Heath continued to arch his back and moan. “Son of a bitch!” he hissed.
And I think that was what snapped my attention away from my own fears—hearing Heath in pain got me to realize that he was actually seriously hurt. Trembling, I inched my way down the stairs to him. He was curled over onto his side, clutching the stair. His flashlight lay next to him and I could see that several of the loose spikes we’d put into his backpack had pierced the canvas and had actually punctured his skin.
“Ohmigod!” I said, hurrying to undo the buckles and get the backpack off him.
“Don’t!” he cried, his eyes tightly closed and his face pale. “Wait until it leaves!”
I eyed the phantom nervously. It had moved even farther away from us, but it was pacing again like a caged animal, hissing and growling and spitting in our direction. I wanted to cower in fear and shrink away, but a voice came into my head, loud and clear.
Help him, M. J. Help my grandson to safety.
Sam’s presence in my mind gave me courage. As carefully as I could, I eased the zipper on Heath’s backpack open and took out a handful of spikes. “Jesus!” he gasped when I rattled them.
“Hold on, honey,” I whispered urgently. “I need these to get us out of here.”
As I removed the spikes, I held them over my head and stood up. The phantom stopped pacing and considered me before it darted forward several feet. I threw several of the spikes right at it and it howled and whirled away. “Stay back!” I shouted. “Stay away from us, you polluted piece of ectoplasm, or I’ll dump the entire backpack of spikes on you!”
The phantom moved beyond the spikes I’d thrown, which gave us a little more room to maneuver. “We have to get you out of here!” I told Heath, coming back to crouch at his side.
His jaw was clenched and he was in so much pain he was making a hissing sound through his teeth. “It’s blocking the way out!” he groaned, looking just beyond the phantom.
I turned my head with dread, and realized the phantom had gone back to pacing again, right in front of the only way out. “Where’s the blueprint?” I asked quickly.
Heath sucked in a breath and moved his hand to his back pocket with a small grunt of pain. I stopped his hand and moved my own into his pocket. With great care I removed the map, unfolded it, and held it under the beam of the flashlight. “There!” I said, pointing to the back of the castle where we’d seen the phantom pacing in front of the door. “There’s a door at the back of the church! We can get to the church from here, then out the back, and make a run for the stairs.”
“Christ, M. J.!” Heath said, his teeth still clenched. “I don’t think I can walk, let alone run!”
I eyed the phantom again and made a decision. “Your backpack has got to come off, sweetheart,” I said, my fingers flying over the buckles. He tried to protest, but I glared hard at him and shook my head. “Trust me!”
When the last buckle was undone, I shimmied out of my sweatshirt and tied the sleeves gently around his neck with the bulk of the shirt hanging in front of him so as not to lie against his back.
I then eased the backpack off his shoulders and got one arm through the strap when the phantom suddenly darted forward again. I gasped and reached for a spike to hurtle at the approaching menace. The phantom flinched and backed up to resume its spitting and snarling thing.
I decided then that instead of wearing the backpack, I would hold on to it, and throw spikes at the phantom as needed, because I was fairly certain it planned to follow us. “Let’s go,” I said, and eased Heath’s arm over my shoulders.
He got up with a muffled cry and walked hunched over next to me as we moved away from the stairs.
The phantom sank low to the ground like a crouching tiger, and I did my best to hold my fear at bay. I decided to fight fire with fire and dug into the backpack. “Take that, you flimsy demon!” I yelled, throwing a few spikes at it.
Each time a spike came near the phantom, it darted to the side, spitting and growling and curling up into a ball, but then it would unfold, zip around the spike and continue to stalk us.
We moved as quickly as Heath’s injury would allow, which wasn’t nearly as fast as I wanted to go, but we finally got to the church and eased inside. In the hallway leading to the church the phantom’s snarl became more enraged, but my continual tossing of spikes kept it at bay.
