The Hand on the Wall(67)

It must have gotten considerably darker outside, because as they approached the entrance there was no patch of light where the hatch was, no dim square of snow sky. As they got closer, the slow and sickening realization entered her bloodstream. She knew it before she saw it for sure.

The hatch had closed above them.





21


“UHHHHHH,” DAVID SAID.

It was as good a summary of the situation as any.

“Oh,” Stevie said.

Again, this about summed it up.

There was a real entombing problem at Ellingham Academy. This was undeniable. Stevie felt a vein throbbing near her ear and had the sure sense that a massive panic attack was about to level her flat. It would wipe away the world and bring her to her knees and she would die from it.

She waited. The vein continued to beat away, like the annoying sound of music from a far-off car. But there was no panic. She focused her light up on the hatch, then on David, who was himself looking a little pale.

“I didn’t think that would happen,” David said. “The hatch opens in.”

“But it happened,” she said. “How did it happen?”

“Wind’s kind of blowing hard up there,” David said, shining his flashlight on the flat metal hatch. “Suction? I guess?”

“Or it’s designed to close,” Stevie said. “Secret lair, secret door.”

“There’s no handle on this side,” David said, a twinge of worry coming into his voice. “Why is there no handle on this side? Who builds a hatch with no way of pushing it open? Who does that? This is a problem. This is a real problem.”

He shone his light around the space, looking over the debris. He grabbed a broken shovel handle and poked it up at the hatch. It didn’t reach. He threw it down.

“Calm down,” she said, and then immediately regretted it. Telling someone to calm down was the worst. He hadn’t seemed to notice; he was too busy freaking out.

“We need to do something a little more proactive,” he said. “We can’t wait this one out. The temperature will drop. We need to get that open and get the hell out of here.”

“That boat,” she said, taking him by the arm. “We’ll get it and stand on it. There’s two of us. Two of us is better than one of us. And if we can reach it, we can work out a way to get it open.”

“I guess,” he said, sounding a little breathless. “Yeah. Okay.”

It turned out that being the calm one eased Stevie’s panic. The more anxious David seemed, the more she could talk through it. She found her steps were steady and firm as she led the way back into the cavern.

They first tried to tip the boat into an upright position, which took both of them. The swan boat was heavy—really heavy—and looked to be made of metal and concrete. These are not generally considered to be good boat-making materials, which indicated that maybe it had not been intended to be a boat at all. Perhaps it was to be a decoration in Ellingham’s weird underground grotto of love. Whatever the case, they would not be able to carry it.

“I hate this,” David said. “I hate that we’re down here.”

Stevie scanned the area. How could there be so much crap and yet nothing useful? The rock formations couldn’t exactly be pulled off the walls. The three bags of old cement had gone solid. The only thing that was left was a small pile of bricks off to one side.

“Bricks!” she said cheerfully, like bricks were fun things that you might bring to parties.

David shone his light on the meager little stack.

“Not enough,” he said.

“But it’s some. Some bricks are better than no bricks. There’s two of us. Maybe one of us could stand on the bricks and boost the other.”

“Yeah . . . maybe. I guess. Yeah.”

The thing about bricks is that they are not easy to carry. One in each hand is about the limit. There was nothing in the grotto to use to wheel the bricks around.

“So we make a few trips,” she said, trying not to lose the momentum of her enthusiasm. “We’ll dump out our bags to carry more.”

With her bag full of ten bricks and David’s with about the same, they began the journey back to the front of the cavern, David using his free hand to hold up the flashlight.

“Let’s speculate,” Stevie said, trying to remain cheerful. “Let’s say you were planning on doing something to Hayes. Let’s say you thought that since I’m the local detective that I might get ideas about it, that it wasn’t an accident—which is what happened—so you do something to make me seem a little crazy. I see threatening notes on my wall at night.”

“We’re still talking about this?” David said. “Look at where we are.”

“Hear me out. My ideas would seem less sensible, right?”

“Why are we talking about this?”

“Something to do,” Stevie said, her voice strained from the effort of carrying the bricks in the cold.

“Well, let’s don’t. We don’t have to run through your case notes every time we’re alone. It doesn’t always have to be about murder.”

“Okay,” she said.

“We have to get out of here.”

“We’re working on that,” Stevie said.