Angel Among Us (31 page)

The old man needed help. I left Arcelia reluctantly, returning to the surface where the butler was replacing the hatch. But he was no fool. He left it open until he could crack a small lower limb off from a nearby fruit tree. Returning to the hatch, he placed the limb across the opening then shut the top on to it. From afar, Lamont Carter would not be able to tell that the hatch had been discovered, but fresh air could still get through to Arcelia Gallagher and it would mark the opening for others.

The old man wiped his hands on his pants, pausing to collect his breath. His heart leapt in his chest like an animal struggling to break free. I wondered if his frail body could contain it. I could feel his desperation as his mind processed what was happening to Arcelia below, the danger of Carter being so near and his own physical weakness. If he tried to help, his life would be in danger. He was taking many risks.

But I had not given the old butler enough credit. His body was old, but his courage had been awakened. His shoulders straightened with resolve and he took off in a rapid walk toward the back of the house where Rodrigo slept. The first thing he was going to do, I realized, was find Rodrigo and send him down to help Arcelia.

Rodrigo. If he was helping Carter, the old man was dead and I did not think I could bear to see him pay such a price for his courage. I followed close behind, worried for him.

Rodrigo was in bed, watching television, when the butler reached him. He looked up, alarmed, as the old man pushed through the door, gasping for breath.

‘What is it?' Rodrigo asked. ‘Has something happened to my brother?'

The old butler's words were barely distinguishable and his breathing had taken on a whooping sound. ‘Below. Below.' He pointed outside. ‘I found the woman they are looking for. She's in a dungeon below our lawn. Near the cherry trees. Carter did it. I followed him. I saw the woman. She needs help. Her baby is coming.'

Rodrigo looked stunned, and in that instant my hope died – why had the butler not considered the fact that Carter might have an accomplice? Why had he not remembered that Rodrigo had been one of the last people to see Arcelia Gallagher before she disappeared?

‘Did you hear what I said?' the old man asked. ‘We have to call the police. The missing woman is below the great lawn.'

Rodrigo fumbled for his cellphone. Perhaps he was not helping Carter after all. But then he froze. ‘I gave my phone to Aldo in jail so he could call his wife. I told him he could keep it until tomorrow.'

‘Then you must go to the woman,' the butler said. ‘You must help her. I cannot get down the ladder. If you help her, than I will go for the police.'

Rodrigo leapt from the bed and grabbed a long pole with a wickedly sharp cutting edge from a corner in his room. He had other tools there, makeshift weapons against the spirit he feared. He fumbled in his pockets and took out a pocket knife long enough to be illegal in our state. I froze, fearful of what he might do next, but all he did was extend both weapons so that the butler could choose. ‘You need a weapon in case Carter comes back,' Rodrigo said. ‘Take one of these.'

The butler waved him away. ‘I'm not strong enough. He would only use it against me.'

‘Where is she?' Rodrigo asked. ‘The great lawn is very big.'

The butler looked panicked for a moment as the enormity of what they needed to do overwhelmed him. I could feel him thinking of the vastness of the lawn, the hopelessness of the dark and the cleverly hidden hatch buried deep in the grass. Courage, I willed him. Strength and courage. You must stay calm.

‘I tore a limb off a cherry tree to mark the opening,' he finally remembered. ‘Go to the lawn by the cherry orchard, find the tree with a limb torn off and then head straight into the lawn. I left the entrance open a few inches, with a branch wedged in it. You will find her there. You must close the top after you. If Carter comes, he will try to hurt you. Your only hope will be to surprise him on the way down. Take a lantern. It is dark in there. And a blanket, she will need something to lie on. Take a blanket.'

Rodrigo grabbed the blanket from his bed and ran out the door. I followed him, desperate to know if he could find the opening. He sprinted to the gardener's shed, scooped up a lantern and kept running. As I left the shed, I could hear the old butler wheezing inside the house, struggling for breath. But I had no choice but to follow Rodrigo. He might need my help.

It was Rodrigo's world and he knew it even in the dark. He loped across the lawn toward the spot where the butler had directed him. If he had been in it with Carter, he would have gone straight to the hatch. Instead he was heading for the trees.

