Bloodless

53

Wellstone, his camera pressed against the grille, shot video of the whole sorry scene: the smoke machines, the shenanigans with the dowsing rod, the phony photographing with the box camera, the orders from Betts between each take—Do this, Don’t do that. It sickened him a little to see how disrespectful all this was to the dead. He noticed there was actually a skull lying on the floor. That had been someone’s mother or father, for heaven’s sake, not some prop. But he’d make sure this desecration would be just another nail in the coffin for Betts’s reputation.

The viewpoint he had wasn’t optimal, so he snuck around to the front of the mausoleum and, staying low and in darkness, filmed through the open door. The door he was crouching next to was bronze, and he noticed that its heavy hinges had been broken by force, and recently, as the metal was shiny and fresh in places. He briefly wondered who had done it and why: pulling off that door must have been no mean feat. Then he shrugged and returned his attention to the fake horror show.

From this vantage point, he could now see there was another staircase, leading down to a lower level. He wondered what an elaborate tomb like this would be doing at the far end of the cemetery, so utterly neglected and forgotten. It must have once been an important Savannah family, no doubt now extinct. He would have to find out something about their history. That would be part of the story, part of the outrage. He squinted and looked through the long lens, trying to read the last names on the crypt doors. He could just make them out, with an inscription below.

He captured that on video, too.

They had finished filming in the outer chamber of the tomb, and he waited as Betts and Gannon gave orders for the breaking down and moving of equipment to the lower level. He was almost seen when someone emerged to spool out more cable from the generator. But it was an overcast night, and he managed to retreat into the darkness in time. He shivered, feeling a chilly wind picking up, stirring the invisible leaves above his head, the whispery sound rising and falling, almost like the breathing of ghosts. Why would a tomb have two levels, anyway? He recalled an H. P. Lovecraft story in which a fellow was working in a sub-basement, or something, and broke through the floor into a passage that had been carved up from below...

He put this out of his head. Now even he, the skeptic, was getting spooked.

There was a break in the action, and he took the opportunity to switch out the SD card in his camera, which was almost full.

All the lights, smoke machines, everything was now being moved down the stairs to the lower level. He waited, watching from the darkness, until they had vacated the upper chamber. As risky as it was, he realized he would have to get inside the tomb if he wanted to continue filming. The big event was evidently going to occur on the lower level, and that was something he couldn’t miss. It occurred to him that, if he was caught, the first thing they would do would be to confiscate his camera’s memory card. He plucked the full SD card from his pocket and hid it in his shoe.

At the opportune moment, when everyone’s attention was occupied, he ducked through the doorway into the mausoleum itself, crossed the upper chamber, and pressed himself against the wall next to the stairs that went deeper into the tomb. He could hear Betts’s voice coming up from below, telling Moller how they were going to work the next shot.

Crouching, practically on his belly, Wellstone crept into the doorway, edging the human skull aside so he could peer down the stairs. A humid, unpleasant smell rose up — not surprising, considering what was stored down there.

He raised his camera to his eye and once again began shooting.