Jail's Bait: Time Served (Book 5)

As the video section of the Last Will and Testament of Joe Hill rolled on, Joe took a deep breath.  “And NOW, my last gift.” 

Regine blanched.  “Not another damn secret…!”  She began to reach for her empty glass and the nearest bottle of gin. 

“I’m tired. I don’t wanna hear anymore,” Rah-Rah complained.  “This damn thing is going on too long now…” 

“Well, he says it’s the last one; let’s listen and then we can finally get out of here,” Danny said, sitting down across from Ray.  “Patience, Robbie.” 

Meanwhile, Joe was taking a drink from a flask; he continued.  “I’ve kept so many secrets and lies that I feel like a true government agent, heh heh.  But here goes.” 

Everyone in the room looked around at each other, then back at the now splotched video. 

“I don’t think any of you have ever really walked the entire length and breadth of Crimson Crest,” Joe said, “not even you, dear Regine. The West Wing- that’s the part that was never wired to code for lights, electicity… there are a lot of forgotten things back there, untouched, unnoticed by everyone for a long time… So to Danny, I leave to you… a choice.” 

“Not me AGAIN,” Danny said, looking up at the screen with renewed disgust. 

“Since I’m now dead, and none of this matters anymore to me, I’ve got one more thing you might as well have… but to be honest, it will bring upon you a doom, no matter what you decide.  You don’t have to take it, of course.  Yet if you do not accept, your Doom will be sealed away forever, by midnight of the day this video is played.  You will never know what last grief I left for you to choke on… and yet I know that this small curiosity alone will snatch you from your sleep at night, always wondering what is was you allowed to be sealed away… without ever knowing what it was.  My lawyers have been advised on their duties, and they will act accordingly as per whatever choice you make. 

“Sooo,” Joe said then, rubbing his hands together, “if you’re detective enough to follow my obvious clues, heed the warning, and make your choice, this will bring you face to face with your final Doom.”  He paused.  “I’m actually hoping you make the choice I KNOW you’re going to make, not that I’ll ever really know… but each decision is designed to haunt you for the rest of your miserable, stinking life- however long that may be.”  And then he began to laugh, hysterically, then maniacally- freezing the blood in the group as they looked on at his spectacle of a face, twisted up in insane laughter… 

“HAPPY HUNTING!!!” Joe Hill cried out as this time, the videotape stopped all on its own; the will finished at last. 

*****

The lawyers began to put the components away.  The rest of the room sat silently for a moment, each looking around at everyone else. About five minutes later Rah-Rah was the first to break the silence.  “I can’t believe that after all that, he actually sends us on a treasure hunt…” 

“No, not all of us; just Danny,” Ray said then, standing up and stretching. 

Lamar got his feet as well, though his face was still pale.  “Well, he as much as told us where to start looking with that whole schpiel about the forgotten places in his house, but the West Wing isn’t safe.  It hasn’t been touched, lived in or fixed up for almost a hundred years.  There may be holes in the upper floors, underneath the carpeting.  I’m not letting my father go into that part of the house by himself.” 

Malik stood up.  “But baby, if we all go, the combined weight might make conditions in the unstable part of the house more treacherous- if you believe it’s all that fragile…” 

“That’s what I mean,” Lamar countered.  “What if Joe’s whole thing was to get Dad to go into a part of the house where he set up some trap?  He kept going on about this being Dad’s ‘Doom’… what if the Doom is a falling ceiling or a trick floor into a dungeon?” 

“In this house, that may well be,” Regine said with one eyebrow raised. 

“Well whatever happens, you aren’t going anywhere near it, and I don’t want to hear any more about it,” Malik declared, putting his arm around Lamar protectively. 

“Baby, my heart is going to be just as stressed sitting down here worried to death over my dad, than if I was actually there watching while he meets his Doom,” Lamar declared.  “And what the fuck is that anyway, Dad’s ‘Doom’...?” he added, waggling his fingers sarcastically.  “Why won’t Joe leave him alone already?” 

“Uncle Mar, why don’t you let me go with Uncle Danny,” Marquis appealed.  “This way someone’s got his back if there’s a trap door or something.” 

“And what makes you think I want you to go running off into a collapsible part of the house to help a madman deliver a Doom...?” Kap said with alarm, raising up from the couch and grabbing Marquis's arm. 

“Man, I gotta do this for Mar,” Marquis said, patting Kap on the arm, “and Uncle Dan is my godfather, after all.” 

“I’m going, too,” Rah-Rah said, getting to his feet before Lamar could respond.  “I got my son’s back, and you know I won’t let anything happen to your dad, Mar.  We should keep this small, so that we can be prepared for… whatever.” Then Rah-Rah met Malik’s eyes.  “You stay here and keep that one from getting up and following us,” he indicated to Lamar. 

