Secret Basement Lab Alphabet: C is for CREEPING CLAW

C is for CREEPING CLAW

The room was silent except for the crackle of the fireplace and the thumping drag of the wind outside the windows. The members of the little gathering in the plush study were all but frozen, rapt and trancelike as the stiff-collared lawyer straightened the pages of the will against the top of the old mahogany desk.

“Frankly,” the lawyer said, turning his attention to the pages in his hand, as if embarrassed or unable to face any of the people sitting in front of him, “I think it’s damned silly, and if I were you, I’d forget the money. There’s no evidence—at least none in my possession—that Silas Garner actually had any fortune to squirrel away. By the end he’d disconnected the phones, shut off the plumbing, and was living by fireplace and well alone. He was an eccentric old goat who liked to get the mental upper-hand on others by giving them the willies.”

“But—“one of the party interjected, a middle-aged woman wearing a green dress that clashed with her russet bouffant, “—according to his will, there is a treasure somewhere in this place, hiding amongst the junk and cobwebs?”

The lawyer tossed the papers into his briefcase and clasped it loudly. He hefted his heavy overcoat from the chair behind the desk, and started towards the door. “Madame,” he said, pausing to address the woman, Old Garner’s estranged youngest sister, “it wouldn’t have shocked me to learn there was a codicil in your brother’s will that any money he might have had should be given to the first family member to colonize Mars. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s getting late and the storm’s starting to worsen. I’m leaving. And, if you’ll pardon me for saying so, if you’re smart you’ll all do the same.”

With that he was gone: Newton Crawley, prominent lawyer in Collier’s Cove; a man who’d done much of the soliciting for most of the small coastal nook’s inhabitants for over thirty-three years. Unfortunately, as far as Crawley was concerned, that roster included warped old crackpot Silas Garner, a one-time millionaire who had retreated into seclusion after the death of his wife. He’d reportedly lost his money about the time he’d lost his mind, throwing it at private investigators and lawyers, including Crawley, to try and prove that his wife’s death was anything but accidental, and that the man she’d been with when it had happened had had a role in it outside of adultery.

Newton stopped in the foyer to put his coat on. Before passing through the ornately carved door into the storm outside, he turned to give the Garner estate one last look before he dusted his hands of it forever. The long hall back to the study where Garner’s family was waiting, deliberating their next avaricious step towards claiming their mad relative’s money, was festooned with thick ropes of cobweb and lined with paintings that dust had rendered indiscernible. Candelabras flickered at even intervals down the corridor, casting dancing shadows across the dirty walls.

Newton shook his head; not so much in disgust as in registering his inability to comprehend the madness that built such a place and then let it go to ruin. After he left, the door to the study creaked open and the inhabitants filed out.

“It’s agreed then,” said an elderly man, very businesslike in nature. He was Silas Garner’s brother, Gilbert. “We’ll retire to our rooms and clean up as best as we can. Silas lived like a hermit in these abominable conditions, but we’ll have to make do. We’ll meet for a simple supper in the kitchen in a half hour, then start devising a plan to search this house for what’s rightfully now ours.”

The members of the group agreed and dispersed to their allocated corners of the reclusive mansion. As the crowd scattered, one of the dust-matted paintings hanging in the hallway moved ever so slightly. The picture angled forward from the bottom, and from the shadowy aperture in the wall behind the picture, stretched a thin arm ending in a handful of chicken bone fingers, each with a talon-like nail jutting from its tip. The claw-like hand caressed the air mere millimeters from one of the party member’s shirt collars.

Carl Garner, Silas’s teenage nephew, spun quickly at the sensation something was playing at his neck. All he saw was the wall and a painting of what might have been some gloomy landscape, now fuzzed with dust. A few errant strings of cobweb dangled from a flickering candelabrum. That must have been it, he surmised, the strands of web must’ve floated out and tickled the nape of his neck.
            There was indeed a surprise waiting for the estranged relatives of Silas Belmont Garner, waiting to be found haunting the shadows and secret places that filled the mansion. It was not, however, the fortune they sought.