7
Griffin looked around the foyer of Ellison’s mansion, a deep frown on his face. Each additional visit to the estate did nothing to improve his sense of disgust at the overwhelming wealth. From the look on Avalon’s face, she felt the same.
“Where should we start?” she asked.
“Everywhere we didn’t look the last time we were here.”
Griffin headed for the main staircase, a huge thing with banisters that looked like they held more coats of wax than a used car lot. The steps were covered by thick red Persian carpeting that was fitted to the tapering width of the ascending case.
“At least there’s no suit of armor on the landing to make the stereotype complete,” Griffin said as he walked. Avalon snickered. She wore a small backpack, and Griffin noted the tip of a silver cylinder sticking out the top of it.
She took the javelin
, he thought.
Interesting choice of personal weapon
. He considered asking her why she’d taken it, but he couldn’t figure out a way to broach the subject without sounding disapproving. She was carrying a lot of guilt around, after her withdrawal. He didn’t want to make it worse. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. He was glad she was armed with something, despite the emptiness of Ellison’s home. Then he realized—the baton might not extend for her. It had worked only for him and not for Frost or Dodge. Maybe she had brought it along for him as a backup weapon or something.
“Let’s start at the top and work our way—”
“Wait, Dad.” Avalon had stopped on the stairs and had a look on her face like she was working out a puzzle. Her nose scrunched up and her eyes squinted like they always did when she was thinking really hard or working out a math problem in her head.
“What is it?”
“We’re either looking for him or information on how he did this—whatever this is,” she swept her arm around in an arc, but he understood she meant the shifts and the world around them, beyond the walls of the mansion. “If he’s hiding something, it won’t be in the bedrooms upstairs. It’ll be where people won’t think to look. So, not in his study or library or whatever passes for it in this huge place, and not in his master bedroom. Maybe…”
She glanced over the balcony at the wood paneled wall that covered the space under the stairs. Then she pointed. Griffin stepped to her side of the staircase and looked down. A panel extended just a quarter of an inch from the rest of the woodwork.
“…we should start in the basement or wine cellar or whatever.”
Griffin smiled at her. “Good thinking, Sherlock.”
She shrugged. “I’m an ex-junkie. We’re good at hiding stuff.”
“This mean I need to search our basement?” Griffin asked as they started to descend the main stairs.
“Only if you want to find my stash of Playgirl magazines from high school.”
“And… You have officially killed my last shred of innocence.”
Avalon laughed as they rounded the massive cherry-wood newel and walked to the loose panel. Griffin gripped it and tugged. A door opened silently, revealing a carpeted staircase winding down under the main stairs. He reached inside and flipped on a light switch. It was dark in the stairwell, but now that he thought of it, it was dim in most of the house.
He turned from the stairwell and strode across the foyer to a tall rectangular curtained window, and yanked the drapes aside.
It was pitch black outside.
“Did we shift again?” Avalon asked him, stepping up next to him.
“We would have heard the church bell. And no one radioed to find out where we are.” He looked down at the two-way on his belt, then pulled it off, about to make a call.
Just then, the radio crackled to life in his hand, and he almost dropped it in surprise.
“Griffin, do you copy? Over.”
Frost’s voice. In the background, the faint howling and shrieking of the screams.
She must be outside.
Ellison’s thick walls blocked out the horrid din.
“Here,” he replied. “What’s up? You seeing the darkness? Over.”
“Yeah, think it’s just whatever passes for nightfall in this world. But it happened fast,” she started, sounding slightly worried. “Pastor and I had a—well, not necessarily a run-in, but let’s say a sighting—of S.G. Over.”
Griffin stared at the radio in his hand, unable to process what he’d just heard.
“Griff, did you copy that last? Over.” Frost asked, the sound of her cruiser’s door slamming closed finally muffling the background screams carried over the radio.
“Copy,” Griffin said. “S.G. Are you both okay? Over.”
“We’re good. Heading back to town. No sign of Ellison or Turkette. How about at your end? Over.” she asked.
“Still checking out the place. Be careful, Helena. Over.”
“And you. Out.”
They had used intentionally vague language about their locations and who she had seen, in case someone else in town was helping Turkette and Ellison.
Griffin lapsed into silence for a moment.
“Dad?” Avalon asked eventually. “Who’s S.G.?”
Griffin stiffened, debated telling her, and then decided that they weren’t in a TV show where everyone kept silly secrets. He turned to her and pointed to her backpack. “The former owner of your baton-javelin thingie. Frost called him ‘Savage Griffin.’”
“No way! I thought he was all burnt up. She said the lizards got his arm and she took his camouflage…”
“Looks like he hitched a ride.” Griffin walked back to the basement stairs.
