Alma Katsu - The Descent

I turned and ran down the hall the way I’d come, as silently as I could, though my head clamored with the sound of my ragged breath, the thumping of my heart, blood sluicing in my ears. Don’t look back, I told myself over and over, sure that something terrible would happen to me if I did, that I’d turn to stone or salt, or would be sentenced to remain in the labyrinth forever. It’s only a dream, I also tried to tell myself. Yet I ran hard, sprinting down the passage, my soles barely touching the packed dirt floor.

When at last I thought I was a safe distance away, I stopped, panting heavily now, doubling over with my hands on my knees and nearly retching from the effort. In my dream state, I tried to recall what I’d seen exactly. The sight of the demon was already growing wispy. The residue of fear stayed with me, though. Dream or not, he was truly something to be afraid of; I felt it to my bones. However, as I stood there, doubled over and breathless, I berated myself. What kind of behavior was this? Did I honestly want to help Jonathan or not? I had to screw up my courage and go back down the corridor and face the creature. For Jonathan’s sake.

I stood up and took another deep breath. The pounding of my heart began to slow. Courage. I’d just about gathered my wits and was about to head back the way I’d come when, suddenly, the demon appeared around the corner. He was closer now, and I could see him in more detail. He had an obscene air about him, due no doubt to the genitalia openly displayed between his legs, swaying heavily with each step. There was no mistaking his yellow eyes falling on me heavily, deliberately, and I thought I saw the corner of his brutish mouth turn upward. He is coming for me. My scream froze in my throat. I couldn’t move and it was only with great luck that before he could lay one of those large, maniacal claws on me, I lurched awake in Adair’s arms.

“It was a dream. Just a dream.”

Adair meant to be reassuring. I knew that he wanted me to blink my eyes and see that I was in his study and not the horrible dungeon of my dreams; to catch my breath and say with an embarrassed chuckle, “Oh, you’re right of course. I see that now.” But I didn’t.

I didn’t need him to tell me it had been a dream. I knew I was awake now and on the other side. However, wisps of the dream were still trapped in my head, making it hard to separate nightmare from reality. I could still see the demon’s rippling red haunches and shoulders, as well as the golden eyes that had sized me up with such calculation. I could still smell the monster’s ashy, earthen odor.

“It was more than a dream. I know it.” I shuddered against the memory.

He didn’t release me. Instead, he started to rub my back as you might to console a child. “It was a bad dream, I’ll give you that. You had me worried . . . you were making horrible noises in your sleep. I thought you were choking. I tried to wake you up, but it was as though you were in a trance. I called your name and I even shook you, but you didn’t respond.”

“That’s what I mean—if it had been a regular dream, you should’ve been able to wake me. Something’s going on, I can feel it.” I let him hold me for a long moment and buried my face against his chest, breathing in his once familiar scent.

After I’d had a minute to gather my wits, Adair gently pulled me to my feet. “We’ve been cooped up in here too long. We should get out of the room for a while. Clear our thoughts. I think the girls have made lunch. There’s something delicious in the air, mushroom soup, perhaps? Why don’t we see what they’re up to?” He was trying to take my mind off my fright, and was probably right about our needing a change of scene: I couldn’t hide in the study forever.

We followed the aroma down to the cavernous kitchen, where the two girls were huddled over a huge stockpot on the stove. They lifted their heads when we entered.

“Ah, look who’s here. Come to join us?” Terry asked, stepping to the worktable. She wiped her hands on her apron before taking up a massive chef’s knife to mince parsley.

“Still among the living, are you? We thought maybe you’d died in there.” Robin’s rejoinder fell flat, like the taunt of an insecure young child.

“We’re catching up on old times,” Adair said. A wooden bowl held slices of rustic homemade bread. He fished one out.

“If you can bear to come up for air, you are welcome to join us for lunch,” Terry said briskly as she scooped up a handful of parsley and dropped it into the pot. “It’s just about ready.”

“It smells heavenly,” I offered, and then I thought of Adair’s description of the hallucinogenic meal the witch sisters had made for him and wondered where the mushrooms had come from, if they could’ve been gathered on the mystical island.

Robin danced up to me, and said, “I was about to go down to the wine cellar to get something to go with lunch. We’ve nothing suitable up here. Do you want to come with me? It’s quite impressive. I’ve never seen so many bottles in one place at one time before, except at a grocer’s.”

I’d been into the labyrinth belowstairs only once, the morning when I’d gotten hopelessly lost, and had resolved not to venture down again, but there didn’t seem to be any danger in going with Robin. “All right,” I said. “I’d like to make myself useful.”

She took me through a nondescript door at the rear of the kitchen, which opened onto a long set of stone steps descending into darkness. Robin didn’t seem intimidated by the cellar in the least; she knew where all the light pulls were, and what’s more, she kept up a stream of chatter as she led the way deeper and deeper under the fortress. The plaster walls eventually gave way to brick, and then stone. It felt as though we’d burrowed straight down toward the center of the earth, a strangely far distance from the living quarters for a wine cellar, but perhaps necessary due to the vicissitudes of the rock and creeping seawater. The halls here were very dark, with few overhead lights. I was starting to wish that she’d brought a flashlight.

“This way,” she said cheerily as we entered a very narrow hall. I was seized by a sudden feeling of claustrophobia, as though the walls were starting to press in on me. Then we passed a door that seemed familiar, though I knew I hadn’t been this way before. I stopped to take a closer look, letting Robin go on ahead. The door was old and scarred, gouged by something very sharp by the look of it. I put a hand to the wood and it swung open, as though whatever was inside had been waiting for me.