“No prob, cousin,” Malik grinned at Rah-Rah. 

“Dad...!” Lamar said in loud protest. 

Danny smiled encouragingly at his son.  “I’ll be careful, son, I promise.” 

“I’m coming too,” said Ray from behind Danny’s back. 

Danny turned.  Ray was standing there, hand outstretched.  “Ray, I’m grateful for the gesture, but you don’t have to do this,” he said. 

Ray shook his head in disagreement.  “My brother’s attacking you, specifically.  Now I may be late to the party as an actual  member of this family, but according to Joe, this is my house too, now… so I’d better make sure you all survive in it, if nothing else.  Besides, I have a vested interest in making sure you get back out in one piece, understand...?” he added, leaning over to kiss Danny on the lips. 

Danny looked at his lover; he sighed.  “Thanks then.  Regine, are you sure there isn’t anything you can’t clue us in on?” he added, turning to the woman who looked like she’d suddenly poured herself another large glass of bourbon. 

Regine shook her head no while draining the glass down in one gulp.  “Not me; I was warned never to go into the unwired area; it really looks like a difference between the old times and modern.  He wouldn’t even allow the servants at least go clean in the West Wing, lay down traps for rats, dust, nothing.  But I’ll tell you this: if anyone would know about the secrets of Crimson Crest, it would have been ol’ Smithers… but maybe someone else on staff might have seen a few things.  Try asking Stella the kitchen maid what she might have seen.  She always seems to be everywhere else but in the kitchen where she should be these days…” 

“Okay guys, wait for us here,” Danny said to the rest of the room; “we’ll be back soon.” 

Marquis leaned over and smiled at Kap.  “Don’t worry, I’ve got my father, my godfather, and my brand-new great-uncle with me.  What could happen...?” 

Kap frowned slightly, yet did not reply. 

The four men headed for the door, and went into the hallway, Rah-Rah being the last to leave.  Turning back to the room, he grinned.  “We’ll be right back…” and then he was gone. 

“I really wish he hadn’t just said that,” Malik said, raising one hand to his neck.  “My neckhairs feel creepy.” 

“I’m about ready to have the heebie-jeebies myself,” Regine added; “but I’m sure they’ll be okay.  Joe wouldn’t booby-trap this house, it means too much to him.” 

“Well, I’ll believe that when I see all four men return with whatever this supposed ‘Doom’ is…” Lamar added with foreboding. 

*****

The group set off towards the Great Hall.  “Where do we start,” Ray asked aloud when they reached the main foyer; “where’s this West Wing begin...?” 

“I’ve only ever been upstairs to the main suite, and the sunroom where I played chess with Smithers,” Marquis said, looking about with a distant frown.  “This place never really gave me the idea to go wandering off, you know.” 

“I know what you mean,” Danny remarked; “some parts of this house make you if you go too far into it, if you’d ever find your way back…” 

“You mean, like us right now, preparing to go deep into this house to search a section which was abandoned about 1000 years ago,” Rah-Rah said, suppressing a shudder. 

“This house stretches due north and south, with wings pointing east to west,” Danny said then, somewhat lost in thought.  “You won’t get to them from down here, though.  Those East and West Wings properly start up on the second floor, towards the center of the manor.” 

They stared at the rising stairwell, which stretched up into the gloom.  “How does Ms. Jean sleep here alone,” Rah-Rah frowned; “this is a creepy freakin house.” 

“She’s not alone, technically,” Danny remarked absently; “there’s a house full of staff.” 

“Let’s do it,” Ray said, taking hold of Danny’s hand. 

They moved up the stairs then, Danny and Ray side by side, then Marquis, followed by Rah-Rah.  Once they reached the 2nd floor landing, Danny turned left and walked down the quiet hallway lined with ivy-covered marble busts and massive tapestries. 

After a moment they came upon a sort of alcove which led directly left again.  Without discussing it, they had unanimously decided to be very quiet.  Danny gave a silent thumbs up, and they turned down this hall, passing closed doors and simple statues of stone.  They walked to the other side, which opened up into a large intersection, showing four literal wings to go from this point; due north, due south, due east and due west. What was odd that for three of the sections leading off, they looked just as kept up as everwhere else in the mansion.  One section, however, was completely covered in dust and cobwebs, from all the way in the distgance to stop abruptly at the intersecting corridor. 

“Was Joe really kidding,” Danny whispered incredulously.  “Why ask the staff to clean right up to the line...?  That whole hallway is filled with dust and spiderwebs.” 

“But don’t you see...?” Marquis replied in a low tone, walking over to the very edge of the wing’s entrance and peering down the hall.  “Does dust really accumulate THAT much over a century?  It looks like a set of an old B horror movie- overdone.  Don’t you think, Dad?” 