He found the cherry tree with the limb stripped from its trunk and paced carefully back across the lawn, staring intently at the ground, searching for the opening the old man had promised. He passed it the first time and my heart sank, but he turned around and began to search again. This time he tripped over the opening. He dropped to his knees and opened the hatch door wide. He called down in Spanish and Arcelia answered him. Rodrigo scrambled down the ladder and I followed, needing to know that Arcelia would now be OK.

Her breathing was coming faster and her contractions were barely a minute apart. The ground below her was wet. Her water had broken. The baby would be here soon.

Rodrigo folded the blanket underneath Arcelia so she had something to lie on. He could do nothing about the handcuff that bound her to the wall. He encouraged her to lie flat on her back. Murmuring to her in reassuring Spanish, he lifted her dress and checked on the baby's progress. His moves were confident and I knew that a baby struggling to join the world was not new to him. A profound sense of relief flooded through me, clearing the way for me to feel a force that had surely been there in the cave all along: a ferociously brilliant spark of energy and love, all centered on one spot within Arcelia – new consciousness taking form.

Rodrigo adjusted the lantern and checked the baby's progress. He shouted something to Arcelia that made her pushed down harder. The air around us vibrated. I could feel a billion atoms dancing and whirling, coalescing at the point where the baby struggled. Arcelia panted, gasping for breath, and Rodrigo murmured more encouragement. The two of them had become one, had somehow agreed silently that they would do this together, that they would bring this new life into the world.

Arcelia relaxed for a moment. The baby was still and she panted in the quiet. Then, as if remembering something, she looked up at Rodrigo and murmured Carter's name.

I'd forgotten about Lamont Carter. If he knew that the old man had discovered him, the butler would not last a minute. I had to go check on him. The baby would be safe. Rodrigo knew what he was doing and Arcelia was strong.

A sudden wind swept through the cave, even though Rodrigo had replaced the hatch cover. It smelled of grass and rain. It was my friend, my fellow traveler, letting me know that there were two of us there, unseen. Letting me know that I could leave. He was there to help.

I fled, my fear for the butler increasing. Carter knew that millions rested on the baby. It would not be long before he left his room to check on Arcelia. I feared what would happen to the old man then.

T
he butler had reached the kitchen table and been unable to go further. Trembling, he sat, trying to regain his strength. As I waited with him, trying to lend him my strength, a shadow appeared behind him. The old man sensed a presence and whirled around, prepared for the worst.

His wife stood in the kitchen, looking down at her husband with the same vacant eyes she had greeted the world with for over a year. But then she said, quite distinctly, in a low voice that I knew somehow came from the other spirit, ‘You must find the master keys and lock him in his bedroom.' Then she calmly reclaimed her customary seat at the kitchen table and lapsed into silence.

The butler was so startled he stood abruptly and grabbed the table to steady himself. ‘Muriel?' he asked his wife. ‘Muriel, are you there?' She stared at him with vacant eyes, but a silver fork lying on the table in front of her began to spin slowly in a circle before it flew off the table and clattered to the floor.

The butler rushed to an immense sideboard against a wall. Frantically opening drawer after drawer, he shoved his hands deep into the back of each until, at last, he emerged triumphant holding a large silver key ring. One single key dangled from the hoop, an old-fashioned skeleton key polished to a sheen. It had been the ultimate symbol of power once – the butler's key, used to lock each room in the house from the hallway when the mansion shut down for the season, a precaution that made it harder for thieves to steal the family treasures.

‘Muriel?' he asked his wife hopefully once more before he left the kitchen, but she was back to staring at the tabletop, oblivious.

The old man hurried through the halls toward the grand staircase. I was close behind. I felt strange vibrations in the air all around me, perhaps even the vibration of the walls themselves, as if the house was alive in some way and urging the old man on.

When he reached the upstairs hallway, the butler slowed his steps and crept silently down the center of the narrow carpet. Carter's room was in the middle of the corridor and the butler had to stop to get his breathing under control before he approached it. But once he reached the right door, the sounds of Carter's voice against the backdrop of a noisy television show leaked out from underneath it. Carter would not have been able to hear the old butler wheezing if he had tried. He was on the phone, arguing furiously with someone over the size of a fee. He never even paused in his rapid-fire sales pitch when the butler inserted the master key into the lock of the bedroom door and gently turned it to the right. The click, though no more than an echo, seemed as loud as a gunshot.

