Death of an Adept

Chapter Twenty

THERE was no key - not that any of them expected to find one - but with the aid of a bit of wire and a lock-pick Davies produced from his wallet, they managed to get the door open without damaging the lock. Entering, they found themselves in a narrow vestibule flanked by doors to either side, with a cobwebby gasolier hanging from the ceiling. Directly ahead of them, a solidly built flight of stairs led to the floor above.

"Hello?" Davies called, sweeping the beam of a powerful torch around the room. "Police officers, Mr. Evans. Anyone home?''

Still receiving no response, Davies tried the door leading off to the left. The toilet and tiny sink beyond were antiquated, but functional.

"I guess that answers your question about the plumbing, anyway," McLeod said to Davies, producing a smaller torch from a side coat pocket. "Let's see what else we can find."

Davies elected to take a look around upstairs, leaving McLeod and Harry to finish surveying the ground floor. Still not quite convinced that the house was empty, McLeod drew his coat back from the butt of his Browning before cautiously opening the door to the right of the stairs.

The doorway gave access to a dim, musty sitting room, with two deeply recessed windows piercing the east wall. Through gaps in the threadbare curtains, enough light filtered into the room to make out a high-backed black oak settle opposite the grey stone fireplace and hearth, flanked by a pair of rush-bottomed chairs. The wall adjoining the windows was dominated by a ponderous oaken sideboard laden with dusty blue and white china and a few pewter serving pieces. At some point in the decades long past, the gaslight wall sconces to either end of the sideboard had been electrified, but the overall appearance of the room suggested that little else might have changed for a century or more.

Harry drew a deep breath and saw his exhalation turn into a plume of white steam.

"I think it's even colder in here than it is outside!" he muttered. "If the temperature's anything to go by, this room hasn't been used for quite some time."

"Probably not for the last fortnight, if not longer," McLeod hazarded, as he swept his torch around the room, thinking back to Callanish. "Wherever this Evans may have gone, I have an uncomfortable notion that he isn't planning to come back."

A secondary door in the west wall led along a short corridor to a large kitchen running the entire length of the back of the house. The plaster overlaying the stone walls had been given a coat of whitewash that now was dingy with age. Harry fished a mini-Maglite out of a pocket of his leather jacket as McLeod swept his light across a tarnished array of copper pans and outmoded cooking utensils displayed on hooks above an old-fashioned coal-burning cookstove.

"I've feel like I've stepped through a time portal," Harry murmured as he and McLeod examined the age-stained porcelain sinks and wooden countertops. "I shouldn't think this place has been refurbished since the reign of Queen Victoria."

"I've seen cheerier morgues in my day," McLeod said with unsparing candor. "Let's move on."

A large walk-in pantry lay at the far end of the kitchen. After probing it with his light, McLeod entered to find himself confronted by an array of shelves running from floor to ceiling on all three sides. The boards underfoot had been overlaid with a worn sheet of linoleum that stopped several inches short of the skirting boards all around. The air was thick with the smell of mildew and mouse-droppings. Coming in behind McLeod, Harry took a sniff and curled his lip.

"Whew, not up to even my bachelor standards of housekeeping. D'you suppose he really lives this way? It has to be a health hazard."

"It isn't physical health hazards I'm worried about," McLeod muttered.

Together the two men inspected the contents of the pantry. The storage space to the left of the doorway held a spartan range of food staples. All the sacks and tins were generically packaged.

"Flour… salt… sugar… lard," McLeod read aloud, moving along the shelves. "Whatever else he may be, this Evans stocks his kitchen like a survivalist."

"Maybe he still thinks there's a war on," Harry offered with a sardonic lift of one eyebrow.

"Candles… matches… kerosene lamps," McLeod continued, carrying on with his survey. "Either our man is expecting a siege, or he doesn't have much faith in privatized utilities."

He took a step backward, hoping to get a better view of the upper shelves. As he did so, he felt the floor give way slightly beneath one heel. His muttered exclamation of surprise alerted Harry, who had started to light one of the kerosene lamps.

"What is it?"

"I'm not sure," McLeod said, bending to look at the floor. "Bring that light down here. Yes, indeed." He shone his own light along the edge of the linoleum, now revealed as a crack that went right around the square.

"Right," McLeod murmured, running his fingers under the area where his heel had pressed. "I think we've found the way into the cellar. Help me lift this trapdoor."

