Phantom (23 page)

Those other things on the floor. Food cans.
A blackened Sterno container. A canvas bag. Now it began to add up.
Someone had taken shelter here, perhaps even lived here for a
while, and then that person had died here, undiscovered until now.
A hobo or a lone gypsy or an outcast of the swamp people. That's
all. It was bad enough to stumble across the remains of a dead
person, but at least Ned knew it couldn't be his mother, and it
certainly wasn't some vampire waiting to devour him.

Shaky, praying that he was right, Ned got up
off the floor. Sight of the skull made him shiver. But this was
followed by a feeling of relief as he saw that it definitely was
not his mother. Just ... someone. The spa and Ned's imagination had
conspired against him before. Now he could see that there wasn't
any flesh or skin left either. Death had come to this person some
time ago, leaving nothing but moldering bones and that unmistakable
smell. Who were you, Ned wondered, that you had to come here, of
all places, to die alone and unfound. My bones will be here too, he
thought grimly, if I don't take care and get out. It was time to
go.

Ned knew the bees were still in the
corridor, but he went to the door and listened carefully. Their
sound was a low roar, like a mighty engine straining impatiently in
neutral. If Ned tried to leave that way he'd never even get close
to the landing. The bees were real, like the spiders above. Not
supernatural, just deadly. Everything Ned had run into so far had
been natural, of this earth. The visions, the optical illusions and
mind games—his own brain must have been responsible for those.
Peeler had been right; this spa was a very dangerous place, whether
phantoms dwelled here or not. But it does the condemned man no good
to understand how dangerous the guillotine is, unless he escapes
the prison. The problem at hand was how to get out of this room
safely.

Ned went to the window. He was one floor
above the building's ground level, but at this end of the wing the
back garden was actually about two floors away, below him. And if
he went down here he would still be within the confines of those
labyrinthine gardens. The jungle would swallow him. The clear area
around the terrace ended about ten yards away. This side of the spa
was rather different from the other side, where Ned had fallen
during his previous visit. He hadn't noticed then that the gardens
came right up to the building at the end of this wing. The thicket
below looked uninviting. Would he be able to make his way out of
it? He would have to get to one of the walls and climb up on top of
it. He could make a pile of some of the brush, to stand on. It
might take a lot of hard work and time—he no longer had his knife
to cut the stuff with—but it could be done. Besides, there was no
alternative.

Ned tested the wrought-iron grille set in
the window casing. It seemed sturdy enough. He put all his weight
on it and bounced lightly. This one didn't budge. From his knapsack
Ned got a fifty-foot roll of K-mart nylon rope. It would hold
him-it had to. He tore off the cellophane wrapper and unwound the
rope. He looped one end around the wrought iron and tied a slip
knot, just as Peeler had taught him. Ned had no idea if it was a
good knot for this kind of job, but it seemed a better bet than the
only other one he knew—a conventional shoelace knot. He held the
rope out and let it fall. It reached the ground below with plenty
to spare.

Now the question was: Would he be able to
hold his own weight as he lowered himself to the ground? Ned
decided against using a safety harness and kicking his way down the
side of the building because that would involve too much swinging
and bouncing, and he wasn't even sure how to rig .such a harness.
He would simply have to rely on his hands and feet. He tied knots
along the length of the rope, every three or four feet. It was
tedious work, but at least it gave him "steps" to climb down
on.

Ned checked the slip knot once more to make
sure it was good and snug. Then he stepped over the grille. He was
nervous as he took the rope in his hands. He stood one foot on the
other, with the rope pressed between his shoes. There was a brief
moment of panic when he moved away from the grille and had a sudden
urge to leap back to the security of the building, but he clung to
his lifeline and breathed deeply to settle himself. The rope was
too thin and it felt like cord cutting into Ned's palms, but he
didn't dare relax his grip. Hand over hand, a few inches at a time,
he descended. The rope slid obligingly through his feet, and Ned
had done a good job of spacing the knots conveniently. But it still
took a great deal of effort to hold himself up. His breath
quickened, coming in short, sharp grunts. Sweat soaked his clothes.
His hands really hurt now, and the moisture made it harder for him
to keep from slipping.

