XXVIII

If Caff were in a more charitable mood he would probably not be cursing every hamfisted, shortsighted fool to ever take up the carpentry profession. He would not have any issue at all with admitting that no one, no matter the skill or material used could stave off decades of misuse and lack of maintenance. Accounting for whatever Artemus Talmadge had done would take a miracle worker. He could admit that. If he were in a more charitable mood. It sadly seemed he had left the ability elsewhere, in the burn-down ruin of his house or at the foot of Ruby Pendleton's lonely little grave.

He wished a thousand misfortunes on whoever had built these stairs. They were without a doubt the most rickety, unstable things he'd ever clapped eyes on. They were built in a spiraling manner, wrapping up around a pillar to a trapdoor set in the ceiling. There was a delicate, finely carved rail on the outside of the steps. The whole thing looked ready, eager to collapse at the weight of a single feather. The pillar was splintered, with crevasses and canyons exposing where larger chunks had fallen off. The steps were thin and held to the pillar by rusted metal bands that were in turn held by loose screws. He could sneeze on the railing and it would happily shatter into thousands of pieces. Oh, how he hated these stairs.

It was a novel experience. He wondered if he'd gone crazy, hating a set of crappy stairs. Hate them he did, though. Too much depended on their staying upright; Jennie's life, his own, the promise to come back alive. There was that blind thing nearby, that swaying, bobbing mass of oozing shade in the shape of a melting candle. It hunted by noise. Any noise, and it would come running. He hated that. Jennie put her foot on the first step and bore down, putting half her weight on it. It flexed down into a hollow curve, but held. She looked to him, brows raised. He shrugged back. Why she had insisted on going first, he couldn't say. Far as he could tell there wasn't much difference in weight between them. Maybe it was his many, many, many hurts and aches. That someone fresh and in scrapping shape should be first up, just in case. It made sense. He hated that, too.

Maybe it was that he had his back to the hallway. That could be why his mood was so foul. Granted, he'd not exactly been pleased as punch before, but perhaps it was just the final straw. After Ruby and everything else it could be that his cup had just filled up and over. No space left for charitable thought or intent. He hoped Talmadge came without fuss. He wanted Talmadge to put up a fight. He wanted to shoot down the wretched, murderous master of this miserable House.

One chance. That was all Artemus Talmadge would get. Caff did not any longer have the patience for more. He watched Jennie's upward climb in a wary silence, ready to act should something happen and knowing there was nothing to be done. She was about halfway when a step broke, widthways, beneath her. He watched the thin crack rip its way from where the step touched the pillar to its end. It wasn't really a loud sound, but it rang in his ears like gunfire. They both froze. Jennie went wide-eyed and pale, eyes locked on the hall they'd crept down. His heart climbed up into his throat and set to hammering. He did not dare turn, lest his shift caused the boards beneath his feet to creak or groan.

He thought on what he could do, should the candle hove into view. Earlier, out of certainty he could not move quietly while wearing them, he had taken off his boots. He still had them in hand. They could serve as distraction, as his lever-actioned rifle had before. If the candle came down the hall and he threw a boot the other way, stood to reason it would turn and pursue this newest noise. Unless it was smart enough to know it was being tricked. Probably wasn't. It had lost them before, after all. Torn its way into that bedroom they'd climbed into and, after they'd gone quiet, lost them both. What had worked once might do so again.

Might. He was not about to bet Jennie's life on that. Not more than he already had. A long, drawn-out thirty seconds passed by without incident. It was looking like the candle had either not heard or was not coming. Maybe, just maybe, it had gone. Followed Talmadge's bidding and lurched off to be a horrible parody of life somewhere else. He relaxed a bit. As much as he could, given the place and time. Jennie looked down to him, still wide-eyed, and whispered, “Is it gone?” He shrugged. Not about to go looking. Her gaze flickered between the hall and him a few times before she nodded and kept climbing.

Whether by grace, miracle, or competence in carpentry, she reached the trapdoor without further issue. It was maybe twice as wide as Caff at the shoulder, and square. There was neither lock nor latch, just hinges on one side. She reached up and pushed at it, then pushed harder when nothing moved. Stuck, or locked on the other side. He looked over his shoulder at the way they'd come. When he looked back it was to lock eyes with her, question writ clear. It took him a moment to nod. More a jerk of his chin than anything else. She crowded up against the trapdoor, bracing hands and shoulders against it. Then she heaved.

What followed was a long, loud grind of rusted metal against itself as the trapdoor was opened. It swung upward and out of sight, landing with a dull thump on the floor of the House's third story. In the moment of stifling quiet that followed, an icy dread and certainty settled into Caff's gut. Jennie froze in place, but it was already done. No need to ask this time, both of them heard it. Skipping from whisper to murmur to slithering roar, the candle came. Jennie shouted, “Caff!” and took up her twelve-gauge in a pointless gesture. He turned to look back, just in time to see the candle crash into and through the wall, flattening out and filling the crater it had just made. It dripped and slid, falling like rain to the floor before taking a different shape; that of a small, long mound that rushed towards him.

He threw his boots and turned on his heel to run. There was no point in waiting to see if it would work. It would not, and the delay would probably cost his life. “Go!” he shouted, the command coming raw and tearing from having to be heard over the rising roar of the candle's chase. It was more like a howl now, which he found appropriate for something hunting him. Ahead of him and above, Jennie scrambled up through the trapdoor. That, at least, was good. It was then that his many injuries chose to remind him of their existence. A nasty, twisting heat burned from thigh down to ankle. He cried out and stumbled, more falling than running for a few steps before righting himself in time to collide with the stairs' central pillar. That little twinge had slowed him. So much that he was only feet ahead of the candle as he started up the stairs.

