secret chambers danced in the back of his mind.
That frightened look was back on Rick’s face. 'I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, Jake. We don’t know how safe the tunnel is or what it might have been constructed for. For all you know it might be the gravesite of one of Blake’s ancestors. I don’t think the old man would appreciate you poking around in the family crypt.'
Jake remembered his initial reaction to the stone and a chill raced through him. What if it was a crypt? Did that make any difference? If he was going to finish the job, he’d have to discover what lay below and relay that information to Blake. He couldn’t very well go to him and say they’d stopped working in the cellar because they’d found a hole in the floor. Blake would be furious. He’d at least need a valid reason for the delay. He explained as much to Rick, who shrugged and reluctantly agreed, but the troubled look never left his foreman’s face. Jake knew Rick was just going along because Jake was the boss. Well, so be it then, he thought. That’s the way it is. Jake turned back toward the steps before him and forgot what Rick was feeling, caught up as he was in the excitement of exploring the unknown. Jake gingerly rested one foot on the top step, checking that it would support his weight. He then stepped down with trepidation, worried about booby traps and the entire structure’s stability. When nothing happened he repeated the process, moving down onto the next step and then the next. Behind him, Rick picked up one of the crowbars and followed. After the first few steps Jake grew more confident and quickly descended to the bottom, where he waited for Rick to join him.
Together they shone their lights into the darkness of the tunnel ahead.
The passage extended directly ahead, father than the beams of their flashlights would reach. Jake felt his excitement rise as he stared down the tunnel.
The air was dry but cold, and Jake was thankful for the sweatshirt he’d donned before he’d headed out the door. He set off down the tunnel, with Rick close behind. The tunnel continued for several hundred yards. About halfway down its length, it began to rise gradually toward the surface.
Eventually, their lights revealed a ninety-degree turn. When they reached it, Jake hesitated a moment, wondering what he might find around that corner. A strange feeling of unease suddenly crept over him and the walls seemed to be closing in. He was struck by the urge to turn around and get out of the tunnel as fast as he could. He was about to tell Rick they were turning back when his good sense reasserted itself. Go back now? a voice whispered in his mind derisively. Just because of a little claustrophobia? I’ve come this far. I might as well see what’s on the other side.
No sooner had Jake convinced himself to keep going than Rick spoke up in a slightly quavering voice, 'Jake? Don’t you think we should wait until…'
Jake wasn’t listening.
Intent on what lay ahead, he stepped around the corner.
The tunnel ended some three feet ahead in a perfectly laid wall of brick.
'What the hell?' Jake stepped forward and slapped the wall with his hand. A flat sound reached his ears in response.
When Rick caught up, Jake said, 'Give me that crowbar, will you?'
Rick handed Jake the crowbar and watched as Jake took a step back and swung the bar at the wall. It rebounded off the surface and nearly struck Jake in the face, but he seemed not to notice. He stepped up and put his ear against the wall, listening.
A frown crossed his face.
He stepped back and swung again.
'Hear that?' he asked.
Rick shook his head.
'There’s an echo,' Jake told him. He struck the wall again, harder. This time, Rick heard the echo, too.
'I think there’s another room on the other side of this wall.'
By now Rick was getting caught up in the excitement of discovery as well. 'Want me to have the jackhammer brought down?' he asked.
Jake absently handed the crowbar back to Rick as he considered his next move. More than anything, he wanted to do what his foreman had suggested. He knew that he shouldn’t, however. There could be a good reason the area had been sealed off. He didn’t want to put anyone in danger.
He decided it would be best if he checked with Blake first.
Jake let Rick know of his decision and the two men returned the way they had come.
Leaving Rick to dismiss the men for the day, Jake headed back to his trailer. Excitement or not, he still had a desk full of paperwork that needed to be finished before he could call it a day himself.
Much to his dismay, he found he couldn’t concentrate on the work before him. His thoughts kept returning to the stone, and the tunnel it had concealed. Again and again, he found himself asking the same question.
What is behind that wall?
In the darkness, he stirred.
At first, there was just a vague feeling of confusion. Confusion a child might feel when waking in a strange room in the middle of the night; yet what was waking here was anything but a child. Against the disorientation, he fought to hold onto his dreams. Though dreams were but a poor substitute for reality, they were all he had. His only companions. To anyone else, they would have been nightmares; dark visions of death, gloriously colored with the rich crimson flash of freshly spilled blood. They were his link to life, his last toehold on the edge of sanity. Without dreams he would long ago have succumbed to the fate that his enemy had planned. But then, like now, his desire for life had been too strong. Long ago, when he’d first felt the crushing bonds of his prison, when he’d first recognized the true nature of his imprisonment, he’d retreated into the cold embrace of the darkness that surrounded him. He surrendered himself to his dreams, finding in them the sanctuary he needed to survive. Over time, he’d forgotten what was real and what was not, the line between illusion and reality blurring. He’d come to see his dreams not as a mere reflection of reality but the very image itself.
Then, as the first faint tugs of reality prodded his consciousness, he fought against them, not yet ready to relinquish that which had kept him safe from the hateful silence and despair that had surrounded him for so long.
Then, like the slow trickle of a muddy stream, he began to remember.
Sights and sounds and images from days that had long since fallen into dust came to him, fragments of a time forever frozen in the depths of his mind.
Memory returned.
He awoke.
He moved to leave his prison, only to find that his sentence had not ended, but had merely been exchanged for another.
He screamed then, a long howling cry that would have been awful to hear had there been a throat from which it could have issued forth; a cry filled with such rage and frustration that it would have turned the listener’s blood to ice and bones to stone, had it been possible to hear.
In the midst of that cry, another memory surfaced.
The image of a face formed in the darkness of his mind. The face of one he had known long ago, the face of the one who had imprisoned him in the darkness of eternity, the one who had brought him such misery and pain.
The face of his enemy.
Cold, reptilian reason took over then, strangling his silent cry, shoving aside his emotions. A calculated cunning immediately set to pondering his current situation.
Summoning his strength from somewhere deep inside, he sent out his newly regained senses and discovered something more.
Men were near.
He could sense them, could hear the clank of their tools and the sounds of their voices. He could feel the minute vibrations that descended through the earth each time they moved above him.
For the first time in countless ages, he began to hope that he might soon be free. Once he was, nothing would stop him from having revenge on the one who had imprisoned him.
Exerting himself, he cast his consciousness out further, out past the walls of his prison, across the fields just beyond, among the living. Searching, seeking, briefly touching the minds of all he encountered before moving on,