As we moved deeper into the church, the phantom stopped stalking us; instead it remained just beyond the doorway, hissing and growling and making a hell of a racket.
“Why isn’t it following us inside?” Heath said through clenched teeth.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, watching it cautiously. We continued to the back of the small chapel and the phantom appeared to grow more and more agitated the farther away we got, but it made no further move to approach us, even though I was sure the range of our magnets no longer extended to it out in the hallway.
A sudden thought occurred to me as I looked around the church, and I had a theory about why it wasn’t approaching. “It’s the chapel!” I said. “We’re in a holy place of worship, and that thing can’t come in here!”
Heath stopped, which forced me to stop too. “If that’s the case, can I sit for a second?”
“Oh, God!” I said, easing him over to one of the stone pews. “Of course. Sit here for a minute and let me see your back.”
Heath sat down and I slung the backpack over my shoulder, then held the flashlight up and lifted his coat to pull his shirttail out of his jeans. “Easy!” he begged.
I moved as slowly as I dared and pulled up the shirt, exposing his back. I sucked in a breath at the sight.
“Is it bad?”
One of the spikes had punctured a hole right into the bone of his spine, and I was convinced that was the one that was causing the most pain, but much of the middle of his back was bruised and held small wounds as well. From the main wound he was bleeding badly, and I was very worried about him losing too much blood, even though I knew he was lucky the one spike hadn’t severed his spinal column. “It’s not good,” I told him truthfully.
“It hurts like a bitch.”
“I’ll bet.” I lowered his shirt and came around to face him. “We need to get you out of here and we need to do it soon.”
“That bad?”
“Like I said, it ain’t good.”
Heath nodded. “Okay. I’m ready when you are.”
I looked over my shoulder and realized that the phantom was gone. “Uh-oh,” I whispered.
“What?”
“The phantom’s gone.” If it wasn’t trying to get to us from the hallway, I had little doubt it would make its way to the other side of the castle and attack us as we left.
“Shit,” Heath swore.
“Come on,” I said, trying to gently lift him off the slab, but he was heavy and started to swoon on his feet.
“M. J.,” he said, his voice a bit desperate. “I need to sit for another minute. I’m feeling really dizzy.”
I thought about pushing him, but decided against it. If he fainted, then we’d really be up the creek. “Okay,” I agreed. “You sit. I’m gonna see if there’s anything in here we can take with us to help protect us.”
“Here?” he asked. “What’s here?”
“I don’t know,” I told him, my voice sounding a bit desperate. “But that phantom was really put off by the energy in this place, so maybe there’s a crucifix or something we can take with us that’ll have some of that protective energy.”
Heath nodded dully and sat forward hugging his knees. “I’ll be okay in a minute,” he promised. “I just need to wait for the room to stop spinning.”
I looked at him worriedly and sat down to dig through my messenger bag searching for the first aid kit I usually carried but wasn’t sure I’d packed this time.
In the lower inside pocket I hit pay dirt. “Thank God!” I said triumphantly, holding up a small bottle of antiseptic and a few cotton balls. There were even a small bit of m
edical tape and extra bandages that I could use to help cover Heath’s wounds.
“Turn around,” I ordered as he eyed me.
Heath took a few deep breaths and swiveled around to his knees, propping his head and shoulders on the stone seat.
Carefully I lifted his coat and shirt again and dabbed at his wounds. He cried out only once when I poured the antiseptic directly into the main puncture wound, and I held my hand on his shoulder and told him over and over how sorry I was. And I truly was sorry. After all, I’d been the one that’d caused him to fall back on those stairs.
I felt even more horrible for the pain that I continued to cause him as I treated his wounds. Tears actually leaked out of his eyes, and his hands were clenched into fists so tight his knuckles were white, but finally his labored breathing subsided, and he nodded and said he was okay, but that he was still dizzy.
I then began taking off all my clothes until I got down to my undershirt. With my teeth I managed to tear off a strip of the cotton T and used it to apply pressure to Heath’s wound. Once the bleeding slowed, I used smaller strips and the medical tape to make him a bandage.