Though the two of them braced themselves to tug, the trapdoor lifted with unexpected ease. A dark cavity yawned below, with a wooden ladder extending downwards into the shadows.

"This is beginning to get interesting," Harry said, as McLeod shone his torch down into the opening. "Should we give Davies a shout?"

"Not before we've had a chance to reconnoiter," McLeod said, testing the first rung of the ladder. "I shouldn't want to frighten our good inspector. Bring that lantern, and let's see what's lurking in the cellar."

The cellar proved to be a cramped, rectangular chamber perhaps six feet by ten, with a trestle table under the angle of the ladder and wooden tea chests stacked untidily at one end. The other end was screened behind upright stacks of old timber and worm-eaten planking, the floor in between littered with half-open boxes and burst packing cases, like the flotsam washed up from a wrecked cargo ship. Looking around him by the flickering glow of the kerosene lamp, Harry gave a disparaging grunt.

"I'm not sure what you're looking for," he muttered, "but this looks like mostly storage to me."

"Maybe more than that," McLeod replied. "Have a look down at that end, and I'll look over here. But don't touch anything unless I tell you it's all right."

"Roger that."

After hanging the lantern on a central hook, Harry turned his cautious attention to the indicated boards and packing cases. McLeod had not said as much to Harry, but the atmosphere in the cellar was tainted with subliminal resonances of a kind that bespoke unwholesome occult activity. Pivoting around in a circle, he tried to home in on the source of the disturbance, but to no avail. He sighed inwardly as he abandoned his efforts and resigned himself to the prospect of a more laborious search.

Near at hand was a stout wooden table lying across trestles, its work surface scarred by what seemed to be saw-cuts, and stained with a hodgepodge of tinctures. Sagging shelves at one side of the table supported a bewildering jumble of crocks, bottles, and jars, all of them so covered in dust that their labels were indecipherable, even when McLeod shone the full light of his torch upon them.

Keeping casual note of Harry's whereabouts, McLeod sidled past an overturned stool to gain closer access to the shelves. Selecting a jar at random, he took it down and blew away enough dust to read the handwritten label.

"Conium maculatum," he murmured under his breath. His knowledge of herbalism was limited, but he knew enough about toxicology to recognize the Latin name for hemlock.

Not unexpectedly, in a Druid's workbench, the jar next to it was half-filled with waxy white berries that looked to McLeod like mistletoe. The label confirmed his identification: Viscum album.

Further search brought to light a wide assortment of vegetable and mineral compounds. Some of the mixtures were clearly medicinal; others were more suspect. McLeod was just considering taking away a few samples for analysis when a sudden gasp from Harry made him look sharply around.

The counsellor was standing frozen over by the far wall, his back to McLeod, gripping a length of loose planking with both hands, as if arrested in the act of lifting it.

Instantly McLeod darted toward him. Simultaneously, Harry snatched his hands away and jerked backwards, colliding hard with McLeod.

"Jesus, what's the matter, Harry?" McLeod demanded, as Harry caught his balance. "I told you not to touch anything!"

Nodding, Harry took a gulp of air and pointed to the timber-lined wall in front of them.

"I didn't think you meant scrap wood," he said huskily. "There's another room beyond this one, behind that timber facade. I didn't exactly… see it - not with my eyes - but I know it's there. The entrance is behind these boards."

McLeod made haste to clear the boards away, Harry craning his neck to see what lay beyond, for McLeod made him stand well back. The labor exposed an irregular opening in the wall, more like the entrance to a cave than a doorway, with a crudely painted succession of runic symbols surmounting the arch. Playing his torch across them, and motioning Harry closer with the lantern, McLeod recognized several Druidic symbols of warding - and a few of them looked familiar.

Tight-lipped, he whipped out his notebook and flipped to the pages carrying the transcriptions he had made at the Callanish stone circle. Many of the symbols were identical, with even their combinations in common. If this was not proof that the owner of the house had been an active participant in the events at Callanish, it was certainly suggestive - and there was no doubting the malignancy of the present wards.

Fortunately, the initial power invested in these runes had largely dissipated, though their hostile influence was still palpable at close range. Handing his torch to Harry, McLeod groped in his pocket for a pencil, then copied down the newly discovered inscriptions on a separate page before returning notebook and pencil to his pocket. Then he took back his torch and shone its beam through the opening - a brighter light than that of Harry's lantern.

