Tunnels

doorway where she'd been to the oven and gave a small shrug.

He wolfed down two and a half of the oven-ready meals and then made his way upstairs in the now uncannily quiet house. There wasn't even the usual strains of the television coming from the living room below as, sitting up in his bed, he meticulously polished his shovel until it gleamed and sent reflections rippling across the ceiling. Then he leaned over to lay it gently on the floor, switched off the light on his bedside table, and slid under his blankets.

9

Will woke with a lazy yawn, looking blearily around the room, until he noticed the light creeping in at the edges of the curtains. He sat up sharply as it dawned on him that something was not quite right. There was a surprising lack of the usual morning hubbub in the house. He glanced at his alarm clock. He'd overslept. The events of last night had completely thrown him and he'd forgotten to set it.

He found some relatively clean items of his school uniform in the bottom of his closet and, quickly throwing them on, went across to the bathroom to brush his teeth.

Emerging from the bathroom he saw that the door to Rebecca's room was open, and he paused outside to listen for a moment. He'd learned not to blunder straight in; this was her inner sanctum, and she had berated him for entering unannounced several times before. Because there were no signs of life, he decided to take a look. It was as spotless as ever — her bed immaculately made and her home clothes laid out in readiness for her return from school — everything clean and shipshape and in its place. He spotted her little black alarm clock on her bedside table. Why didn't she get me up? he thought.

He then saw that his parents' door was ajar, too, and he couldn't resist putting his head around the corner. The bed hadn't been slept in. This was not right at all.

Where were they? Will reflected on the previous evening's argument between his parents, the gravity of which now began to sink in.

Although he'd never stopped to give it much thought, Will was aware that his home life was pretty strange, to say the least. All four members of the family were so different, as if they'd been thoughtlessly thrown together by circumstances beyond their control, like four complete strangers who happened to share the same car on a train. Somehow it had hung together; each knew his or her place, and the end result, if not entirely happy, had seemed to have found its own peculiar equilibrium. But now the whole thing was in danger of coming crashing down. At least that was how it felt to Will that morning.

As he stood in the middle of the landing, he listened to the disquieting silence again, glancing from bedroom door to bedroom door. This was serious.

'It would have to happen now… just when I've found something so amazing,' he muttered to himself. He longed to speak to Dr. Burrows, to tell him about the Pits tunnel and the strange chamber that he and Chester had stumbled upon. It was as if it all meant nothing without his approval, his 'Well done, Will,' and his fatherly smile of pride in his son's achievement.

As he tiptoed downstairs, Will had the oddest feeling of being an intruder in his own home. He glanced at the living room door. It was still closed. Mum must have slept in there, he thought as he went into the kitchen. On the table was a single bowl; from the few remaining Rice Krispies clinging to it, he could tell that his sister had already had her breakfast and left for school. The fact that she hadn't cleaned up after herself, and the absence of his father's cornflakes bowl and teacup on the table or in the sink, caused vague alarm bells to ring in his head. This frozen snapshot of everyday activity had become the clue to a mystery, like the little pieces of evidence at a crime scene, which, if read in the right way, would give him the answer to what exactly was going on.

But it was no good. He could find no answers here, and he realized he had to be on his way.

'This is like a bad dream,' he grumbled to himself as he hastily poured his Wheaties into a bowl. 'Total cave-in,' he added, glumly crunching on the cereal.

10

Chester lounged in one of the two broken-down armchairs in the main chamber of the Forty Pits tunnel. He formed yet another little marble of clay between his fingertips, adding it to the growing pile on the table next to him. He then began to aim them halfheartedly, one after another, at the neck of an empty water bottle that he had balanced precariously on the rim of a nearby wheelbarrow.

Will was long overdue, and as Chester threw the little projectiles he wondered what could have possibly gotten in the way of his friend's arrival. This alone wasn't of great concern, but he was anxious to tell Will what he'd discovered when he had first entered the excavation site.

When Will finally appeared, he was walking at a snail's pace down the incline of the entrance tunnel, his shovel resting on his shoulder and his head hung low.

'Hi, Will,' Chester said brightly as he lobbed a whole handful of the clay balls at the defiant bottle. All of them predictably failed to hit the mark. There was a moment of disappointment before Chester turned to Will for a response. But Will merely grunted, and when he did look up, Chester was disturbed by the marked lack of sparkle in his friend's eyes. Chester had noticed something wasn't right over the past couple of days at school — Will seemed to be avoiding him, and when Chester had caught up with him, he had been withdrawn and uncommunicative.

An uneasy silence grew between them in the chamber until Chester, unable to stand it any longer, blurted out, 'There's a block—'

'My dad's gone,' Will cut him off.

'What?'

'He locked himself in the cellar, but now we think he's gone.'

Suddenly, it became clear to Chester why his friend's behavior had been odder than usual. He opened his mouth and then shut it again. He had absolutely no idea what to say.

As if exhausted, Will slumped down in the other armchair.

'When did this happen?' Chester asked awkwardly.

'Couple of days ago — he had some sort of fight with Mum.'

'What does she think?'

'Hah, nothing! She hasn't said a word to us since he went,' Will answered.

Chester glanced at the tunnel branching off the chamber and then at Will, who was contemplatively rubbing a smear of dried mud from the shaft of the shovel. Chester took a deep breath and spoke hesitantly. 'I'm sorry, but… there's something else you should know.'

'What's that?' Will said quietly.

'The tunnel's blocked.'

'What?' Will said. In a flash, he became animated again. He sprang out of the armchair and dashed into the mouth of the tunnel. Sure enough, the entrance to the peculiar brick room was impassable — in fact, only half of the passage still remained.

'I don't believe it.' Will stared helplessly at the tightly packed barrier of soil and stone that reached right up to the roof of the tunnel, closing it off completely. He tested the props and stay immediately in front of it, tugging at them with both hands and kicking their bases with the steel toe cap of his work boot. 'Nothing wrong with those,' he said, squatting down to test several areas of the spoil from the pile with his palms. He cupped his hand, scooped up some of the earth, and examined it as Chester watched, admiring the way his friend was investigating the scene.

'Weird.'

'What is?' Chester asked.

Will held the dirt up to his nose and sniffed it deeply. Then, taking a pinch of the soil, he discarded the rest of it. He continued to rub it slowly between his fingertips for several seconds and then turned to Chester with a