Peripheral Vision: A Supernatural Thriller(31)
Sarah took a closer look. Nailed shut, she realized. Her body shuddered at the thought. It wasn’t going to stop her though. She took a step forward and reached out, feeling at the rusted nails that held the small wooden door in place. Her eyes betrayed her and she quickly glanced off to the corner of the cellar- fully expecting to see the woman from her dream, but there was no one there. Relieved, she took the hammer and began to pry the rusty nails out of the door. The first nail came out quite easily, but the next four took all her effort. She braced herself against the wall with her foot and yanked out the next nail. It was bent, much like the two before it. She again set the claw of the hammer and braced her foot, but this time, before she could put forth a full pulling effort, the door fell off its rusty hinges and backward on top of Sarah. She let out a loud cry as she fell backwards onto the cellar floor. The door wasn’t heavy, but the cloud of dust and dirt that escaped from behind it left Sarah choking and gasping for a breath. Sarah coughed and tried to cover her mouth with her hands. When the cloud of dust finally dissipated, she could make out the opening to a small brick crawl space where the door had previously been. Sarah picked up the flashlight from the floor. She had dropped it in the commotion. She flicked it on and off and then on again. Thankfully, it still worked. She rubbed some of the dirt from her eye and hesitated for just a moment before climbing up into the crawl space, praying that she wouldn’t get stuck and rot in there like some animal wedged in a tight chimney.
Thankfully, it was only a few seconds until the crawl space opened up into another room. Sarah pointed her light above her head, revealing a concrete reinforced ceiling, and realized that she had more than enough room to stand up. As she stood up, her light bounced along the ceiling further and further into the darkness, and it became clear to her. She was in a tunnel. Her mind tried to make sense of it, but it was too hard to think in here. The air was thin and moist and… decaying, her mind suggested. Sarah looked back the way she had come, tempted to turn around and crawl back out. But she wasn’t just curious, she had to know where the tunnel lead, and there was only one way to find out. And that’s when she found the small kerosene lantern-kicked it over in fact. It had been setting on top of a small foot stool that rested on the ground only a few feet from the crawl space opening. She’d missed seeing it in the stark lighting, that was, until her foot caught the leg of the stool and sent the lantern crashing to the floor. Sarah bent down to pick it up and noticed a stack of disintegrating paperbacks standing next to the overturned stool. The top book was missing it’s cover and clearly had the corners folded in as a place marker. Sarah was tempted to reach out and see what book it was. Which chapter were they on? But she forced herself to look away and instead searched the floor with her flashlight. She quickly found the lantern. It lay on its side, with a long nosed lighter conveniently duct taped to its globe. My lucky day, Sarah shuddered. It was obvious now that someone had been here… and quite recently.
Sarah cautiously made her way down the pitch-black tunnel, glancing back at the small light marking her starting point. She had decided to light the lantern to mark the location of the crawl space. Just in case. Sarah tightened her grip on the flashlight, wishing she was holding the hammer instead. The artificial light caught something on the floor of the tunnel up ahead. She walked over and picked it up, slowly turning it over in the beam of the flashlight. Sarah immediately regretted picking it up, as the light revealed exactly what it was-the old gas mask the figure from her dream had been wearing. She dropped the mask, as the details of the dream came rushing back into her mind. “I don’t want to remember,” her lips silently mouthed as her face drained of all color and the cold feeling returned. A new horrifying idea was beginning to take shape inside Sarah’s head. She quickened her step. Is this what her aunt was trying to show her? Trying to warn her? And then, as if in an answer, a tiny light peered out from up ahead. The exit. As she reached the end, the tunnel began to narrow and was no longer reinforced with concrete. By the time she reached the growing light she was actually down on her hands and knees crawling along the dirt floor. She reached forward and pushed her way through the small tangled tree branches that were blocking her exit.
Sarah struggled a bit as she made her way out of the tunnel and into the late afternoon sunlight. Her lungs were relieved to take in the fresh air, but the sunlight seemed much too bright after her journey. She moved a number of the small leaf covered tree branches that seemed to have been strategically placed in front of the tunnel entrance for camouflage. As she moved the last branch, she looked up and saw the park. The kids’ swings. The merry-go-round and the teeter-totter. There was a family at a picnic table. But it was the lone girl jogging down the curving dirt path, next to the quiet stream, that really grabbed her attention. She thought of the missing school teacher. She could see the newspaper clippings in her mind. It was all starting to make a horrible sort of sense. Sarah accidentally dropped the flashlight as she fumbled for her cell phone.
“Shit!” She shouted as she looked down at the broken flashlight. The lens had exploded immediately as it hit the hard ground.
When her shaking fingers finally grasped her phone, she tried to call Nick, but it went straight to voicemail.
“Hey you’ve reached Nick Fielding. Leave a message.”
“Nick, it’s Sarah. This is crazy-really crazy, but I just found this tunnel from the house and what if someone...” The phone beeped in response. No Service. The call dropped. “Damn it!” Sarah whispered as she looked at the bars on her phone in disgust. She held it high in the air and ridiculously moved it around, but her quest for service was quickly interrupted by the sound of twigs snapping off in the thick trees to her left.