But he would not allow Harry to follow him inside. Touching his Adept ring to his lips, McLeod commended himself to the protection of the Light, concluding that prayer with a gesture of personal warding before moving forward.

The chamber he entered gave the appearance of having been quarried out of solid rock, its sloping walls roughly finished and surmounted by a low vaulted roof. The shape and size of the chamber suggested the interior of a burial mound. His probing torch-beam revealed no other entrance or exit, but it soon caught the design painted on the cavern's stone floor - a red-brown circle quartered by two intersecting lines. He preferred not to think of what had gone into the paint, though lie sensed that the blood was animal, not human.

At the center of the circle, where the two lines crossed, a stunted pillar of dark stone bore traces of more blood along its length. Eight lesser stones made a Faerie ring around the circle's perimeter. Squinting against the reflected glare of the torch, McLeod saw that the dark-stained tops of all the standing stones had been hollowed out, like offertory bowls.

There was no mistaking the ritualistic character of the layout. Equally apparent to McLeod's deeper senses was the chaotic nature of the forces that this place was intended to honor and invoke.

"Don't come in," he called to his companion. "Go and fetch me one of those big bags of salt, and then go upstairs and see what Davies is doing. Try not to let him come down here. I have to do something."

To his relief, Harry gave no argument, receding footsteps telling of his obedience. McLeod moved forward, but soon encountered a field of resistance that set his nerves jangling with sudden inimical dissonance.

Gritting his teeth, he thrust forward the stiffened blade of his hand in a determined push until he felt the field collapse, falling in tatters behind him as he, too, passed into the circle. Here his cautious torch-beam discovered evidence of animal sacrifice in the form of scattered small bones still bearing shreds of fur and feathers - perhaps the source of the blood that had stained the stones. The standing stone at the center of the ring bore a string of runic symbols executed in the same gory medium.

As far as McLeod was concerned, no clearer evidence was needed to forge a connection between the owner of this house and the arch-Druid whose likeness Peregrine had captured at Callanish. But this in turn led to further questions. The atmosphere within the chamber was saturated with unclean resonances, bespeaking years of secretive use. What could have prompted Evans to emerge so suddenly from obscurity two years ago, only to retire again until the present, Callanish incident?

He had the feeling that the answer was hovering elusively just out of reach. Just now, however, he had neither the privacy nor the time to spare for introspection. There were no clues to indicate when or if Evans intended to return here. But Mc-Leod's own duty clearly dictated that this underground sanctuary must be rendered untenable to those shadowy forces it was meant to serve. He had scuffed out the painted circle and was kicking over the outer stones when Harry called to him from the entrance to the place.

"Noel, I've got your salt."

"Thanks," McLeod replied. "Now, go upstairs with Davies. I'll explain later."

Harry gave a nod and disappeared a second time, and McLeod returned to his work, ripping open the bag of salt and murmuring a litany of purification as he scattered the bag's contents around the room by the handful. Within the space of less than a minute, the floor was covered with a glistening carpet of white powder. For good measure, McLeod set one booted foot against the central pillar and pushed. When it toppled over, it made more of a thump than the smaller ones had done, but hopefully Davis would not have heard it.

Breathing a final prayer of exorcism, McLeod headed back for the exit from the place. Adam, no doubt, would know who to send at a later date to finish the demolition work he had started.

In the meantime, however, satisfied that this chapel of shadows could not readily be put to its former use, McLeod quickly made to replace the boards concealing the cavern's entrance before ascending the ladder to the floor above. There he found Harry and his lantern, both perched on the edge of the kitchen table. The counsellor was alone.

"What's happened to Davies?" McLeod asked.

"He's been going through some personal papers he found in a box under Evans's bed," Harry replied. "I told him you were still poking around, and that we'd be up to join him directly."

"That's true enough," McLeod agreed, as they closed the trapdoor and left the pantry. "I don't think we need to say anything about the cellar, do you?''

Harry gave him a sly, conspiratorial glance. "I gather there's nothing down there that would be of any material help to Inspector Davies," he said.

"It could be awkward," McLeod agreed.

"And that's part of your job - to keep awkward questions from being asked." Harry shook his head resignedly. "Well, far be it from me to interfere. I didn't see a thing. But you did say you'd explain later. Maybe on the way home, once we're safely aloft?"

"Maybe," McLeod said noncommittally.