Chapter 6
In the kitchen, somebody was singing an unfamiliar tune, from the words she recognized it as Tam Lin, with a brightness that made Elizabeth wince. She had staggered out of bed, appalled at the lateness of the hour, and been even more appalled when she caught sight of herself in the mirror. She had dark circles under her eyes, her hair was still matted with twigs and mud, and she stank. Now, freshly showered and ready to move on to the next part of the morning, the caffeine part, she stood in the back stairs at the kitchen door and steeled herself to face the maniac who had enough energy to sing English folk songs after being up most of the night.
She pushed open the door to see Miss Price, her frilly Victorian night dress hitched up and covered with a frilly Victorian tea gown, neatly frying eggs. Miss Price greeted her with a cheery wave of the spatula and kept singing. Elizabeth waved back as she dove for the gurgling coffee maker into which the final drops of the precious liquid were dripping from the filter.
After a few sips from a brimful mug (she was not quite so far gone that she drank from the pot), Elizabeth was able to greet her employer more civilly.
"You all certainly sleep late here," Miss Price commented. "I've been up for hours wondering whether I should raid your kitchen after all you all had done for me. As you can see, hunger finally won out. Shall I put more eggs on for you?"
"Yes, please," said Elizabeth. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
"If you know where the bread is you can start some toast. The bacon is almost done too." Ms. Price pointed her spatula at the microwave oven which sputtered and popped alarmingly.
Undisturbed by the racket of cooking bacon, Rififi sat atop the microwave, his nose wrinkling rhythmically as he bobbed his head and sniffed the air from the microwave's exhaust fan.
Elizabeth located the bread, a long, dense loaf of multigrain artisan bread that she suspected did not fall into the communal food stock, and cut two thick slices. She dropped the slices in the toaster and pressed down the switch. At that precise moment she remembered Alice's warnings about the electricity. A nanosecond later the kitchen light fixture went dark, the microwave stopped microwaving and nothing whatsoever happen with the toast. The red LED on the coffee maker went black.
She wailed, "Oh no! Alice told me about not turning everything on at once and I completely forgot."
"You just need to flip the breaker or replace a fuse. Do you know where the fuse box is?" Miss Price flipped the eggs. The gas flame on the stove still burned brightly.
"I think it's down in the basement," Elizabeth said slowly. She was not looking forward to applying Alice's whack and curse method to the fuse box that had sent a real electrician into paroxysms of terror. She had a sneaking suspicion that her ignorance might not protect her from the same.
Rififi started scratching at the door of the microwave oven.
Miss Price shook the frying pan to loosen the eggs. "Well, go down there and check it out. It's very simple."
"Yes, ma'am." Elizabeth reluctantly set down her coffee and shuffled towards the basement door. The basement lights came on when she hit the switch inside the door. Obviously they were on a different circuit. A cobweb brushed her face as she started down the stairs. She wiped it off and proceeded the rest of the way down, waving her hands in front of her to catch any other webs before they touched her face.
Penrose lounged against a wall at the bottom of the stairs. "Microwave and the toaster? Didn't your sister warn you?" he asked.
"Only in general terms. Where is the fuse box?"
"Back here." Penrose led her to a storeroom in the rear of the basement. She switched on low wattage lights of the same antiquity as those in the attic. They barely added to the outside light filtering through two small, grimy windows shadowed by the back porch. Trunks were stacked three deep against the walls and the narrow path to the fuse box was lined with odd shaped crates.
"What is all this stuff?" Elizabeth asked.
Penrose said, "Mostly junk. Things that people left when they moved out." He did not sound particularly interested. If the junk had been of any value, it would have been upstairs somewhere.
She walked down the narrow aisle and pulled open the fuse box. A shower of sparks spurted into her face. She yipped and jumped back. The fuse box held a tangle of black and sooty metal wires embedded with very old fuses. A surprising number of coins gleamed in the mess.
She said, "I don't suppose you have a box of fuses sitting around in here?" Spying a rolled up newspaper sitting on a stack of boxes beneath a window, she picked it up to smack the fuse box.
"Certainly not. We don't need fuses, and put that down. Here, watch this." Penrose took on an air of concentration. His normally opaque form became slightly translucent and he blurred around the edges. He reached out one hand, through which she could actually see the fuse box, and waved it through the wires, coins, and old fuses. More sparks leaped out, followed by a fearsome crackling sound. Acrid smoke stung her nose. From the kitchen above they heard a joyful whoop from Miss Price.
"That should take care of it," he told her.
"Are you insane? This is so dangerous. You really should have this house wired properly."
"The occasional blown circuit is far less disruptive than a herd of electricians ripping out the walls and replacing all the wiring. It's quite safe as long as I keep track of it."
Elizabeth didn't buy that. "This place is going to burn down. Hasn't a building inspector ever been in here?"
Penrose laughed. "The city isn't going to bother with this house. Sure, if bricks start falling off the chimney, they'll send someone out to bulldoze the place, but that's about all."
"That figures." Elizabeth headed out of the store room and back to the stairs.
As she put her hand on the end of the rough wooden banister, she heard a sound from one of the other basement rooms towards the front of the house. "What was that?" she asked Penrose, who was at her side.
"Probably just the cat."
"No, Rififi was upstairs on the microwave and he wouldn't have come down to the basement with you down here," she whispered.
"It sounded like the boiler room." Penrose pulled open a door and Elizabeth followed him into the room and switched on the light.