A cramp was forming in his thigh muscles,
but Ned was close enough to the ground to know that he would make
it. He let go of the rope and dropped the last six feet, landing on
his butt in a bed of ferns. His body was sore, but he smiled with
pleasure as he looked back up at the building. Beat you again, he
thought. It occurred to Ned that this was probably the most daring
thing he had ever done in his life. He felt a measure of pride as
he examined the red welts on the palms of his hands.

Ned rested where he sat. He ate an apple, a
chocolate bar, and he took another drink of water from the canteen.
The effort of coming down the rope had made his headache worse, but
it was letting up now as the aspirin took effect. The loss of the
knife still annoyed him. Other than that, however, he hadn't done
badly. He was still alive.

Ready to move on, Ned turned his attention
to the garden he was in. It looked different, now that he was down
here and actually in it. From above, even from as close as the top
of the walls, it had appeared to be an impenetrable snarl of briars
and weedy brush, a jungle choking on itself. But that had been
deceptive. At ground level, in this area of the garden anyway,
there were occasional thin spots. Beneath the taller, sprawling,
bent-over bushes, there were low, tunnel-like passages through
which a small body might move. It would be slow going and
difficult, but if all parts of the garden were like this Ned
thought he would be able to reach the clearing and terrace without
having to find a way up one of the high walls.

He went the route of least resistance,
always trying to keep an eye on the walls, looking for the doorway
into the next section of the garden. In some places he could almost
stand upright, but most of the time he had to stay low or even
crawl on his hands and knees. The knapsack on his back snagged
constantly, but there was nothing he could do about it except to
struggle on. Fortunately, it was cool and shady in the garden, as
the tall, leafy foliage screened out a good deal of the afternoon
sun.

After about twenty minutes Ned came to a
door in the wall. It wouldn't budge at first, but he kicked it
several times until it scraped across the stone sill enough to let
him slip through. Was there a doorway in every wall, or just one in
each section of the garden? Ned tried to remember what he had
observed on his previous visit, but he wasn't sure.

He wanted to move to the left, toward the
center, but he was unable to get very far that way. The dense
growth shunted him more or less forward, and after a while he came
to another doorway, this one already open. Ned was pushing out,
away from the spa building, when he needed to be circling around
and back toward the clear ground. An hour later he stopped and
tried to get his bearings. He could see enough of the building to
get a rough fix on where he was: perhaps halfway between the spa
and the back wall, virtually in the middle of the garden and still
somewhat off center. Too far, he thought. He had to cut across and
back. In spite of the shade he was hot and sweaty and beginning to
tire now. He sat down for five minutes to rest again. The bugs were
a nuisance—tiny gnats getting in his eyes, and the unnerving buzz
of ugly fat flies always around him. But Ned reminded himself that
they were much better than bees. So far, no bees, no spiders and no
snakes. Think of the good points.

Funny ... These gardens had always seemed to
be the worst possible place Ned could get stuck in, more
frightening and dangerous even than the black cellar. Ned had
imagined all kinds of strange beasts and deadly creatures lurking
in this jungle, waiting to tear apart any hapless intruder. But
that fear had vanished—in fact, he hadn't given it a thought—as
soon as he had actually landed in the garden. Now it appeared to be
no more or less threatening than any other piece of wild ground.
Thicker and heavier, maybe, but aside from that Ned could just as
well be hiking through part of Old Woods. If this was the devil's
playground, there wasn't much to it, he thought. Not yet, anyway;
he wasn't safe until he was out—and maybe not even then.

