IF FRIC HAD SUSPECTED THAT THE WINE CELLAR was haunted or that something less than human prowled its channels and chambers1, he would have eaten dinner in his bedroom.
He proceeded without caution.
Likening the separation noise of the rubber seal to the sucking sound made by popping the lid off a vacuum-packed can of peanuts, Fric opened the thick glass door in the insulated-glass wall.
He stepped out of the wine-tasting room into the wine cellar proper. Here the temperature was maintained at a constant fifty-five degrees.
Fourteen thousand bottles required a lot of racks—a maze3 of racks. These weren’t simply arranged like aisles4 in a supermarket. Instead, they lined a cozy5 brick labyrinth6 of vaulted7 passageways that intersected at circular grottoes ringed by more racks.
Four times each year, every bottle in the collection was gently rotated a quarter turn—ninety degrees—in its niche10. This ensured that no edge of any cork11 would dry out and that the sediment12 would settle properly to the bottom of each punt.
The two porters, Mr. Worthy13 and Mr. Phan, were able to attend to the turning of the wine bottles for only four hours a day due to the [206] tediousness of the work, the measured care that it required, and the havoc14 that it caused with neck and shoulder muscles. Each man could properly rotate between twelve hundred and thirteen hundred bottles per four-hour session.
Through a flow of cool dry air that pumped ceaselessly from ceiling vents15, Fric followed a narrow dome-vaulted passageway of Pinot Noir to a wider groin-vaulted corridor of Cabernet, circled a curiously16 coved17 grotto9 of Lafitte Rothschild stocked with various vintages, continued through a tunnel of Merlot, in search of a place where he would be able to hide without fear of discovery.
Arriving in an elongated-oval gallery stocked with French Burgundy, he thought he heard footsteps other than his own, elsewhere in the maze. He froze, listened.
Nothing. Just the whispery voice of the perpetual wine-cooling draft lazily entering the gallery by one passageway, leaving by a second.
The fluttering false flames of the fake gas lamps, which were wall-mounted in some places but also hung from grotto ceilings where height allowed, caused shimmers18 of light to chase twists of shadow along the racks and brickwork. This meaningless but spooky movement teased the mind into hearing footsteps that probably weren’t there.
Probably.
Proceeding19 less boldly than before, occasionally glancing over his shoulder, he moved on with the gentle draft.
Other wine cellars might be musty dens20 in which time shed skin after skin of dust, leaving a record of its unending progress. In fact a dusty film on the bottles was often considered good ambience.
Fric’s father had an almost obsessive21 aversion to dust, however, and none could be found in this place. Taking special care not to disturb the bottles, the staff vacuumed the racks once a month, as well as the ceiling, walls, and floor.
[207] Here and there in the corners of the passageways and more often in the shadowed curves of the masonry22 ceiling vaults23 were delicate spider webs. Some were simple, others elaborate.
No eight-legged architects could be glimpsed at home in these constructions. Spiders were not tolerated.
When at work, the housekeepers24 kept the vacuum cleaner away from these gossamer25 architectures, which had been made not by spiders but by a specialist in set decoration from Ghost Dad’s favorite film studio. Nevertheless, the webs deteriorated26. Twice a year, Mr. Knute, the set decorator, swabbed them off the bricks and then rebuilt them as good as new.
The wine itself was real.
Turn by turn through the labyrinth, Fric calculated how long his father could stay blind drunk on wine before exhausting the contents of this cellar.
Certain assumptions had to be made, the first being that Ghost Dad would sleep eight hours a night. Perpetually soused, he might sleep longer; however, in the interest of keeping these calculations simple, an arbitrary number must be selected. Eight.
Also assume that a grown man could stay seriously drunk by consuming one bottle of wine every three hours. To establish a state of inebriation27, the first bottle might have to be slugged down in an hour or two, but after that, one every three hours.
This was actually not an assumption but hard knowledge. Fric had on numerous occasions been in a position to observe actors, writers, rock stars, directors, and other famous drunks with a taste for fine wine, and while some could pour it down faster than one bottle every three hours, those aggressive drinkers always passed out.
Okay. Five bottles spread over each sixteen-hour day. Divide fourteen thousand by five. Twenty-eight hundred.
The contents of this cellar ought to keep Ghost Dad shitfaced for twenty-eight hundred days. So then divide 2,800 by 365 ...
[208] Over seven and a half years. The old man could stay blind drunk until Fric had graduated from high school and had run away to join the United States Marine28 Corps29.
Of course, the biggest movie star in the world never drank more than one glass of wine with dinner. He didn’t use drugs at all—not even pot, which everyone else in Hollywood seemed to think was just a health food. “I’m far from perfect,” he’d once told a reporter for Premiere magazine, “but all my faults and failures and foibles tend to be spiritual in nature.”
Fric had no idea what that meant, even though he’d spent more than a little time trying to figure it out.
Maybe Ming du Lac, his father’s full-time30 spiritual adviser31, could have explained the quote. Fric never dared to ask him for a translation because he found Ming nearly as scary as Mr. Hachette, the extraterrestrial predator32 disguised as their household chef.