Mere feet, he knew, was not enough. He clenched his jaw in anticipation of whatever form of pain it would deliver to him. The first attack came fast and high, whistling through the space he had just occupied at shoulder height to punch a hole as big around as a clenched fist into the wooden pillar that held up the stairs. He was three steps up and climbing fast. The whole thing shook from impact and he stumbled a little. He skipped the step Jennie had broken with a jump, splintering the one he'd pushed off from. It wasn't a long distance. He still managed to land off balance, socked feet sliding a little. It was enough that, when the pillar shook again, he started to fall. First he hit the delicately carved, fragile-looking rail that hemmed the stairs in. He went right through it. So close to the trapdoor and the promise of safety beyond, he fell.

Oddly, the first thing he felt was that strange swooping thrill that accompanied hanging in the empty air. What followed was a distant regret that he would not be able to keep his promise to Claudia after all, for he was clearly about to die. Not from the fall, but from the candle. It had seen or sensed him lose his balance and start to tumble, for it was shifting from its assault on the stairs to pile beneath where he would land. To be wholly enveloped in it would mean death. There was no proof, but he was certain.

He would not close his eyes. It would not be said of him that he was too much a coward to face his end head-on. He watched the pile of oily, oozing shade build and build in anticipation. Soon he would strike it, it would subsume him, and that would be that.

Only none of that happened. What did instead was that he came to a sudden and very painful halt, teetering just on the edge of a single wooden step. A grip like an iron manacle had clasped him around the wrist and dug in. Blunt fingernails dug into and broke his skin. The jerk traveled up his arm and found an echo in the sealed wound in his shoulder. He cried out, the shift of momentum turning him to see Jennie, half-leaned out of the trapdoor, braced against the lip of the frame, and holding desperately onto him. There was fear and panic on her features, buried beneath a layer of steely will. She pulled him in, washing another wave of echoed pain across him.

The candle changed its form behind him. He heard the shifting slide of silks overtake, just for a moment, the screeching howl it somehow made. Whatever new shape it took was no doubt meant to snatch him from Jennie's grip, back down to its loving embrace. That would not be happening. Much to the candle's disappointment, he was sure. He locked eyes with her for a moment. Then she pulled him back from the brink.

- - -

From there it was an awkward crawl up through the trapdoor. They had damn near crashed their heads together, and she was more hauling him than helping, but in the end he was up and out. Together they went for the door, heaving to slam it closed. It was heavier than it looked. Its rusted hinges were not helping either. He looked down at the stairs he'd just climbed, watching them collapse in ever-larger pieces. He saw the candle's new form; a curling, snake-like thing with a half-dozen tendrils centered around a hole in one end. That end lifted and shot forward, fast. Got close enough to see inside that hole, see the smoky nothing waiting to envelop him. He yanked downward on that stubborn door as hard as he could. At the same time Jennie went round to the side and threw her weight into it.

The trapdoor slammed home with force, rattling the floor they knelt upon. Then it was his turn to seize Jennie and haul her away, mindful of the last time a closed door had stood between them and the candle. They scooted backwards away, eyes locked on, and waited. Breaths came hard and fast, filling the still air with that sound. It took him a moment to realize, but; it was that sound, and no other. Quiet fell. The candle did not follow them up. With a final, heaving breath Caff got himself under control. He felt Jennie relaxing beside him as the seconds went by.

This marked the third time today she had saved his life. He could argue that the swarm of corpses outside did not count due to it being more of a mutual thing, but keeping count like that didn't set right. There was no competing. Not on his part, anyway, and he wager good money there was none on hers. “Thank you,” he said to her, surprising himself with the hoarse rasp it came out as.

“Yeah,” she answered after a moment, “sure.”

He checked the trapdoor once more to reassure himself that nothing was about to come breaking through. After it once more did not he felt okay in taking stock of this newest, freshest layer of hell.

It was much smaller than the first two, best he could tell. Maybe a third of the size. What dim light there was came from three large holes in the roof, matched by three holes in the floor directly beneath. He wagered he'd see the front hall if he looked down. Felt like a lifetime since they'd stood there and watched the shade eat those stairs. Two of the room's corners were brick. Took him a moment to realize they were chimneys. Probably two more on the other side of the room, for all that he couldn't see them.

Only walls he could see were of a small room in the middle. There was one door, under which a thin slice of amber light came. The walls and the door were in good shape. Strangely so, given the rest of the House's condition. “Reckon he's there,” Caff said, pointing.

“Probably,” Jennie agreed. The way she said it had him looking at her. She was giving him a look. He didn't know what to make of it. “You gonna shoot him?” she asked. Now he did.

Caff grunted. He wanted to. Pretty badly now, given everything. He could dress it up, justify it to himself and everyone else, but that was what it came down to. He wanted Artemus Talmadge dead. He wanted revenge. “I...I don't know,” he answered, and it was the truth. He would not lie to her. “I want to,” he told her, “but...”

She looked at him for a long moment, searching for something in his eyes. What, he didn't know. He hoped she found it. He'd not hide anything either. Eventually she looked away and said nothing. That seemed to be that. In front of them, and quite by itself, the door to that little room opened. Lined by the glow of a hearth was an old man, tall and strong for his age. Though Caff had never once laid eyes on him, this was without a doubt Artemus Talmadge.