‘What are you doing?' a voice whispered to the old man's right.

The butler gasped and backed up against the hallway wall.

Alice Hernandez stood there, staring at the old man curiously. She glanced at Carter's door and gestured for the butler to follow her down the hall. When they reached the top of the steps, she wasted no time in explaining who she really was. ‘Why would you lock him in his room?' she asked, pulling her badge from the pocket of her maid uniform and showing it to the old butler. ‘I'm working here undercover. Why were you locking Carter in his room?'

I thought the old man might start sobbing with relief. He grabbed for the railing and steadied himself before explaining, ‘I found the woman you are looking for. Carter's been holding her in some sort of cave beneath the great lawn. I think maybe it's an old room from when the house was part of the Underground Railroad. She's about to have her baby. I sent the gardener to help her, but if Carter finds out, he will kill us all.'

The old man unwrapped the ascot and showed his bruises to Alice. ‘I'm not strong enough to fight him off, as you can see.'

Alice took him by his elbow and escorted him down the stairs. ‘Listen to me very carefully,' she said, keeping her voice calm. ‘I need you to show me where Arcelia Gallagher is, and then you must stay above on the lawn until the police get here so that they can find us as quickly as possible. You must wave them over while I go down inside the room to protect her.'

‘I don't think I can walk to where it is again,' the butler said, ashamed. ‘I don't think I have the strength.'

‘I want you to tell me exactly where this place is,' Alice told him. ‘Remember that I am not familiar with the grounds and tell me exactly where it is.'

The butler explained about the cherry trees and the great lawn, but warned her that Rodrigo had closed the hatch above him to avoid Carter being tipped off.

‘In that case, I am going to need you to come out to the great lawn with me,' Alice said, the urgency rising in her voice. ‘I know it will be hard for you, but I may need your help finding it. Can you do that? Can you do that for Arcelia Gallagher and her baby?'

The old man nodded, but he looked frightened and I could feel his heart thumping in his chest, erratic and ragged, pushed to its limit. His frail body could not take much more.

‘I'm going to run ahead,' Alice told him. ‘I'll call the police on the way. But promise me you will follow me. Promise me you will not give up. If I don't find the hatch, I'll wait by the cherry trees.'

The old man nodded but Alice had already taken off, running through the hallway of the house. I followed, watching as she raced past the old woman in the kitchen and burst out the back door. She bounded down the steps in one leap, hitting the ground below with athletic grace. She was strong and ran like a gazelle, her heart beating confidently in her chest as her lungs took in the night air and the fresh oxygen fueled her legs. She reached the great lawn within a minute and loped to her left. Once she reached the cherry trees, she pulled a cellphone from her pocket and, barely winded, had Maggie on the phone within seconds.

‘I found her,' she told Maggie. ‘She's being held in some sort of cave underneath the lawn of the mansion. The old butler found her, actually, and I caught him trying to lock Lamont Carter in his room. Carter is the one who took her.' She was silent as Maggie asked her something. ‘Yes, he's locked inside. I don't think he's noticed anything yet. But he's dangerous. You need to send an ambulance. The old man says she's having her baby. I'm trying to find the entrance now.' She described the spot on the lawn where the butler had told her the hatch would be and promised Maggie that someone would be waiting above ground to show them the way.

‘Hurry,' she told Maggie. ‘Please, just hurry. The butler is going to guard the room from above and if Carter gets out and finds him, he won't survive.'

As soon as Alice hung up, she walked straight into the lawn in the direction the butler had directed her to. She found nothing, but that did not slow her. Dropping to her knees, she swept her hands around her in a wide arc and began to call out Rodrigo's name. She pulled the grass, she buried her hands deep in the turf, she raised her voice and called out his name louder. It was maddening. But the moon above was full and a cloud blocking it moved past at that moment, causing pearly light to pour over the tree line and send shadows dancing across the lawn. The top of one of the cherry trees looked like a figure pointing directly to where the hatch handle was hidden.