Penrose cried out in dismay. "We'll never get this cleaned up."
The boiler appeared to be operating well, as far as Elizabeth's inexpert eyes could see. However, the pile of coal that Alice had told her about it was no longer in a pile. Lumps of coal were scattered all throughout the boiler room and crunched beneath her slippers. A strange smell, like sulfur, hung in the air.
"Do you smell gas?" she asked Penrose. Assuming that boilers had pilot lights, she walked towards the boiler to make sure that the pilot light was lit. She had no idea what to look for and was afraid to even touch the thing.
"I can't smell anything," Penrose told her.
"Do you think I'm just imagining it?" she asked him hopefully.
"No, I mean I can't smell anything. That doesn't mean there isn't a smell." He kicked at the coal.
"Oh." She could not tell if anything was amiss with the boiler. In fact, the sulfur smell was fainter in that part of the room. She started to offer this observation, but stopped when she saw Penrose kneeling in the coal and picking at something. Instead she asked, "What's that?"
"I don't know," he said.
Elizabeth was certain he was lying.
He was turning a small black-and-white object over and over in his fingers and he tucked it into a pocket when he saw her looking. "Come on, let's get out of here." He motioned her towards the door and followed her out so closely that the chill raised goosebumps down her back. He pulled the door to behind them, and as he did they heard another sound. This one seemed to come from behind the next door down the corridor.
They exchanged glances of confusion.
"I was sure it was the boiler room," Elizabeth said. She walked down to the next door and yanked it open. A cloud of sand puffed out at her and she rubbed her eyes. "I guess this is the sand room that Alice told me about. She said there was something about a tunnel under the house."
She walked into the room. The sand was furrowed with footprints and looked like a crowded beach above high tide mark, minus the bathers. The smell of rotten eggs and brimstone was definitely stronger here. The air was moist and hot.
Penrose remained in the doorway while Elizabeth kicked at the sand. "Yes, there was a train tunnel under the hill that collapsed back in the twenties. The floor of this room began to subside forty years ago, or so, and the city poured sand down the sinkhole to fill it in."
"Was there a train in the tunnel when it collapsed?"
"Yes, unfortunately. A large number of people died and the tunnel was so unstable that the rail company could only seal the ends. Let's go. There's obviously nothing here."
Elizabeth walked further towards the center of the room, her feet sinking deeper into the sand. Her slippers were already ruined with coal dust so she didn't mind about the sand, which was at least a lighter color. She took a few deep sniffs, trying to find the source of the smell. A truck rumbled down the street outside and rattled the basement windows in their frames. The sand was up around her ankles now and she had to grip her slippers firmly with her toes, or else lose them when she lifted her feet to take a step. The sand should have dissipated the vibrations from the truck, but instead the shaking seemed to grow stronger. Elizabeth started to comment on this to Penrose, but as she opened her mouth to speak, the sand beneath her feet suddenly loosened and she sank up to her knees.
She struggled to free herself but this only caused her to sink deeper. Penrose bounded across the room and grabbed her wrists with an inhuman strength. The cold from his hands burned her skin and the force of his grasp ground her wrist bones together. She cried out with pain, but kept her head enough to kick at the sand as he pulled her free. Her slippers fell off her feet and were sucked down into the sand without her. She imagined them sinking down through the sand-filled shaft into the tunnel, with its train and the dead.
Penrose hauled her clear to the door, her feet barely touching the sand on the way. He deposited her on the solid floor of the hallway and slammed the door, leaning against it as if to stop anything from bursting out of the sand room . If he had had any need to breathe, she was certain he would have been hyperventilating like she was.
She leaned against the wall and held out her arms to inspect her wrists. A large white hand print was etched into the skin of each forearm. She tentatively rubbed her wrists to restore some of the circulation.
"Sorry about that," said Penrose, looking on with concern. He was perfectly translucent.
"It's nothing," she assured him as the color returned to her wrists. "How about you? You've nearly disappeared."
"Remember I said I could carry small objects for short distances? I can also manage large objects, very short distances. At a cost." Even his voice was faint.
"Oh. I'm sorry. Thank you. What was that anyway? Quicksand?" Her wrists warmed slowly and the cold from the brick floor chilled her slipperless feet. She turned her attention to her rescuer. She had to strain to see him at all in the dim light of the hallway.
"I'm not certain. Something is going on with the house, but I can't tell what it is. That might simply be the natural subsidence of the sand, but somehow I don't think so." A lost expression passed across his face so quickly that Elizabeth thought she had imagined it. He went on, "As far as the sand room goes, I never go down there, so I don't know if it's any different from how it usually is. Did you say something about the smell?"
"Yes, the rotten egg smell was much stronger in there and it was really warm too."
Penrose's eyes narrowed. He said, "How very strange."
"Elizabeth, the power is back on. What are you doing down there?" Miss Price called down the stairs.
"Go on," said Penrose.
"Are you sure? Is the house going to sink into the ground?"
"No time soon. And even if it does, there's hardly anything you can do about it, so you might as well have some breakfast. I'll take another look in the sand room." He smiled reassuringly.
Not particularly reassured, she left reluctantly, looking back as she padded down the hallway and back up the stairs. Before she entered the kitchen, she brushed sand from her feet and the hem of her robe. The bricks of the basement floor had sucked every calorie of heat from her feet, which were now so numb that the cracked linoleum of the kitchen floor felt warm beneath them.