Arriving in the last grotto, the point farthest from the wine-cellar entrance, he heard footsteps again. As before, when he cocked his head and listened intently, he detected nothing suspicious.
Sometimes his imagination went into overdrive.
Three years ago, when he’d been seven, he’d been convinced that something strange and green and scaly33 crawled out of the toilet bowl in his bathroom every night and waited to devour34 him if ever he went for a postmidnight pee. For months, when Fric woke in the middle of the night with a bloated bladder, he left his suite35 and used safe bathrooms elsewhere in the house.
In his own monster-occupied bath, he’d left a cookie on a plate. Night after night, the cookie remained untouched. Eventually he had substituted a chunk36 of cheese for the cookie, and then a package of lunch meat in place of the cheese. A monster might have no interest in cookies, might even turn its nose up at cheese, but surely no carnivorous beast could resist pimento-loaf bologna.
When the bologna went unmolested for a week, Fric used his own bathroom again. Nothing ate him.
[209] Now nothing followed him into the final grotto. Nothing but the cool draft and the flicker37 of light and shadow from fake gas lamps.
The entrance and exit passages more or less divided the grotto in half. To Fric’s right were yet more racks of wine bottles. To his left, stacked floor to ceiling along the wall, were sealed wooden cases of wine.
According to the stenciled38 names, the cases contained a fine French Bordeaux. In fact they were filled with cheap vino that only gutter-living bums39 would drink, and the contents had no doubt turned to vinegar decades before Fric had been born.
The wooden cases had been stacked here partly for decoration and partly to conceal40 the entrance to the port-wine closet.
Fric pressed a hidden latch-release button. One stack of wooden cases swung inward.
Beyond lay a room the size of a walk-in closet. At the back was a rack of port wines fifty, sixty, and seventy years old.
Ports were dessert wines. Fric preferred chocolate cake.
He assumed that even in the late 1930s, when this house had been built, the nation had not been plagued by gangs of port-wine thieves. The closet had most likely been concealed42 just for the fun of it.
This secret chamber2, smaller than the fur vault8, might make an adequate hiding place—depending on how long he would need to remain hidden. The space would be comfortable enough for a few hours.
If he had to stay in here for two or three days, however, he would start to feel that he’d been buried alive. He’d collapse43 into a screaming fit of claustrophobia and eventually, descending44 into madness, he would probably eat himself alive, beginning with his toes and working upward.
Unnerved by the direction their second conversation had taken, he’d forgotten to ask Mysterious Caller how long he could expect to be under siege.
He retreated from the port closet and pulled shut the clever wine-case door.
[210] Turning, Fric saw movement in the passageway by which he had entered this last grotto. Not just the throb45 of fake gas flames.
A large, strange, spiral silhouette46 wheeled across the racks and vaulted brick ceiling, layering itself over the familiar flicker of small pennants47 of light and small flags of shadow. It was approaching the grotto.
Quite unlike his father in a big-screen pinch, Fric seized up with fear and could neither attack nor flee.
Eerily48 shapeless, shifting, gently tumbling, the shadow billowed closer, closer, and then the fearsome source appeared at the mouth of the passageway: a spirit, a ghost, an apparition49, ragged50 and milky51, semitransparent and vaguely52 luminous53, drifting slowly toward him by supernatural locomotion54.
Fric frantically55 stepped backward, stumbled, fell hard enough to remind himself that his butt41 was as scrawny as his biceps.
Out of the passageway and into the grotto came the apparition, gliding56 like a stingray in ocean depths. Lambent light and pulsing shadow played upon the phantom57 form, lending it a greater mystery, an aura of veiled or bearded evil.
Fric raised his hands protectively before his face and peered up between his spread fingers as the spirit arrived above him. For a moment, weightless and slowly revolving58, the apparition reminded him of the Milky Way galaxy59, with its gossamer spiral arms—and then he recognized it for what it was.
Lazily drifting on the cool draft, a fake web, fabricated by Mr. Knute, had come unanchored. Floating with all the ghostly grace of a jellyfish, it followed the air currents across the grotto toward the next passageway.
Mortified60, Fric scrambled61 to his feet.
Passing out of the grotto, the airborne web snared62 on one of the wall-mounted lamps, tangled63 upon itself, and hung there, flimsy and aflutter, like something from Tinkerbell’s lingerie drawer.
[211] Angry with himself, Fric fled the wine cellar.
He was in the tasting room, closing the heavy glass door behind himself, before he realized that the spider web could not have come loose all by itself. A draft alone would not have spun64 it free, up, and away.
Someone would have had to brush against it, at the least, and Fric didn’t believe that he himself had done so.
He suspected that someone close behind him in the wine maze had patiently worked the web loose from its corner, careful not to shred65 or wad it, and had set it afloat upon the draft, to taunt66 him.
On the other hand, he remembered too well the toilet-spawned, scaly, green monster that had not even been real enough to nibble67 on a slice of bologna.