When I was finished, he was panting again. “How’re you doing?” I asked, wishing there was something I could do to take away his pain.
“I’ll need another minute,” he gasped.
I sat back on my heels and considered our situation. I still felt terrible for hurting Heath, but I knew I needed to focus on getting us out of there. I quickly put my clothes back on, and slung the pack onto my shoulder. I then went around the chapel, searching for anything that could help.
When I neared the door to the back of the church, I peeked through the window and sure enough I could see the phantom pacing and growling just a short distance away. “You son of a bitch!” I yelled at it.
“Hissssssssssssssss!” it replied.
I turned back and looked at Heath. There was no way I could get him through the castle and back down the stairs. It would take us much longer, and I had little doubt the phantom would eventually find us one way or another.
I swept the beam of my flashlight around the whole church, methodically looking for anything I could carry that would give us a little more breathing room. To my immense relief I finally spotted a crucifix hanging on the wall. I moved quickly toward the crucifix and tripped as I went, stumbling right onto a large marble slab. “Son of a—” I muttered.
“M. J.?” Heath called weakly.
I got up and dusted myself off. “I’m okay,” I said, looking down. I realized that I’d stumbled onto a crypt, and the writing indicated that buried there was one Malachi Dunnyvale, beloved son of Ranald and Meara, born 1572, died 1584. I realized that Malachi had died the same year the castle was completed, and wondered if Ranald had added the family crypts later, which would explain why Malachi was buried here instead of with the rest of his family.
Still, there wasn’t much time to ponder things and I moved to see if I could retrieve the crucifix.
I had to climb up on the old stone altar to get to it, but my hands finally curled around it and I felt it give way. As I pulled on it, however, it acted like a lever, and the altar I was kneeling on swiveled inward to reveal a stone staircase. “Whoa!” I gasped.
“M. J.!” Heath shouted in alarm.
I realized I’d swung completely out of his view. “I’m here!” I called, hopping down and coming out into the chapel again. “And I believe I just found our way past the phantom!”
Heath and I moved slowly and carefully down the spiral staircase. I had to support a lot of his weight, and the stairwell was narrow, which didn’t make it an easy journey, but it was definitely preferable to facing the phantom.
As we descended, I could smell the brine of the ocean and hear the crash of waves echoing up through the stairwell. The air became noticeably chillier and damp.
I knew we would eventually come out somewhere near the shore, but I wasn’t sure where.
I was wrong. The staircase ended and Heath and I found ourselves in a very narrow tunnel, and for someone like me, who suffers from bouts of claustrophobia, it was a worst-case scenario. “Aw, crap,” I whispered when I realized the tunnel went on for quite a way. “I don’t think I can do that.”
My breathing was coming in short little gasps and I knew I was close to hyperventilating.
Ever since I’d been trapped in a narrow underground tunnel with my ex-boyfriend Steven two years before, I found that tight cramped spaces caused me to have panic attacks. The stairwell was bad enough, but this ... well, this threatened to push me over the edge.
“Breathe slowly, M. J.,” Heath said, hugging me slightly around the shoulders.
I closed my eyes and tried to take slower inhalations, but it wasn’t working, and very quickly, I became dizzy.
“M. J.!” Heath commanded, squeezing me again. “You have got to calm down, babe.”
I nodded, but my breathing and heart rate both increased. I could feel the world spinning and I started to sink. “Can’t ... breathe!” I gasped, feeling my grip on Heath loosen. My knees hit the floor and then I was on all fours, still squeezing my eyes shut and fighting with everything I had to stay conscious.
A moment later, I lost the battle and slipped into the darkness.
The next thing I realized was that someone’s hand was warming my forehead. “M. J.?” I heard Heath ask.
My eyelids fluttered.
“Hey, honey,” he whispered. “Come on, now. Wake up for me.”