“Creepy,” Avalon said. “So he was here all last week, when we thought we were safe…” Avalon pulled her backpack off and looked inside the pack at the collapsed telescoping javelin inside. “You don’t think he’s after me to get his property back, do you?”
Griffin shook his head. “She said he had dozens of them. I doubt it. If he’s after anyone in particular, it would be her, for revenge. Or me, for… Hell, I don’t know. Maybe he’s just taking his best shot at surviving. Either way, he’s an unknown and a danger. I haven’t seen the guy, but the way she described him, I doubt you’d mix the two of us up. Just in case though, we should have a secret phrase that only the two of use would know, so you’ll know I’m the real me, if we ever get into a doppelganger situation.”
“If the guy’s an alternate version of you, then any phrase you come up with, is one he might come up with, too,” Avalon said, reslinging her backpack, as they came to the bottom of the stairs. Ahead of her was a long, clean hallway that ran straight for a few feet and ended at an elevator. To the right was a door.
“You’ll have to think of the pass phrase then.”
“Sam Jacobs is a vaginal dickface.”
Griffin laughed. Hard. “
What? Who?
”
“That’s the secret phrase,” Ava said as though it was obvious. “He was a guy I dated in California.”
Griffin shook his head. “I’m
not
saying that.”
“Sorry, dad. Like it or not, that’s the phrase.”
“Seriously, you are murdering my inner child, girl.” Griffin, still shaking his head, opened the door and reached in for a light switch. The room was a vast rectangular space with an unfinished concrete floor. He could see a massive electrical station with networking modems and wires, as well as a gigantic gray fuse box. The other end of the room had an old oil tank for a furnace, and several hot-water boilers.
He stepped out of the basement and closed the door, turning his attention back to the elevator. It had a panel to the side of it with arrow buttons for both up and down.
Griffin looked at Avalon and then pushed the down button.
“We go down.”
The doors opened to a typical elevator, except that the plush carpeting of the hallway extended into the elevator as well.
They boarded and looked at the options. B for basement, was where they were. Above that on the control panel were simple 1, 2 and 3 buttons, presumably for ground floor and the two upper floors of the mansion. Below the B button was an extra space, as if a floor had been left without a button, and finally, there was one more button labeled T.
“T?” Avalon asked, as Griffin reached out for the button.
“Hopefully it doesn’t stand for ‘torture chamber,’” Griffin said, as the elevator lurched downward, rapidly picking up speed.
Griffin’s ears popped as the elevator’s speed decreased and they came to a slow halt. He looked at Avalon.
“Not just a sub-basement, then,” she smiled.
The elevator dinged, and Griffin pulled out his M9, ready for action. The doors parted.
The opening revealed a long, sloping, carpeted hallway, with no doors on either side. Recessed lighting above gave the utilitarian corridor a more upscale feel, but as far as Griffin could see, the corridor went on forever.
“Up for a walk?” Griffin asked, scratching his left arm, which had just developed an itch.
Avalon took a deep breath and let it out. “Let’s do it.”
As they walked down the relatively straight hallway, Griffin could feel more pressure changes in his ears. Behind them, he noticed the lights back by the elevator went out, but looking forward again, he saw that those lights further in the distance came on. He searched the ceiling and the walls and saw some cleverly concealed motion sensors, that must have been activating lights as they walked.
After about twenty
minutes, Griffin guessed they had walked a mile or so, underground. As far as he could see, the corridor continued on for another mile or more.
“This thing just doesn’t end does it?” Avalon said, putting her long brown hair back in a ponytail. She was slightly out of breath, and her skin was still far paler than it should have been. Griffin assumed her color would come back once she had been off the drugs long enough.
“Have you been keeping track of our direction?” Griffin asked her.
Avalon just looked at him, the question in her eyes, waiting for him to finish his thought.
“We went under the lake. We’re heading into the center of town. Under it, really. Way under.”
“This is nuts. Where do you think we’ll come out?”
Griffin looked at a compass feature on his wristwatch. “Should take us right under the church. Considering how the bell has been acting during the shifts, that’s where I’d guess this hall stops.”
Fifteen minutes later they came to another elevator, identical to the one two miles behind them. The brass plate had only one call button. Up.
Avalon pushed the button, and Griffin, who had re-holstered the pistol on their long walk, withdrew it again.
The doors opened to a normal elevator again, this time with only three buttons. T for their level, which Griffin guessed stood for
Tunnel
. The next floor up was B, and the top floor was G.
He selected B, and the doors shut. The elevator shot upward, and the ride felt close to as long up as the one at the other end of town had felt going down.
“I’m going to be disappointed if this doesn’t come out under a volcano, or something equally Bondian,” Avalon quipped.
“Hope for Moneypenny, but be prepared for piranha,” Griffin said, as the car slowed to a halt and dinged.