Part 34: Cellar Duet

Previously in the Vines Inquiry— Frank, Harlow and Blevin navigated the Big House’s cellars after they’d been separated in the dark. Chased by starving cougars, the trio worked to make their ways back to the foyer without getting eaten. Blevin, distracted by an Inquiry archive and all the research it contained, didn’t notice a cougar ready to pounce. Harlow ran blindly before hitting some sort of iron rod and tumbling into the open air. And Frank, finding himself behind a thin wall near the foyer, he heard the Call starting.

Drunk, exhausted, scared and a little endorphin-high from all the running; Blevin ignored the itch behind his ear as he opened a copy of “…By Any Other: A Review of Nouns as Names.” (Inquiry Archives Entry 611.7-14. Table, Rose.)

The divot-eyed cougar jumped down right as Blevin finished reading the abstract. It raked one claw down the right side of his back, missing his spinal column by the width of the manuscript’s spine. 

Blevin was laid out, face down and screaming. He kicked wildly, crawling on the floor as blood soaked through to the front side of his clothing. The cougar batted at his shoes playfully with saliva dripping from its rotten jaws. He turned himself over, the pain stabbing at him fresh as he dragged the wounds across the gritty stone floor of the archive. 

“Go away!” Blevin commanded. “Shoo!” 

The divot-eyed cat did no such thing and leapt again, landing hard on Blevin’s calf without stabbing into him. The librarian looked around the room for something helpful while trying not to break eye(?) contact with the starving beast. It made sense in his head. He dragged himself farther along the floor where another cat joined the party, blocking him in.

Blevin was panicking, which he knew would lead to worse decisions. Stupid decisions. 

“That fits. You’re stupid. You’re always stupid.” 

Not his own words. Ones that had planted in his brain and been left to grow, fed unconsciously. He wished he knew if he was smart. If he was good enough for the Inquiry. Clever enough to save himself from a future that left no mark at the end of the world.

He wanted it all. The community, the family; to unlock secret knowledge and be counted on to get things off high shelves. To be counted on for that and so much more. 

This room alone could be the key to his future. All the information it contained on the metal shelves, packed to their limit. He scrambled, grasping for whatever his fingers could graze. Something behind him grazed smooth knuckles. He stretched and could feel the wound open, spilling more cold blood on the floor without any pain.

That can’t be good, he thought. Reaching further, he grasped one paw around the only thing in reach. A pile of things. With pointy edges! He pulled it close, the muscles on his back splitting like dry logs in a fire.

“Danggit!”

Blevin shook his hand, trying to free the would-be weapons from where they’d gotten stuck to his bloody hand. Feathers, gray ones! Not from a harpy, or even an albatross! If anything they looked like they might be regular down…

Why would someone have a pillow down here?

While he asked the question, and entertained a few enticing answers, he kept searching while the cougars circled him. One had started to lick the accumulating blood from little puddles that had formed in the uneven floor. Finally, he spotted salvation; an unsavory choice though it may be. 

“It’s a first step,” he told himself, plastering on a smile. “And technically, Mr. Cougar. I was right.”

The big cat leaned its head sideways, listening. 

“All of this knowledge is going to save me.”

The cougar licked its lips. 

With all the might of a 2001 Little League World Series Runner-up Pitcher, Blevin hurled the collected thoughts of Rose Table at the cat. The book bonked it right in the snout, sending the beast sprawling onto its back.

Blevin yanked at the shelving unit on his right and pulled it down on top of both cougars. He limped to his feet, the pain in his back frozen under a layer of panic and adrenaline, and started up the conveyor again. 

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Harlow was made of moonlight.  

Lost in space. The buoyant darkness swallowed her whole, but not greedily. The night wrapped itself around Harlow, protecting no secrets from her wild, searching eyes. She could see it all. Through the panes of glass. The cracked one letting in the snow. The other, below, hidden beneath damp soil and rotting leaves.

Light as a feather, she hit the board.

The smell smacked her half a breath before the water. It broke her fall like an egg against the rim of a glass bowl. Harlow crashed through the putrid surface on her side, ribs flinching at the impact. Later, if she got a later, she’d have to thank that instinct; the small curling that saved her eardrum from getting smashed in. She held her breath—more than just when you dive under. A larger, internal pause. A wincing to see if this was the end.

She was still here.

The topside of her pinky toe slapped against the swimming pool’s tiled bottom and Harlow grit her teeth, steaming bubbles between her lips as she clawed for the surface. Gasping, flailing; the oily water clung to her dress and tangled her legs. But she broke through.        