I opened my eyes and sat up, blinking at him in a state of disorientation. “What happened?”
“You had a panic attack, and you fainted.”
I swallowed hard and my stomach felt queasy. Plus I was really embarrassed. “Sorry.”
Heath smiled and squeezed my hand. “What are you sorry for? Being human?”
I shrugged. “The last underground tunnel I was in that was built like this one collapsed and nearly killed me.”
Heath’s eyebrows shot up. “There’s a story I want to hear.”
I looked at him in the dim light and took in his hunched-over posture and the pain in his eyes, and realized that I had no choice but to suck it up and get him out of there. “I’ll tell you,” I said. “But after we get you to a doctor.”
Heath smiled again. “Deal.”
I got up and focused on the ground in front of me. If I looked up and took in the narrowness of my surroundings, I knew I’d start to panic again. “We’re not going to be able to make it through here side by side,” I told him. “So you lean on me piggyback-style, okay?”
He agreed and I helped him to his feet; then, when I felt his hands grip my shoulders, I began to move us forward. We could still hear the crash of waves and smell the salty air, but no hint of open sky revealed itself as we moved along, although it was still damp and every once in a while I saw a puddle or two.
We went on like that for quite a while, the tunnel bending always to the left; then it curved sharply and we came to a slope, traveling upward until finally we were met with an L-shaped corner. Here the tunnel ended in front of us, and we had to make a tight right turn.
When we came around the corner, I was amazed by what I saw.
“Whoa,” I said, pointing my light ahead of us to a much wider tunnel that ran straight and true, dripping with moisture.
“Where are we?” Heath asked.
Above us we both heard the crash of a wave, and I realized what I was looking at. “Heath,” I said excitedly. “I think we’re under the causeway!”
I felt his body weight ease forward onto my shoulders as he too peered down the stretch of tunnel in front of us. “No way!”
Another crash of waves echoed right over our heads. “It has to be!” I said. “I mean, think about it. The spiral staircase at the church was at the back of the castle, so we would have come out on the far side of the rock. The narrow tunnel we were just in curved to the left, which means it eventually would have put us on the Irish-coastline side, a
nd this is about the right place for the causeway to be.”
“Genius,” Heath said admiringly.
“Come on,” I told him. “We’re almost home.”
The tunnel under the causeway was wide enough for Heath and me to walk side by side, which made it easier on Heath as I was able to support his weight. Eventually we reached the end and walked up a flight of stairs to another corridor that bent to the left. We followed that as it sloped upward and eventually ended at a small cramped space with a heavy iron manhole above our heads. I felt my stomach muscles clench when I realized the manhole might be too heavy for me to push aside, but when I pushed up on it, it eased up and over with only a reasonable amount of effort from me. “Thank you, God,” I whispered, shoving it the rest of the way, then shimmying out of the hole before helping Heath.
We came out onto a bluff with a small cobblestoned platform surrounded by tall hedges, and I sucked in huge gulps of fresh air and relished the feeling of being in a wide-open space again. “Man! Am I glad to be out of there!”
“Where are we?” Heath wondered as he stood hunched and hurting next to me.
I stepped out from behind the hedges to get a better look at our location and spotted our two vans sitting side by side about fifty yards away. I pointed them out to him, and we could both see that in between the vans and our location was the causeway, confirming that we had indeed traveled under it.
“So, Dunnyvale built an escape route,” he said, looking from the causeway to the manhole behind us.
“It makes sense, when you think about it,” I told him. “If the castle was ever laid siege to, he could have gotten himself and his family out without the enemy ever being the wiser.”
“And now we have a safe and phantom-free route to the castle,” Heath said.
I turned to look at him sharply. “Why would we ever want to go back there?”
He in turn appeared confused. “To find Gopher.”
I shook my head. “Gopher’s not there, Heath. We searched the entire top two stories tonight and much of the lower one on our first trip. There’s no way he’s still in that god-awful place.”