Chapter 14: An Untimely Grave

"Thou shalt confess the vain pursuit of human glory yields no fruit but an untimely grave."

-Thomas Carew

My eyes widened as I stared in shock at the empty passageway in front of my eyes. Absolutely impossible.

John's arms were crossed and a disgruntled look was on his face. "I think maybe Lestrade is right," he said skeptically, his mustache bristling slightly with annoyance. "I do not see any body here, nor any evidence that there was one."

Andrew's hand had left mine and now was hanging slack at his side. Nicole numbly walked over and came to a halt at my other side. The three of us looked at one another, shaking our heads, completely speechless.

"Don't be ridiculous, of course there was a body here!" Holmes exclaimed after a moment, snatching the lantern and holding it up close to the wall. "Look here! Smears of blood, just as they said."

"Well, that looks like rust to me, Holmes!" Lestrade said, squinting slightly.

Andrew stiffened and pointed a finger at Lestrade. "I did not have rust on the back of my vest!" he protested.

Holmes wiped a finger across the substance and sniffed it. "It's blood Lestrade. Something most certainly bled on this wall. And here!" He waved the lantern around the space a bit, and leap back in the passage a few feet, squatting close to the ground to illuminate a puddle.

We stepped closer to see. I gasped again, for the small pool of liquid on the ground was thick, opaque, and reddish brown in color. It was on the spot where I had tread in a puddle just before we found Leslie's body. And it was most certainly not a puddle of water. My left foot twitched involuntarily. No doubt my shoe and probably the hem of my skirt were now soaked with it.

"There most certainly was a body here," Holmes mused. "The only problem is that it isn't here now."

"Well where the deuce do you suppose it went?" asked Lestrade incredulously.

"I would imagine," replied Holmes, grunting softly as he stood up, "that the killer took it."

"Took it where?" I asked. "We saw him leave, and directly afterwards we became blocked in."

"There are other entrances," Nicole matter-of-factly pointed out.

Holmes nodded. "It is more than likely that after the killer made sure you three weren't able to follow him, he looped around the outside to the main entrance. There he waited until he knew you were out of his way and then came back in to dispose of the body when you came to fetch us."

"But where would he have taken it?" I repeated insistently. "We weren't gone from here very long at all, and it's no easy thing to carry a corpse away. It takes quite a lot of time and effort. And look here at the ground. I don't see any scuff or blood marks to show that the body was dragged anywhere. He would have had to physically lift the deceased off of the ground and carry him. That's slow progress, so it can't have been anywhere particularly far away."

"What about somewhere else in the mine?" John asked. "It's not a long distance, and I'm sure there's a lot of unused branches."

Holmes let out a laugh and clapped his hands together. "Watson, that's brilliant!" he exclaimed, his voice echoing throughout the space.

"So shall we split up?" Lestrade suggested. "We would cover a great deal more ground that way."

Holmes raised his eyebrows and I snorted. "I doubt splitting up would do us much good, Lestrade," I replied.

"And why not?" He appeared affronted.

"We only have one lantern," I said. Holmes lifted it and rattled it to illustrate.

Lestrade clapped his hands together, tightening his lips with the air of one who was about to claim that he had known that all along. "Together it is."

And we set off as a group, Holmes at the front of our party, holding the lantern high to illuminate our paths.

We turned down various offshoots, peering into an innumerable amount of nooks and crannies shrouded in gloomy darkness, searching for what seemed to be hours. Even with the time we had spent wandering the mines before, I had not imagined that they could be so vast.

A few yards ahead of us, beyond the reach of the lantern's flickering circle of light, there came the noises of scrabbling and scraping, and the unmistakable, eerily heavy sound of something being dragged across the ground. The cacophony echoed and reverberated off of every stone wall around us, and it was impossible to determine whether or not it was coming from the main passage or one of the smaller offshoots.

Holmes held up a hand, but none of us needed the warning. We all abruptly halted at the noise, causing Nicole to nearly trip over Andrew's left shoe. He immediately shot out an arm to steady her. I held my breath in dread and suspense.

"Who's there?" Holmes called out into the darkness, slowly and silently squatting to place the lantern gently on the ground.

"Holmes, what are you –" John began to ask under his breath. But he did not have time to finish, for the answer quickly became obvious.