Rah-Rah came up to his son and stared down the dark passage.  “It does seem like Vincent Price might come from right around that creepy corner…” 

“Who...?” Marquis asked with a frown. 

“Whatever,” Rah-Rah said then.  “You see what I mean, Danny?” 

Danny looked down the hall with his detective’s eyes.  “I’ll bet you that this is another one of the obvious clues that Joe mentioned,” he said.  “‘Which way should we go’, we would ask ourselves when we got this far… and here’s our answer,” he said, pointing into the dark, rotting interior. 

“The West Wing,” Ray said with a shudder. 

Rah-Rah sighed.  “Follow the ‘dirty-brick road’,” he muttered wryly.  “Okay,” he said with some authority, “I’ll go first; son, you bring up the rear.  Danny, Ray, stay behind me- if anything should happen or I accidentally set off a trap, Marquis would have the best chance to run for help.  Any questions?” 

No one had any, so Rah-Rah nodded, took a deep breath and went into the West Wing, followed by Ray, Danny, and Marquis. 

It was as if they stepped into another world, filled with cobwebs and dust.  A sort of silence filled the corridor as filthy, moth-eaten drapes hung in tatters amongst the floor-length windows they passed; the windows were covered over with a film of grime and weather residue to the point that you couldn’t see out of them.  The grime-filtered light cast the corridor into near-night shadow.  There were no sounds of their passing, for the level of dust on the worn carpeted floor muffled all movements. 

As they moved along, Rah-Rah spied something on the floor.  “We aint the only ones to come down this hallway,” he remarked. 

The travelers stopped and looked downward.  Just before them lay a small set of footprints and an unbroken twin line seemingly headed in the same direction.  Danny could also make out a larger set of footprints, yet these seemed to be not as recent as neither the smaller set nor the twin lines. 

“What do you think,” Ray asked Danny. 

“The smaller set of footprints could belong to one of the staff,” Danny observed; “the older set of larger prints… maybe Joe; after all, he had to come down this way to set up my Doom, remember,” he added dryly. 

“And the lines...?” Marquis asked his godfather. 

“Possibly a tea-tray, or a small cart- something to carry small items on.  One of the servants must have pushed a tray down here, carrying something… on Joe’s orders...?” Danny mused.  “We need to follow these tracks- another obvicous clue, of course.” 

“Well, we’ll find out at the other end,” Rah-Rah said; “lets move on.” 

The others fell into step behind Rah-Rah as he began to move down the long, dark, dilapidated corridor.  There were just as much furnishings down here as there were back in the main part of the manor- tapestries, mirrors, chandeliers, and portraits lined the walls.  Yet they seemed to be of an age older than the rest of Crimson Crest; the light furnishings were fixed with half-used candles in each of the sconces, in lieu of lightbulbs; the furniture seemed to be more of an antique French design then the Roman-colonial décor favored everwhere else… small posture-seats, elaborately designed door handles… and all of it covered in dust and cobwebs.  “What an amazing piece of antique history here, just going to pieces,” Danny shook his head sadly as they walked on.  “Imagine the millions that could have been made if they had kep these art pieces and chairs at perfect condition...?” 

“Well, look at the people we’re talking about,” Marquis said wisely; “they were so filthy rich that they could squander millions without a second’s thought of it.  They didn’t care about the moral consequences.” 

“Well, son, you grew up just like that, filthy rich… what makes you any different from our ancestors?” He grinned back at Marquis. 

“I know you’re teasing me, Dad,” Marquis replied; “but I’ll answer you anyway.  From what I know now, it didn’t look like J. Mayson Hill really cared about his son; but I grew up knowing that you loved me… whether you were there or not. Malik and Uncle Mar made sure I remembered that you loved me first, and best.  So in a way, I was already rich before I got any of the money.” 

Rah-Rah said nothing for a moment then, still ooking forward into the dark.  “Are you trying to make me cry...?” Rah-Rah growled in a husky voice. 

Danny and Ray looked back at Marquis, who winked at them silently.  Out loud he asked, “Dad, are we bearing to the right?” 

Just before them the wall ahead seemed to split off into two different corridors, yet the footprints and wheel lines bore to the right. 

Rah-Rah cleared his throat- twice- and then looked ahead.  “Looks like it, son,” he said then- “stay behind me, yall.”  And Rah-Rah crept forward as the group followed him.  

Down the hall they crept, their shoes getting covered in dust as they went along.  Suddenly Rah-Rah jumped back with a loud yelp; startled, Ray, Danny and Marquis rushed forward 

“Dad, what’s wrong,” Marquis cried out in alarm- “did you step into a trap?  Where does it hurt?” 

“Eeeeuuggghh,” Rah-Rah managed, pointing a trembling finger at a spot ahead. 

Everyone turned just in time to catch a full-grown rat dart across the dusty floorway and disappear behind a large floor-length tapestry on the left side of the hall. 