He stood for a moment, frowning at the refectory table. While he had been wandering the wine cellar, his dinner dishes had been taken away.
One of the maids might have cleaned up after him. Or Mrs. McBee, though as busy as she was this evening, she would probably send the mister.
Why any of them would have followed him into the wine cellar without calling out to him, why they would have set the Knute-spun cobweb afloat, he couldn’t begin to understand.
Fric felt that he was at the center of a web not manufactured by Mr. Knute, an invisible web of conspiracy68.
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1
chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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maze
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| n.迷宫，八阵图，混乱，迷惑 | |
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aisles
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| n. (席位间的)通道, 侧廊 | |
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cozy
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| adj.亲如手足的，密切的，暖和舒服的 | |
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labyrinth
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| n.迷宫；难解的事物；迷路 | |
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vaulted
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| adj.拱状的 | |
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vault
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| n.拱形圆顶，地窖，地下室 | |
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grotto
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| n.洞穴 | |
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niche
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| n.壁龛；合适的职务(环境、位置等) | |
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cork
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| n.软木，软木塞 | |
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sediment
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| n.沉淀，沉渣，沉积(物) | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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havoc
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| n.大破坏，浩劫，大混乱，大杂乱 | |
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vents
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| （气体、液体等进出的）孔、口( vent的名词复数 )； （鸟、鱼、爬行动物或小哺乳动物的）肛门； 大衣等的)衩口； 开衩 | |
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curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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coved
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| v.小海湾( cove的过去分词 )；家伙 | |
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shimmers
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| n.闪闪发光，发微光( shimmer的名词复数 )v.闪闪发光，发微光( shimmer的第三人称单数 ) | |
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proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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dens
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| n.牙齿，齿状部分；兽窝( den的名词复数 )；窝点；休息室；书斋 | |
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obsessive
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| adj. 着迷的, 强迫性的, 分神的 | |
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masonry
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| n.砖土建筑；砖石 | |
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vaults
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| n.拱顶( vault的名词复数 )；地下室；撑物跳高；墓穴 | |
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housekeepers
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| n.（女）管家( housekeeper的名词复数 ) | |
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gossamer
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| n.薄纱，游丝 | |
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deteriorated
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| 恶化，变坏( deteriorate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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inebriation
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| n.醉，陶醉 | |
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marine
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| adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵 | |
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corps
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| n.(通信等兵种的)部队；(同类作的)一组 | |
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full-time
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| adj.满工作日的或工作周的，全时间的 | |
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adviser
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| n.劝告者，顾问 | |
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predator
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| n.捕食其它动物的动物；捕食者 | |
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scaly
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| adj.鱼鳞状的；干燥粗糙的 | |
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devour
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| v.吞没；贪婪地注视或谛听，贪读；使着迷 | |
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suite
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| n.一套(家具)；套房；随从人员 | |
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chunk
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| n.厚片，大块，相当大的部分（数量） | |
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flicker
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| vi./n.闪烁，摇曳，闪现 | |
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stenciled
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| v.用模板印（文字或图案）( stencil的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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bums
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| n. 游荡者，流浪汉，懒鬼，闹饮，屁股 adj. 没有价值的，不灵光的，不合理的 vt. 令人失望，乞讨 vi. 混日子，以乞讨为生 | |
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40
conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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43
collapse
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| vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷 | |
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descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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throb
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| v.震颤，颤动；(急速强烈地)跳动，搏动 | |
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46
silhouette
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| n.黑色半身侧面影，影子，轮廓；v.描绘成侧面影，照出影子来，仅仅显出轮廓 | |
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47
pennants
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| n.校旗( pennant的名词复数 )；锦标旗；长三角旗；信号旗 | |
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48
eerily
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| adv.引起神秘感或害怕地 | |
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49
apparition
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| n.幽灵，神奇的现象 | |
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50
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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51
milky
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| adj.牛奶的，多奶的；乳白色的 | |
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52
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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53
luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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54
locomotion
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| n.运动，移动 | |
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frantically
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| ad.发狂地, 发疯地 | |
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56
gliding
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| v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
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57
phantom
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| n.幻影，虚位，幽灵；adj.错觉的，幻影的，幽灵的 | |
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58
revolving
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| adj.旋转的，轮转式的；循环的v.（使）旋转( revolve的现在分词 )；细想 | |
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59
galaxy
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| n.星系；银河系；一群(杰出或著名的人物) | |
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60
mortified
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| v.使受辱( mortify的过去式和过去分词 )；伤害（人的感情）；克制；抑制（肉体、情感等） | |
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61
scrambled
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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62
snared
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| v.用罗网捕捉，诱陷，陷害( snare的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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63
tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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64
spun
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| v.纺，杜撰，急转身 | |
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shred
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| v.撕成碎片，变成碎片；n.碎布条，细片，些少 | |
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taunt
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| n.辱骂，嘲弄；v.嘲弄 | |
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67
nibble
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| n.轻咬，啃；v.一点点地咬，慢慢啃，吹毛求疵 | |
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conspiracy
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| n.阴谋，密谋，共谋 | |
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