Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(104)

Before long, we arrived at what could best be described as a clearing—and in this clearing we were confronted with three options: two hallways that had been dug out of the dirt like mine shafts, or a single reinforced place that offered a rough-hewn set of steps going down into yet more darkness.

We hesitated and investigated each one, neither one of us mentioning what we both knew all too well: that we were no longer in any kind of basement or cellar, that somewhere we had passed the point of subterranean civilization and now there were only walls of mud to separate us from whatever lay beyond the dank, miserable corridors we traversed together.

The light wasn’t great enough to show us anything down any of the three passages. But the weird singing—yes, I think it was singing, very low, very deep—was coming from down those awful, uneven stairs.

We knew what to do.

“Take my hand,” Simon suggested.

I very nearly did, but was startled by a sudden shout rising up from below.

The singing stopped abruptly, disintegrating into a jumble of voices, each one carrying a question we couldn’t hear—and might not have understood, regardless. Another shout, another cry, and the sound of footsteps at the bottom of those stairs—which must have gone very deep below.

Our light would give us away.

Simon took my hand and yanked it, pulling me down into one of the rounded, earthy openings that passed for a doorway, I guess. He pressed his back against it and shuttered the lantern until only a tiny white seam declared it—and although it must have been quite hot, he concealed it behind his jacket. I prayed he wouldn’t burn himself, and prayed that he wouldn’t set fire to himself, either, and likewise I prayed that we had chosen wisely in our hiding place.

Not that it mattered, really. We had but two choices, and it all amounted to the toss of a coin.

Up the stairs they came, as many as a dozen of them, I gauged by the sound of their hustling, frantic feet . . . but I couldn’t see them. They traveled without light, and I wondered how they could see anything at all—but I didn’t wonder hard, or long. It was one more thing to toss in that locked-up room in my head. One more thing to walk away from, without looking back.

“She went out through the window.”

“And you’re certain?”

“She went out, that’s all I’m certain of. We checked the room, top to bottom. Her mother swears she was there not five minutes before.”

“But the window? She could have never reached it.”

“She piled things on the bed, and climbed them.”

My heart surged to hear it. Ruth? Surely they were speaking of Ruth!

Simon was thinking it, too; he squeezed my hand with joy, then let it go. He shuffled nearer to the opening, in order to hear better, I suppose.

I retreated farther, not to be contrary—but because I thought I felt something against my hip. It was wood, and squared off. A railroad tie? Perhaps. I’d seen some down there below, holding up shafts and generally littering the landscape. Yes, I was more sure of it as I ran my hands over the grain, over the shape of the end. It was piled atop others, left behind for future projects or merely abandoned. I felt a knob of metal jutting from one end. The head of a spike? Probably. I was dying for some light, desperate to take the lantern and give myself just a few drops of illumination—it wouldn’t take much more! Not when my eyes were so accustomed to the gloom. But I knew better, and so I “saw” only with my fingers while I listened to the chatter just beyond us.

“She can’t have gotten far. Not on foot, in the dark.”

“There were candles in the room. She might have taken one.”

“She won’t get far with it if she did. Can’t run and keep one lit at the same time, now can she?”

“Get her parents. I’ll get the lens and see if I can find her. We only have tonight, you understand? Catch her, and bring her back down to the Holiest of Holies.”

“What if we’re too late?”

“The Great One’s heart won’t beat again for a thousand years. If that brat costs us this opportunity, I’ll have her dead myself—rather than simply transitioned. Go on. Find Shirley, and have him meet me at the lens. And get that girl—do you understand? Bring her to me, or spend the rest of your life running from me. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly.”

The lens? Well, it was just one more question, added to the pile of them. I turned around and felt with both hands now, running them over the pile of beams and wondering what else I might find. The planks were too heavy to use as weapons, but there could be something else left among them—a hammer, a pry bar, anything.

The footsteps faded, back the way we’d come; but another minute’s pause allowed another three or four of Chapelwood’s residents to clamber up from the depths and dash out in the wake of whoever’d been given those awful instructions.

Meanwhile, I proceeded with my tactile investigations. I found what was, yes, certainly, a railroad spike—heavy and pointed, but dull. A weapon of last resort.

“What are you doing?” Simon whispered.

I realized then that I’d gotten away from him. “Is it safe to use the light?” I whispered back.

“I don’t know.”

I might have asked him for a small dab, just a dribble of that precious stuff to warm my eyes and show the way . . . but at that very instant I set hands upon something familiar. It was lodged in a slab of wood and I had to rock it back and forth to extract it. I did my best to do this in silence, and my companion did not shush me—so I must have done a reasonable job of it.