They turned back to Rah-Rah in surprise.  “A rat...?” Marquis said incredulously to Rah-Rah.  “You scared me half to death over a RAT???” 

“Hey MAN, I don’t like them things,” Rah-Rah defended himself, as he righted himself and attempted a dignified stance.  “Most people have a …thing, you know- something they freak out over… I admit that my thing is seeing a rat up close and personal, okay?  Sue me.” 

“Do that again and I’m taking your voting shares back,” Marquis grumbled as he went back to the back of the group. 

“Can you go on,” Danny asked Rah-Rah, obviously attempting to hold back a grin. 

“Yessir,” Rah-Rah said finally catching his breath; after glancing surrepticiously at the innocent-looking tapestry to his left, he crept onward, followed by the group.  Yet it turned out that they had reached their destination, for only three steps past the tapestry Rah-Rah called a halt. 

“Not another rat, Dad...?” Marquis asked. 

“Not this time, son,” Rah-Rah replied, waving them all forward.  The footprints and wheelines all made a sudden right and disappeared behind the door in their immediate presence- a large, oaken door to which a sheet a paper was tacked just above a doorbell..  They could all see that the paper had no dust on it at all, and it read as follows: 

WARNING:

Welcome to the Crimson’s Gloom,

Press the Bell, Embrace your Doom;

Or wonder, ‘til it drives you mad,

What would have followed if you had.

“Welcome to my Doom, everyone,” Danny said with a trace of sarcasm. 

“I thought this place wasn’t wired,” Rah-Rah said with a frown.  “How can he use an electric doorbell if it was never wired up?” 

“It could be hooked up to a battery, Rah-Rah,” Ray said then, examining the buzzer.  “When I was on the street, we learned to wire up batteries for electricity sometimes.”  He turned to Danny, who was staring at the door with a worried look on his face.  “Listen baby, I know you.  Those words mean nothing, it’s not a spell; you are not going to go crazy if you don’t press that bell.” 

Danny shook his head.  “I think I will go crazy.  I’m afraid that Joe knew me better than I expected.  If I walk away right now, I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering what the hell it is that Joe left for me behind this door.  And especially since whatever it is will be sealed away in that room forevermore…” 

Rah-Rah put one hand on Danny’s shoulder. “Listen, it’s not that deep man; I can’t understand why you let Uncle Joe play you like this...!” 

“I’m with Uncle Danny on this one, Dad,” Marquis objected. 

“What the hell for?” Rah-Rah asked his son. 

“Are you telling me that you would walk away from a family secret right behind that door, a revelation that promises to affect you so badly, that you would be haunted by it forever...?   Are you telling me that you can do that, just walk away right now...?”  Marquis asked pointedly. 

Rah-Rah stared at his son, then sighed.  “Ahhhh… go on and press the damn bell,” he grumbled. 

Ray came over to Danny, looking at him intently.  “Are you ready...?  No turning back?” he asked. 

Danny’s eyes were resolute.  “No turning back.”   And he reached out to press the doorbell. 

*****

The ring chimed with a sinister tinkle, then stopped.  After what seemed like a full three seconds, the sound of a metallic click came from inside the door, and then came a electronic sort of whirring… the door latch unlocked… and then silence. 

Danny looked at the others, who looked back at him. “I’ll go in first,” Rah-Rah said then, stepping forward. 

“No way,” Danny said, stepping between Rah-Rah and the door.  “This is mine.  My Doom, come what may.”  He held up a hand to silence any other protests.  “I’ll be fine.”  And he turned to grasp the handle, opened the door and stepped inside…. 

There was a fair-sized room with a television on a stand, heavy drapes on the windows, and candles burning in the wall sconces.  Dustry traces of the footprints and the wheel lines led into the room over to the other end.  A large bucket sat next a standard-size cot, which is where Danny’s gaze fell first.  What he saw instantly froze him in place, his eyes wide in a silent shock. 

The others gathered around him and looked into the room… “Oh my God,” Marquis said, wide-eyed. 

“Jesus,” Ray said with a gasp- “it CAN’T be…!” 

Rah-Rah couldn’t speak.  His hand grabbed the doorframe, as if this was the only thing that was holding him up.  “No…. no,” he finally managed in a whisper. 

*****

Just across from the doorway, dressed in a tattered tank-top and faded pajama pants, barefoot, half-sitting on a threadbare cot, one arm chained to a wooden spoke in the wall nearest the bed, Ray stared back at the group in the doorway- the look on his stubbled face just as startled. 

But Danny realized through his shock that Ray, who was clean-shaven, was standing right behind him, not chained to a wall in a hidden section of an ancient mansion… and then the truth hit him, like it already hit everyone else standing behind him, like the force of a bullet- 

“…Trey...?”