I groped along the wall for a light switch, but there was none. The light from the hall, dim as it was, was sufficient; as I looked around, I again felt a sense of déjà vu. It was then I realized that the floor underfoot was packed dirt, smooth from disuse. And the walls were stone, made of very large, precisely cut blocks. In a flash, I knew it was the room from my dreams.

I wanted to scream but it was as though I was back in my nocturnal prison and I couldn’t, my voice trapped in my throat. I turned to the door and it suddenly swung shut in front of me. I thought I’d seen the fleetest glimpse of Robin at the door, a smile on her sly face, her hand on the iron latch. I started pounding on the door, calling, “Let me out, let me out!” as soon as my voice came back to me. I struggled with the latch but it wouldn’t work, the mechanism frozen in place. “Robin, this isn’t funny. Let me out now!” I shouted, but I heard nothing on the other side of the door, not even the patter of retreating footsteps.

I kept pounding, all the while telling myself to stay calm, not to lose my head. It wasn’t the room from the dream, it couldn’t be. That was just a dream and this was reality. And yet . . . I could swear that I was beginning to smell the same dark aroma from my dream, the smell of ashes and earth. And I thought I heard something coming toward me from the dark recess of the room, a heavy, blunt footfall, one deliberate step at a time, and the snort of animal breathing. I shrieked in earnest, kicked and banged, jerked on the latch so mightily in an attempt to fling the door open that I might’ve dislocated my shoulder. To no avail. The acrid smell of scorched earth wrapped around me, and the heavy breath washed down my neck in cascades as though the monster was standing right over me . . . and just as I thought I felt the brush of its taloned hands reaching for me, I was pulled under by blackness.

* * *

“Dear God, Lanore, you gave me a terrible fright,” Adair said as soon as I opened my eyes.

Where was I? Not in the dungeon, I saw that right away. I was lying in my bed in the guest room, Robin and Terry visible over Adair’s shoulder, hovering at the doorway. Adair sat on the edge of the bed, watching me intently.

I bolted upright, but the sudden movement made my head spin, and Adair grabbed my shoulders to keep me from tumbling out of bed. “The cellar—”

“You’re safe,” he said, trying to get me to lie back. “Robin came to get me. She said you were trapped in one of the storerooms. The door shut behind you and she couldn’t get it open.”

The fleeting glimpse of her sly smile was frozen in my memory. “She’s lying,” I countered. I was ready to throw back the blanket and climb out of bed to confront her, but Adair held me in place. “She locked me in there! She did it on purpose. She wanted to frighten me,” I insisted, pointing in her direction.

“What cheek!” Terry shouted at me from the doorway, but I noticed that Robin scurried backward into the hall, out of my view.

“Now, Lanore, really,” Adair said, trying to soothe me. “Why would she do that?”

“How should I know?” I snapped. “All I know is that she did.”

“You’re tired, and you’ve had a lot on your mind lately, Lanore,” he said loudly enough to be overheard by the girls, then added under his breath, “Are you sure it’s not your imagination?” But he had been heard after all, for there was a giggle at the door, mean and childish and meant to intimidate me.

I grasped Adair’s shirt and pulled myself closer to him. “Adair, we need to speak in private. Please,” I said in a low voice.

He twisted in his seat and barked at the two women to leave us alone and, once they’d slunk away grumpily, got up to close the door after them. “Are you quite sure that you saw Robin close the door?” he asked skeptically as he resumed his seat.

I wanted to remind him that he was the one who suspected the malevolent witch sisters of possessing the Englishwomen in some way, but didn’t want to be pulled into an argument on the matter, not at the moment. “Never mind about that—that’s not what I want to talk to you about.” I closed my eyes and an image of the ochre stones rushed up and sent a fresh shiver through me. “That room in your basement, the room where I was trapped . . . it’s the place in my dream. The dungeon.”

He stared at me uncomprehending for a minute, and then shook his head. “You must be mistaken. . . . It can’t be.”

“It is. I’m not imagining it,” I said hotly.

“Not imagining, but maybe it’s the power of suggestion. You told me that you got lost in the basement the other day—maybe you’re only remembering what you saw then. Maybe that’s why the room seems familiar to you.”

That sounded reasonable, but—no. I hadn’t been lost in the basement for long, and besides, I hadn’t gone nearly that far down the passage on my first morning here. The hall in my dream looked precisely the same as the one snaking beneath Adair’s home—they were the same. I didn’t have the slightest doubt. I was going to tell Adair all about the demon I’d seen in my dream and whose presence I’d felt underground, but I decided not to mention it lest he refuse to send me to the underworld, thinking it too dangerous.

“Something’s going on, Adair. These dreams are a message. I know it, I can feel it.” The dreams were coming fast and furious now, and what’s more, they were breaking through to the daylight world, having followed me to Adair’s island—or lured me here. I was beginning to believe there was some kind of intelligence behind them. Someone was trying to communicate with me. It was time to lay my cards on the table. I was going to need to ask Adair for his help at some point, and it seemed that the time had come. I took a deep breath. “I don’t think they’re dreams, not exactly. I think they’re something else. I think Jonathan is trying to contact me.”

This was not going to be an easy topic to discuss with Adair, no matter how I brought it up. Jonathan was the last person in the world Adair would want to talk about, especially with me. He’d never liked Jonathan; what’s more, I don’t think he forgave Jonathan for breaking my heart (and, to an extent, never forgave me for falling in love with Jonathan in the first place). To say that the three of us had a complicated history was an understatement, and I’m sure Adair had hoped that was behind us now that Jonathan was dead. Only here he was again, still coming between us even in death.