After another second’s panic, she choked in steadier breaths. Recoiling from the still water’s stench, Harlow gagged as more of reality broke into her weightless sanctuary. Without her command, her mind started to take stock.

Where was she? What was she in?

What else was here with her?  

She tread water and tried to get her bearings, all the while breathing through her mouth.

The walls had changed. Slippery with moisture of the heated pool, the big stone blocks of that first cellar had been replaced by a flush expanse of white tile. The steaming natatorium was at the mercy and whims of spotty-green mildew. The air was cloying and chemical.

Harlow looked up, towards that time in space, that respite and saw the moon; her only light source. Diffused through the unnatural storm clouds and refracted over the millions or more snowflakes that had settled onto Carlisle Island. She was still in the manor. In fact, she was smack dab in the middle.

Harlow was wading in a swimming pool that could rival Bramford’s, tucked sneakily in the Big House’s center. Above her, the conservatory’s glass cage loomed, with its cracked windows and wobbly, iron-rod infrastructure. She counted how many full panes of glass were missing from the conservatory windows. The number was low, but anything above zero could mean translucent knives in the water. Harlow slowed her arms as they kept her wading, fingers probing the pool for invisible sharp edges.

On the deck surrounding the fifty-meter pool there were lounge chairs with cushions long-since gone musty peeking up above the chemical steam. Levels above, the second- or third-story filigreed iron walkway that Harlow had fallen from. It bordered above the garden, matching the dimensions of the pool deck. The more time she spent in the Big House, the more accustomed Harlow was becoming to their ‘unique’ design aesthetic; but she had to draw a line somewhere. And even in her current (likely concussed) state of mind, she knew a pool-sized, rectangular hole punch sliced into the garden floor and the foundations beyond was just stupid.

Never mind the insurance on an underground pool surrounded by glass, she thought. Oh, baby, we really are hurting if you’re thinking about homeowner’s insurance at a time like this.

“Who the crap are these people?” she said.

‘Not swimmers’ was an appropriate answer as any.

The whole pool area looked untouched for more than one season. But that hadn’t stopped ambitious lichen and flora from sucking up any sun that came in through the conservatory glass. By the smell and humidity, the feral plants must have marinated in the slick chlorine moisture during the colder months.

It was a rotten oasis. A cankerous Eden, scabbed over and oozing because there was no one to use it. At least no one worthy, according to the Vineses.

Like God with Earth.

Harlow felt a pity for the deity for a second before her survival self (kindly) slapped her upside the head.

LoLo, we are in a rotting pool with an aching foot and starving cougars after us. Get it together.

She had to move. To pick a direction. Get to the pool’s edge and hope to anyone or thing that her foot wasn’t hurt so bad she couldn’t make it back to the foyer. Even the small kicks to keep herself afloat ached.

The fog rising off the pool shrouded everything farther than two feet in front of her. Harlow couldn’t see the far end of the room, if she was even looking at the far end.

She thought of Stella’s diary, the doors to nowhere. The map. She couldn’t remember it exactly after all these years, but she knew there was a staircase that led up to the conservatory. The drawing had looked like a tiered birdcage. As long as Stella had been mapping this pool.

“How many could they have?”

Harlow decided it was better for her psyche to not answer the question. All she had to do was find the stairs. From there, she hoped it would be a straighter shot than the maze of cellars the Vineses had apparently dug deep into their perch at the top of Carlisle.

Harlow doubted the moon that had blinded her. It was already fading as her eyes adjusted. All she could hear was her own breathing and the room’s night music. Whatever smaller critters—frogs, crickets—had nestled into the pool over the years barely let out a murmur. Their song didn’t offer her a guide, unless…

Harlow couldn’t dare close her eyes, the little good they did her, but she tried to focus in on one spot and open her ear drums. For an echo of a claw, the reverberation of a blistered tongue scraping against whiskers. Snowflakes fell next to her, tiny, delicate impacts. Then, a snarling.

“Bingo.” Harlow turned the other way and started moving. She nodded to herself, again and again. Yes. Another stroke. Wait! …No, it’s okay. Keep going. Another stroke.

Each moment a mile. Every pull of her arm through the water the most important decision of her life. And that was okay. If that’s what it took, then it was okay.

She kept moving away from the where she’d heard the cougar, wading past rotting plants and scum that had grown thick enough to add weight to her pulls. The house was tying itself to her ankles, tugging on her rattled bones, angry that she was moving freely through it. There was a cloying to the old place; a knotted sprawl of vines waiting to trip any unfortunate trespasser.