A gunshot echoed with a sharp crack, and Andrew pulled me sideways into him as it whizzed past Holmes' collar and barely an inch from where my head had been a split second before. I let out my breath in a small gasp. Both hands now free to do so, Holmes pulled his own gun out of his coat the moment the shot sounded, signaling with a nod for John and Lestrade to follow suit and cover him.

Lestrade quickly turned to us and hissed, "You three, run. Andrew, get them back to the house immediately. Lock the doors and secure the building. Do not let anyone in until you see us come back."

Without even a nod in reply, Andrew turned tail and pushed us forward, and we set off at a sprint towards what might or not be the exit. We didn't have any time to stop and confer about which twists and turns would lead us back to the entrance, for we heard the cracks of returning gunshots from behind us, and the subsequent clinks as the bullets hit the walls, chipping off pieces of stone. Our breathing eventually became labored and my lungs seared with the effort of gasping for air, and we were forced to duck into an offshoot to stop for breath.

But after a moment, more shots sounded, closer to us, and a bullet struck a piece of stone directly above my head, which crumbled and fell in a powdery dust into my hair. No, that's impossible, I thought, for this meant that there was more than one shooter. Even though I tried, I did not have a chance to look around for the source of these shots, for Andrew pulled us out from against the wall and pushed us forward again, urging us further and further ahead of him.

We all knew that there was no time to stay together. Although we were fleeing as a single group, we were each running separately, as fast as we could. And although Andrew was clearly faster than both of us, he lagged behind to act as a shield between us and the shooter and to continue pushing us further ahead of him. Soon enough, I had lost all inclination of where Andrew was, and even Nicole. I barely noticed when I passed the entrance of the mines and was surrounded by trees before I realized and slowed to a halt for breath, throwing myself behind a particularly large tree and doubling over, kneeling on the ground and gasping for breath. My vision was blurry and after so long blindly running through the dark, it took me a moment to adjust to the change in surroundings. It was growing dark outside, and I could not see where the sun was setting from within the dense prison of trees that completely encircled me. There was only a minute bit of light left, from which I peered around me as the world came back into focus. Something was familiar about this place, and as my eyes darted from a strange imprint in the blanket of wet leaves on the ground, as of something laying there for a prolonged amount of time, to the few brown leaves still adorning the branches of the trees around me, to the tangle of tree roots and the rotting log on the ground, I suddenly knew. This was the spot where we had found Simon Camberwell's body just days before.

But something was different, and not just the absence of the body. Something was…new. Wincing as my breath seared my throat and lungs once again, I inhaled deeply to clear the spots in front of my vision and stepped forward to peer around. Something was imbedded in the bark of one of the trees. I thought it was silver, but there was no moonlight yet, and so instead of a glimmer, there was only a dull, cloudy sheen. I reached forward to pull it out, and as it gave way I could see that it was a pocketknife, much like the one we had found with Simon Camberwell. In fact, as I squinted at it in the dim twilight, the style looked absolutely identical. I had no idea what it was, but I knew that something was peculiar about it, and I deftly snapped the knife closed and shoved it into my pocket.

A twig snapped somewhere not far from me. I started and turned around, but saw nothing. What should I do? Should I wait here and see if Andrew, Nicole, or any of the others turned up? Or should I head back to the house and wait there? Or should I go looking for them?

More than one shooter was out there, and wherever I went, I was alone, and I had no chance of securing either the house or the woods by myself. But we had been instructed to return to the house, so heading there was far better than the others reaching the destination before me and being forced to head out again in search for me or my body. So I shivered as a cold breeze rustled the scarce leaves on the trees like the decorations on a shaman's staff and headed briskly in the direction I thought to lead to the house. But from somewhere on my other side, I heard another twig snap, and as my head jerked to look, I could have sworn I saw a flurry of movement. The moment my head was turned, another shot rang out, and I dived forward, hoping to avoid its deadly trajectory. I stumbled and fell face first onto the ground, and my hands and feet slipped and slid on the wet leaves as I struggled to get up. Finally, I did so, doing my best to dodge the whistling paths of more bullets as I maneuvered through the trees. Bullets were coming at me from both sides, and although I did not slow to allow time for a deduction, something did not make sense. It almost seemed as if the two shooters were not aiming for me, but for each other.

