Simon had a closer look at the semi-oval. It really looked like the entrance to some dwarf’s cave.
Or like the door to hell…
Simon cleared his throat. “The priest mentioned that witches and sorcerers were said to have met here in olden days. A heathen place for their unholy celebrations. Could that have anything to do with this…dwarf’s hole?”
“Whatever the case,” said Jakob Kuisl, sinking to his knees, “we must go inside. So let’s go.”
Simon closed his eyes briefly and sent a whispered prayer to the cloudy skies visible only twenty-five feet above them. Then he crawled behind the hangman into the narrow tunnel.
Up at the well’s rim, the devil pointed his nose into the wind. He was smelling revenge and retaliation. He waited a few more moments before sliding down the rope into the depths.
As soon as Simon had crawled through the entrance, he noted that this would not be an easy job. After only a few feet the tunnel narrowed. To make any headway, they almost had to crawl sideways and push themselves forward with their shoulders. Simon felt sharp rocks scraping across his face and body. Then the tunnel widened slightly. Bent over, Simon stumbled forward, yard by yard, holding the lantern in one hand, leaning with the other against the wet clay wall next to him. He tried not to think of how his pants and doublet must look by now. But anyway, in the dark it didn’t show.
His only point of orientation was the flickering hangman’s lantern in front of him. He could see how Jakob Kuisl was having difficulty squeezing his broad, muscular body through this needle’s eye. Earth kept trickling from the ceiling and fell into his collar. The roof was arched as in a miner’s tunnel. At regular intervals sooty niches the size of a hand appeared in the walls. They looked as if candles or oil lamps had stood in them in the past. The niches enabled Simon to estimate the tunnel’s length. Nevertheless he had lost all sense of time after only a few minutes.
Above their heads lay tons of rock and earth. The physician briefly thought about what would happen if the wet clay were to suddenly collapse over him. Would he even feel anything at all? Would the rock mercifully break his neck or would he slowly suffocate? When he realized that his heart was starting to race, he tried to direct his thoughts toward something beautiful. He thought of Magdalena, of her black hair, her dark, laughing eyes, her full lips…he could clearly see her face in front of him, almost close enough to touch. Now her expression was changing; it looked as if she wanted to cry out to him. Her mouth opened and closed soundlessly; her eyes shone with naked fear. When she turned around to look straight at him, the daydream burst like a soap bubble. The tunnel curved suddenly and opened into a chamber about six feet high.
In front of him, the hangman straightened up and shone his lantern all around the chamber. Simon tried without much success to knock the dirt from his trousers, then he looked around as well.
The chamber was almost square and about three paces wide and long. On the sides were small recesses and steps, almost like shelves. On the opposite side two more slightly sloping tunnels extended into the depths. They too had the oval shape Simon already had seen at the first entrance. A ladder was leaning in the chamber’s left corner, leading to a hole in the ceiling. Jakob Kuisl inspected the ladder with his lantern. In the pale light Simon could make out its greenish, moldy rungs. Two of them had split completely. Simon wondered whether the ladder could still support anybody at all.
“It’s surely been standing down here for ages,” said Jakob Kuisl, tapping against the wood. “Perhaps one hundred, two hundred years? The devil knows where it leads. I believe all this is a goddamn labyrinth. We should call out for the children. If they’re smart they’ll answer us, and the hide-and-seek game will finally come to an end.”
“And if…if someone else should hear us?” asked Simon nervously.
“Bah, who would that be? We are so deep down in the ground that I’d almost be glad if our shouts could penetrate all the way to the outside.” The hangman grinned. “Maybe we’ll be buried and need help. It doesn’t look all that stable, especially that narrow tunnel at the entrance…”
“Please, Kuisl, don’t joke about this.”
Again Simon sensed the tons of dirt over their heads. In the meantime the hangman cast some light into the entrance on the opposite side. Then he called out into the darkness.
“Children! It’s me, Jakob Kuisl! You have nothing to be afraid of! We now know who wants to harm you. With us you’re safe. So be so kind and come out of there!”
His voice sounded strangely hollow and low, as if the clay all around them were sucking up his words like water. There was no answer. Kuisl tried it again.
“Children! Can you hear me? Everything will be all right! I promise you that I’ll get you out of here all in one piece. And if anyone harms as much as one hair on your heads, I’ll break every bone in his body.”
There still came no reply. Only the soft trickle of a rivulet somewhere could be heard. Suddenly the hangman slapped his flat hand against the clay wall so that whole chunks came loose.
“Goddamn it, get a move on, you cursed bunch of creeps! Or else I’ll spank your behinds so you won’t be able to move for three days!”
“I don’t think that this tone will convince them to come out,” opined Simon. “Perhaps you should…”
“Shush.” Jakob Kuisl laid his finger over his mouth and pointed toward the opposite entrance. A soft whimpering sound could be heard. It was very weak. Simon closed his eyes in order to make out the direction it was coming from. He couldn’t. He couldn’t tell with certainty whether it was coming from above or from the side. It was as if the voice was moving ghostlike through the earth.
The hangman seemed to have the same difficulty. Several times he looked up and then to the side. Then he shrugged.
“We shall have to split up. I’m going to climb up that ladder and you continue down into one of the tunnels. Whoever finds them shouts.”
“And if we don’t find them?” asked Simon, who almost felt ill at the thought of crawling once more through a narrow tunnel.
“Count to five hundred as you search. If you haven’t found anything by then, turn back. Then we’ll meet again here and we’ll think of something else.”
Simon nodded. Jakob Kuisl was already going up the ladder, which made ominous creaking noises under his weight. One more time he looked down at Simon.
“Oh, and Fronwieser…”
Simon looked up expectantly.
“Yes?”
“Don’t get lost. Or else they’ll only find you on Judgment Day.”
Grinning, the hangman disappeared through the hole in the ceiling. For a brief moment Simon could hear him in the chamber over him, then there was silence.
The physician sighed. Then he walked over to the two holes. They were of identical size and equally dark. Which one should he enter? Should he just play eeny-meeny-miney-moe? On a pure whim he decided to pick the hole on the right side.
When he cast a light into the opening he could see that the waist-high tunnel was indeed sloping down. The clay underfoot was moist and slushy, and tiny rivulets were running down into the depths on either side. Simon fell to his knees and tapped his way forward. He quickly noticed that the ground beneath him had the consistency of slimy water plants. He tried to support himself with his hands on the sides, but since he was carrying the lantern in his right hand, he kept sliding against the left wall. Finally he could no longer steady himself. He had to decide whether to let go of the lantern and hold on or simply let himself slide down. He decided in favor of sliding.
Simon slithered down. The tunnel was getting steeper and steeper, and after a few yards he felt the ground beneath him disappear. He flew through the air, and before he could cry out, he had already landed. At the impact with the hard clay floor, the lantern flew from his hand and rolled into a corner. Briefly Simon was able to make out a rocky chamber similar to the previous one, then the lantern went out.
Darkness swallowed him.
The darkness was so deep that it seemed to him like a wall that he had been thrown against. After the first moment of terror he groped along on his hands and knees toward the place he suspected the lantern to be. His hand moved over stones and clumps of clay, dipped briefly into a cold puddle of water, then he felt the warm copper of the lantern.
Relieved, he reached for the tinderbox in the pocket of his trousers so he could light the lantern once
