.

  Samantha looked rather unwell, even for someone who was not quite alive. She was pale as parchment and almost as thin. I saw that she was still wearing the bland grey suit I’d given her. It hung on her bony frame like a rag. I’d bought it in Gretchenville, naively thinking it would make a good impression for my job interview at Mia magazine, which it certainly hadn’t. Now the suit was frayed and spotted with dirt. I hadn’t seen Samantha in anything else, and I knew for a fact that Blonde and Redhead hoarded excessive stacks of clothes in their room on the second floor. I’d tried to encourage Samantha to insist on being allowed to wear some of that clothing, but obviously that hadn’t worked out.

  ‘You know my friend Luke?’ I said.

  She shook her head, looking at her bare, dirty toes.

  ‘But I’ve told you about him,’ I reminded her. She’d never seen him but she had heard me talking to him. ‘He died in the Civil War. He’s a friend of mine. Remember I mentioned him?’

  She nodded faintly, perhaps recalling our conversation. My next question was probably futile but I had to ask. ‘Have you seen or heard anything about him? Maybe from the others?’

  The Fledgling shook her head again. The movement was weak. It made me wonder if she was eating enough. Just what or who was she eating, anyway? I knew she’d taken to the rodents in the mansion, which was not a nice thought, though perhaps less morbid than the bloody alternative.

  Samantha said nothing more, so it seemed time to say goodbye. ‘Okay.’ I reached into my pocket, letting the rice go and squeezing the skeleton key impatiently in my hand. ‘Well, um, I’m looking for Lieutenant Luke, so if you hear anything I hope you’ll tell me.’

  She nodded.

  Then I had a thought. ‘Do you know of any hidden passageways in the house?’ Her face remained blank. Some­times it felt like I was talking to a rag doll – a limp, sad doll that was perfectly nice, yet dangerous when hungry. ‘Any panels in the lobby that open up, that sort of thing?’ I asked.

  Yet all Samantha did was shrug again.

  ‘Right. Do you know what’s on the other side of the mezzanine door?’ It was boarded up.

  ‘Stairs,’ she said in a voice so quiet I might have missed it.

  I perked up. ‘Did you say stairs?’

  She nodded and a greasy curl fell over her eyes.

  ‘Where do the stairs lead?’

  ‘All through the house.’

  ‘Can you get through the door?’ I said and pointed up the staircase she’d appeared from.

  ‘It’s boarded up,’ she said, cocking her head to one side, those cheekbones jutting out like knives. She seemed perplexed that I would not have noticed something so obvious.

  ‘I know, but can you open it? Have you tried? Why is it boarded up?’ I asked.

  My questions were met with yet another limp shrug. She seemed to communicate almost entirely by shrug. ‘The staircase doesn’t get used, I guess. Because of the elevator,’ she muttered.

  It did make sense that there was a staircase that led to the lobby, though it seemed a little strange that it was boarded up at the bottom, whether the stairs were commonly used or not. That wasn’t fire safe, to say the least, but then again, the mansion was unlikely to pass any safety inspection. Besides, most of the residents wouldn’t have a problem with smoke inhalation, as they didn’t breathe.

  Creepy.

  ‘Well, let me know if you hear about Luke or anything else that might be of interest, okay? And let me know if I can help with, um, anything,’ I said awkwardly, reminding myself that she was Sanguine and I should therefore be cautious about committing myself too much.

  Samantha nodded and slunk away again. Alrighty then, I thought as I watched her go, her thin shoulders slumped. She cut a sad figure as she returned to her spot on the steps, evidently waiting for her master to return. She sure hadn’t taken well to being turned.

  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.’