“Aaron?”
He paused halfway back up, his cape falling slightly forward over one shoulder.
She smiled with genuine warmth. “You are a true gentleman. Thank you, brave sir.”
“Oh. I mean, it’s no problem. At all.” He sputtered, awkward now and standing stiffly.
Chad chuckled. “Take the win, A.” He clapped his friend on the shoulder. “And get down those steps before I steal your thunder and do it for you.”
Aaron did as suggested, waving his arms furiously and knocking down every cobweb dangling from every direction. Esmie followed hesitantly, shining her light every which way, trying to see everywhere at once. She wasn’t too worried about bats, as she hadn’t seen any other living things besides them, but she didn’t want to find out the hard way by waking up an entire legion of them by bumping into one. And no, she didn’t actually see any spiders. Just lots and lots—andlots—of cobwebs.
“Lots of barrels down here,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “But they’re little. What’s that all about?”
“Probably consecrated wine. For blessings and such.” He leaned over one, holding his cape back so it wouldn’t get even more dusty and cobwebby. “Chad would have a field day down here. He could probably read all of this chicken scratch, but it’s too faded and fancy for me.”
She sighed, rubbing her free hand up and down the opposite arm and shining her light around, hoping she’d magically know what she was supposed to look at. “I don’t think hundreds of years old wine has anything to do with the Headless Horseman. I was hoping something really obvious would be down here.”
“Like his head in a bag hanging from a corner?”
“Exactly, if I’m honest.” She pointed the light into each corner, just in case, but though various crosses and books and moldy, moth-eaten robes hung from them, no bags with heads did. “Well, no luck there. Wait, what’s over there?”
The light fell on a piece of furniture buried crookedly in the dirt of the cellar floor against the far wall. It appeared to still be quite solid—despite the fact that it had clearly fallen through the floor above at some point—though it was covered with lichen, mold, and, inevitably, cobwebs. Moving together, they stepped closer to it, dodging around the stacked barrels and various other obstacles on the cellar’s floor until they stood in front of it. It was a large piece with two facing doors jammed closed, little knobs on each side.
They exchanged looks—Esmie assumed they exchanged looks, as Aaron’s shoulders turned toward her—and shrugged. Aaron reached out, since his hands were gloved, and yanked opened the doors.
“It’s a chifforobe,” he said, sounding delighted, as the doors gritted open with absurd ease on rusty hinges.
“A what?”
“A chifforobe,” he repeated, turning to look at her. Again, she assumed. “What, you never readTo Kill A Mockingbird?”
She shrugged.
“It’s like a closet on one side and a bookshelf on the other. Look.” He gestured, and she saw that he spoke nothing but the truth. Moldy, gross, ragged old clothes hung limply on one side, while moldy, gross, ragged old books were stacked in the shelves on the other. “Too bad they obviously got wet over the years. They might be worth a fortune if they’d been preserved.”
She didn’t want to touch those books. She was going to have to touch those books. Dammit.
“Can I borrow one of your gloves?”
“Huh? Oh, sure.”
Just like that, he pulled one off and handed it to her. He was such a good soul. She put on the glove, oversized though it was, and tweezed up the topmost book. The cover was unreadable,and the book squelched unpleasantly as she lifted it. She barely applied any pressure before it fell apart between her fingers.
“I hope that one wasn’t important.” She grunted and pushed it aside with a grimace. “The next one’s in better shape, though. It was sort of shielded by that one.”
They scooted in close, ignoring the unpleasantly damp, moldy smell from the chifforobe as she gently lifted the cover of the book, which was some treatise or other on the Bible. Boring. Definitely not anything to do with the Headless Horseman. She carefully lifted it aside with Aaron’s help.
“What’s this one?” he asked, as the next one down didn’t have any sort of writing on the cover. It was a leatherbound book wrapped around with a twisted, gross, slimy-looking leather thong. Knotted, of course. “Should we untie it?”
Her mouth pulled down in disgust. “I guess we’ll have to.”
“You two alright down there?” Chad hollered from above.
“Fine,” Aaron shouted back, but distractedly. “Just looking at some books.”
“Nerds,” Jerome said, perhaps predictably but pleasantly enough.
Her too-fat gloved fingers wouldn’t be able to untie the slimy, thin leather string, so she had no choice but to take off the glove and do this bare-handed. She didn’t like it. She hated it.