A little further on, Ned was finally able to
break left. He couldn't count the number of bramble scratches on
his hands, and he knew there were some on his face, but this turn
in the right direction tapped a fresh reserve of energy and
enthusiasm in him. Ducking low, brushing away the raspy weeds and
saw grass, he crossed the central ground of the gardens. Now: back
to the clearing and the terrace. By then he would have seen and
done enough for one day. The light would be fading. He would get
out of the spa through the front door and head for home. If he felt
it was necessary, he could come back another day to finish the
ground floor and the cellar—but right now there was no longer any
sense of urgency or importance to the idea. The crazy spa and the
crazy gardens had deflated a little on their own. It was a place of
natural hazards, and one that lent itself to a lively imagination,
but Ned hadn't really encountered anything he could honestly call
supernatural. He had to smile. He could see now that he had, in a
way, done what his father had always advised. He had faced the
nightmare, the weird phenomena, the unexplained and unknown—and he
was working his way through it, literally, and coming to certain
explanations and an understanding. In the end, there would be no
phantom.

Ned located the spa building. He should be
moving toward it. In that direction would be a wall and a door, he
knew, followed by another wall and another door, and so on, until
the clearing and the terrace. But the way was barred by an immense
tangle of briars, thick as cables with vicious, inch long thorns.
Jump in there and you'd bleed to death in a few minutes. Once
again, Ned was steered off on a tangent, unable to complete the
arc. He went the only way he could.

When he came to the wall, he didn't
recognize it, but as he edged along, looking for a doorway, it
dawned on him. This was the circular garden. The one Peeler and
Cloudy said probably had a hot spring or something of the sort in
it. Ned had to see this. He tried to recall how the layout had
looked from atop the walls. If he went into the circular garden he
might lose a little time, but there was still plenty of daylight
left and his course was so unpredictable anyway that it probably
wouldn't make much difference. But even if it did, Ned knew he had
to enter; instinct told him this was not to be passed by. He stayed
close to the wall, afraid to lose sight of it. The mass of
vegetation was so dense it almost seemed to push him back. The
knapsack was more of a hindrance than ever now, but Ned wouldn't
consider ditching it as he climbed and crawled along the base of
the wall.

The entrance itself was also a circle. No
hinges, no holes. Never was a door here, Ned thought as his eyes
took in the sweep of unbroken brickwork. Just inside, however,
there was a kind of door. A tight cluster of twisted saplings had
reared up against the inside wall. Holding his knapsack in one
hand, Ned slid easily past this natural barrier and into the
circular garden.

The differences were immediately obvious. He
could stand up here. The plant growth was tall, reaching the full
height of the surrounding wall, but the heavy leaves were banded
there at the top, forming a spiky green ceiling. The trunks, or
stalks really, were thin and deformed-looking, like spun vines
marred by grotesque knotty eruptions. There was hardly any ground
cover or scrub—just a bare, hard clay. It was so different from any
other part of the spa gardens he had been through that Ned stood
for several minutes, looking around in astonishment. He wondered if
a bamboo grove might be anything like this. Then he thought, Yeah,
in a bad dream.

He had been aware of the smell from the
moment he had come to the entrance. It was not overpowering, but it
was acrid and pervasive. Ned had performed enough experiments with
his chemistry set to know it was the stink of burning sulphur. It
was hard to imagine people wanting to spend time here, breathing
this air, much less thinking it was somehow good for their health.
Even the insects stayed out of this area; there wasn't a fly or a
gnat or a bug of any kind to be seen. It was the quietest part of
the spa Ned had come across yet.

The peculiar nature of the plant life here
made it easy for Ned to move around. The last time he had been at
this place, looking down from above, the greenery had reminded him
of a giant wreath that filled the circular garden but for an open
spot in the center. He would get there shortly, but first he wanted
to complete one circuit of the inside wall. No doubt he could go to
the library and find a book that would tell him what these plants
were, but he came up with his own name for them: pipe-cleaner
trees. They were sticky to touch, glistening with some kind of sap
or resin. Ned moved carefully between them, and soon arrived back
at the entrance.

Now to the center, where the smoke or steam
had emanated from. He wanted to see what was really there: the
mouth of a fire-beast, the gate to hell, or nothing at all?