Finally, the house came into sight, and I flew across the lawn, a second pair of footsteps behind me, slowing as a series of clicking noises began – a gun being reloaded. To a trained shooter, this only took a matter of seconds, so I didn't stop or slow and took the steps in twos, flinging open the doors and racing down the hallway, not stopping until I reached the kitchen and threw open the door.

The door to the kitchen slammed behind me, and any silence in the room was overcome by the deafening pounding of blood in my ears. My breath came hard and fast, my lungs searing painfully each time I inhaled. Strands of hair had fallen loose from their clips and were clinging to my forehead. My hands shook as I wiped them on my skirt and then gripped the edge of the table for support. My legs felt like jelly, and I knew I would collapse if I stood on my own. Still gripping the table, I shakily moved backwards to lean against the wall.

Everything in my mind was racing. God, what was going on? I didn't even know from whom I was running. All I'd heard in the chaos were the gunshots and the ensuing footsteps behind me when I ran. They had stopped to reload their weapon on the front lawn as I ran inside. Oh, God. That meant they couldn't be far behind me. What was I doing? I had no time to stop for breath. I pushed myself upright and looked frantically for something – anything – to use as a weapon. I have no idea why I didn't just pick up one of the many knives, or even the one I'd found in the forest – the thought only occurred to me post hoc – but I must admit that I did no such thing. Instead my eyes fell on a large, bulbous pumpkin that was sitting ready to be carved up into some stew or pie. It was heavy, probably weighing about fifteen or twenty pounds. In my hurry I didn't question this as my choice of weapon, and hefted it above my head.

My arms were beginning to shake from the strain, and I was afraid that I would have to set the large vegetable back on the counter, but just then the door swung open and a figure appeared. I could only see the back of the head, for he immediately turned to wildly search the other side of the room with his eyes, a gun held loosely in his hands.

Protect yourself first, ask questions later, everything in my mind was telling me, so I mustered every ounce of survival instinct within me and brought the pumpkin down on the head as hard as I could. It must have been hard enough, for the unfortunate owner of the cranium immediately crashed to the ground, face down and limp. The force of the blow had done as much damage to the pumpkin as it had to the person. The outer shell had been crushed, leaving a huge mess of pumpkin seeds and the usual stringy, mucilaginous mass. I stood frozen in a shock for a moment, watching the substance drip out of the smashed shell I held in my arms with a sort of fascination. It was beginning to mix with and congeal in the individual's hair, giving off an effect as if they had applied far too much wax to it in the morning.

I was still stupefied a moment later when the doors opened again, with enough force that they smashed against the shelves and tables on either side of them and pots and canisters of spices were knocked to the floor with a loud series of clatters. My senses were both heightened and dulled at once from the adrenalin and shock, and while I was unusually aware of the noise, I merely stared rather stupidly at the gathering in the doorway for an embarrassingly long while before registering that the faces belonged to Holmes, John, and Lestrade, Nicole standing right behind them.

They appeared as stunned by the scene before them as I was. I could thoroughly understand why. I was standing over a face down, unconscious body, holding the shattered remains of a pumpkin while the innards of said pumpkin dripped down onto the body. It was then that it occurred to me that I must look like a total moron to have used the large squash as a weapon in a room full of knives of every description.

All four of them looked as if they might like to make some mention of said moronic decision, but they did not.

"What in the blue blazes happened?" Lestrade asked, looking from the body to me to the pumpkin.

"Who is that?" Holmes asked, holding one arm to his chest at a strange angle and not giving time enough for me to answer Lestrade's inquiry.

"I-I don't know," I stammered.

John knelt to examine the body, checking for a pulse and then carefully turning it over. I had turned to set the pumpkin down on the counter behind me and so froze when I turned back to see all three men plus Nicole staring at me expectantly. My gaze dropped to the limp figure on the floor, and my hand flew to cover my mouth in horror. It was Andrew. I'd knocked Andrew unconscious with a pumpkin. "Oh my God," I breathed.

"It doesn't seem particularly dangerous," John said. "He won't be unconscious for long, and it's only a minor concussion."

His reassurances didn't assuage my guilt. I hadn't just hit Andrew on the head with a pumpkin, I'd concussed him with it.