The Banshee's Walk by Frank Tuttle

Author:Frank Tuttle [Tuttle, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), Speculative Fiction
ISBN: 9781609280604
Google: 1AVKJnSPYgoC
Amazon: B003P9XHQ2
Goodreads: 8440561
Publisher: Samhain
Published: 2010-06-05T00:00:00+00:00

I knew the massive cast-iron stove was rigged to move, but even so I nearly had to risk the ire of Gertriss by fetching Lady Werewilk to show me the secret lever.

But I found it, and with a surprisingly small bout of grunting and gasping I managed to pull the hot oven out from the wall, revealing a dark recess beneath it.

I heard female voices, so I felt for a ladder or a stair and found a flight of nice solid stair treads leading down into the dark.

The dark. I hadn’t planned my expedition very well. I spent a frantic moment rummaging through the kitchen drawers, found a box of matches, and fashioned a makeshift torch for myself out of a long-handled soup spoon, a dry dishrag, and a dip in the grease-pot on the counter. A second dishrag went in my pocket for the return trip.

I hoofed it down the secret stairs. Fifteen steps down—I counted in case I was in the dark coming up—I encountered a complicated set of gears and pulleys. A cable led up beside the stairs, towards the stove and the secret door. Another cable was attached to a trio of hanging barrels, each filled with sand.

I found a lever and pulled. Above me, the stove groaned as it was pulled back into place by the lowering of the heavy barrels.

I grinned. The machinery was well oiled and nearly silent. But of course it would be, since Lady Werewilk presumably used it often to reach her secret sorcerer’s lair.

The rectangle of light above me winked out as the secret door closed. The barrels hit the earth with a soft thud-thud-thud.

I cranked them back up, hurrying to spare my torch.

That done, I descended the rest of the stairs. It was wide enough for two to walk side by side. It ended on hard-packed earth, in a tunnel made of very old bricks.

I waved my torch around. My choice of paths was limited. The tunnel behind the stairs ended abruptly in a blank brick wall. The tunnel ahead stretched out straight and dark and doorless.

Doorless but not empty. Junk of every description was stacked against both walls. Half a dozen torches were among the leaning items. They’d been left ready to light, with pitch already soaked into the rags wrapped around the top.

There was also a pair of bent brass candelabras perched atop a rickety old curio table. The candles showed some use, but had plenty of light left. I chose a torch instead, on the off chance I needed to shove it suddenly into a stranger’s face somewhere down there in the dark.

The ghost of the huldra, of course, came out to play. I heard it begin to whisper its nonsense words, felt it try to show me secret things, hidden things, useful things, all lurking in easy reach, just at the edge of the torchlight, just in the spaces between the tumbling shadows.

I countered the huldra’s unintelligible ramblings by muttering an old Army marching song.

But the truth is, I hadn’t been in a tunnel since the War.

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