With tentative hands searching in front of her, Harlow drew back as if burned. She’d hit something solid. Tooth or claw?

She felt a yelp rising in her and dove underwater to snuff it out. Holding her lips tight so none of the foul got in her mouth, Harlow burst the scream in her body, letting it echo in each chamber. Maybe it could shake some of the manor’s anchors loose. She rose above the surface, just high enough to open her eyes without flooding them. The water lapped against the bridge of her nose, disturbed by her swimming and scream. She saw her culprit.

The pool’s edge.

She’d made it.

Harlow put both hands on the stone border, textured like pumice edge, and swayed herself out of the water. She readied herself with a deep exhale, leaned back and forward, bracing for her foot to hurt as it landed on the tile.

Two paws, a mottled blur of yellow-brown, loped past her as she hoisted out of the pool. Harlow froze, triceps tensed, halfway pushed up out of the water. The humidity of the room clung to her damp skin, pulling ever heavier on her dress as it noisily dripped. She couldn’t move, wouldn’t dare to. She could only stare with gawping eyes.

To her left, the cougar moseyed around the pool edge, searching for a hint of her. Could the cat smell her amidst the chlorine? How well could it see? It took a thirsty gulp of the pool water and Harlow’s stomach turned.

She slid onto the pool deck as quietly as possible, resting on her hip instead of her throbbing foot. Even the thought of putting weight on it sent a shooting pain up the back of her thigh. Higher out of the water, the fog let up a bit and Harlow could see more pool chairs and the walls. The door. A staircase!

It was on the far end of the deck. A tiny room with a washing machine and dryer—was that a margarita maker?—and a way up. The stairs were painted white to fade into the Swiss-spa-you-never-escape theme. Harlow couldn’t wait to leave grimy footprints on each step. When she got out of this, she couldn’t wait to give Rosalind Vines a foot up her… Well, somewhere feet don’t go in easy!

She took a cautious step towards the staircase, aware of each pinprick of noise that her movements let out. The squeeze of her dress, soggy and pulled too tight against her legs. The minuscule suction of her good foot and the panic of dragging her aching one along. She leaned on the lounge chairs as she moved, desperate to look back. Every inch of her, every firing synapse, wanted to glance behind her. To see how far she’d gone.

Harlow made good progress, got to the corner of the pool. Only half the short side to go. With no loungers on this end, she needed to make a leap to the wall. Limping still, she took a big step, hurrying, and fell with a wet slap. She grunted. Held her breath, wheezing in and out through her nose with her face pressed against the pool tile.

The cloying moisture squished against her cheek, licking her with the cold of Carlisle’s dark stone. She stayed like that, pretending to be paralyzed. Let the beast think she was dead. Her eyes whirled in her skull, searching for anything to defend herself. Across the deck, in the mist, something moved, snorting in the air. Wondering.

She took short, quick breaths; stole them like she was being watched.

Stay calm. Get it together. Move slow.

Even as the wet slap of paws came closer. Even as the snorts seemed more directed, more honed in. They came and faded in the span of her held breaths.

Harlow slid one arm forward, her hand inching along the slick tile. The coldness of it felt good against her palm that was already swelling with a bruise. She reached for a pool skimmer; the long, thin metal pole with a net square on the end to pick up leaves. The basket side was broken, but she would make do. She needed to stand, to run. What if she slipped? What if her foot betrayed her again?

This, she thought. Is thirty. Had Jenna Rink lied to her so?

She extended her arm as far as it would go, and then further. The tendons in her shoulder gave her what she wanted but already protested like children stuffed into Sunday clothes, ready to torment her for the next few days.

That’s fine. That’s fine. Just do this for me now.

“Focus,” she heard her father say.

“Breathe, LoLo,” said her mother.

The tip of her middle finger caught the edge of the skimmer. It was a grip, a hold. She got her pointer finger around it. Then her ring. Her other hand pushed her along. This was it. She’d pull once, yank herself, get the pole under her and she’d be out. Up the stairs. Harlow smiled, finally!, as she realized there was probably stuff in the laundry room she could throw behind her. She could block the way for whatever might chase.

She took a deep breath, and pulled.

The skimmer scratched towards her, loud on the tile and failing grout. It announced her presence like an out-of-tune trumpet.

The cougar immediately answered the summons.

The one behind her, of course, but another jogged out of the laundry nook. Its jaw hung open with a run of dry, red saliva staining its crooked mouth.