church.”
“Okay,” Scott said, pausing. “I’m familiar with the general history of the area. You’ve explained the tunnels, but what do you expect to find down this hallway.”
“An entrance into the old convent.”
“The old folks home? I’ve got news for you, there’s a much more accessible entrance above ground.”
“Don’t you think that I’ve been there? After the church sold the property to a group of investors, converting it into the nursing home, I tried to get them to let me look around, to see if the nuns had left any records that might help me rationalize what I saw here so many years ago. But they wouldn’t even allow me to stray from the tour. In fact, they were more than insistent.”
“So you want to sneak in the back door…”
“If there still is one. I’ve combed these hills since the early Seventies looking for the entrance into these tunnels, but I hadn’t been able to find anything.”
“But you never looked in that house?”
“Look, that hole in the basement wall wasn’t there decades ago when I boarded that house up. I put a lock on the front door and boarded all of the windows, why on earth would I even suspect that anyone would be digging a tunnel through the wall?” Harry huffed, his face reddening.
“No need to get worked up,” Scott said, looking Harry directly in the face in the dim glow of their lights. He hesitated, formulating his words carefully so as not to offend the older man again. “There is just something about this story that doesn’t quite fit. There are gaps that I am having a hard time making any sense of.”
“How do you think I feel?” Harry said, steering his light into the darkness beyond the archway. “Let’s see if we can find some answers.”
The two left the main tunnel, heading into the thinner, rock-walled channel. The air grew colder with each step, thickening with dust. Cobwebs hung in the air, bouncing as their movement changed in the flow of the stale air. Their flashlights stopped on a thick wooden door, the vertical slats held together by diamond-shaped iron fasteners, the circles of light growing larger and larger on the faded, splintering surface as they approached. A thin line of green covered the bottom foot of the door from where the waters had risen along the base, the slightly sloping ground was slick with the slight covering of slime.
Stepping right up to the door, the side of his head pressed against the slightly bowed wooden surface, Harry listened intently, hoping to hear anything at all if there was someone just beyond the door. Gripping the black iron handle in his right hand, he squeezed it as hard as he could, the small lever crackling as it lowered beneath his thumb. He could hear the bolt in the wall, groaning and creaking as it slowly broke free of the rust that held it tightly within the wall. With a loud crack, the bolt disengaged, the sound echoing wildly through the tunnel around them.
Harry looked to Scott, who held his breath, a pained wince engraved into his face.
Holding a finger to his pursed lips, Harry slowly began to pull the door outward, the bottom edges of the wooden planks scraping loudly on the compressed rock floor. The noise was awful. He could only move the door an inch at a time for fear that they would draw too much attention to themselves, surely even a group of hearing aid laden retirees could hear that noise more than a story above ground in that old castle. It was obvious that the door hadn’t been opened in quite some time, so maybe, even if it was audible on the floors above, no one would know what it was, or even have the inclination to descend into the old cellar to try to figure it out. It was the middle of the day, and surely there was enough activity up there to mask their noise.
Pulling the door just far enough back so that they could slip through sideways, Harry pointed his light through the small gap between the door and the wall, trying to look inside. There was a tightly stretched sheet of plastic covering the entrance into the castle, a tightly packed layer of spray foam insulation pressed against the plastic from the inside. Producing a small pocketknife from within his jeans, Harry slit the sheet of clear plastic right down the center and began to pull handfuls of the almost Styrofoam-like pink insulation from within.
After making a sizable dent in the insulation, the pink stuffing piled around his feet on the cold ground, he could see that there was another layer of the plastic covering, sealing the layer of foam between two airtight seals. Slicing through the far side, the tip of his blade clanged dully off of something large and wooden. Ripping out the remnants of the plastic and insulation, he pressed both hands against the wooden barrier beyond.
Its surface was smooth, not at all weathered like the outer door had been. A thick, almost satiny finish had been applied to the wood, the deep-black, highly-defined grains in astounding contrast to the mahogany stain.
Leaning against it, Harry strained, lowering his shoulder as he spread apart his feet, hoping to bull his way through it. It was heavy, and, judging by the lack of hinges, it wasn’t a door, just something haphazardly stuffed into the doorway to bar access. The base of the wooden creation scraped across the floor within, bouncing and popping slightly as it caught on the floor, Harry’s force then freeing it suddenly.
The stagnant smell of mildew flooded the tunnel from the small opening that Harry had created, small clouds of dust swarming about them, filling their lungs. The two hacked almost in unison. Squeezing into the entryway next to Harry, Scott braced his foot against the outer door, his shoulder against the inner wall and shoved with all of his might. The combination of the two pushing together made the object squeak loudly as it scraped along the floor, opening up just enough of a gap so that they could sneak past and enter the small room beyond.
Two streams of light bounced around the pitch black room, only the thinnest line of gray creeping in from behind the enormous object that had been barring their way. Both of them studied the small circles from their lights, hoping to see anything at all that might help them to illuminate the room further. Their flashlights were barely enough to light more than the thick cloud of dust that hung all around them in the air, shimmering like glitter in the flitting rays.
Arms in front of them as they shuffled through the darkened room, they each headed in a different direction. Scott’s hand rammed into something hard, his fingertips crumpling. Recoiling quickly, he clenched and unclenched his fist, his teeth grinding as he shook off the sudden jolt of pain. Slowly, he reached back out, his bare hand running along the dust-coated surface of a table of some sort. Shining the flashlight directly down upon it, he could see a small, hand blown glass lamp, the kerosene within soaked through the think wick which stood just above a thin metal ring. The ornately decorated glass was thick with dust, his fingers slipping from the surface the first time he tried to grab it, before latching on more securely around the thin ring of metal adjoining the two glass globes that made it look like an hourglass.
Laying his palm into the dust, he slid it from side to side, hoping to smack into a lighter or a pack of matches or something. The cloud of sediment that had been untouched in what could only have been years, floated into the air all around his face, wedging itself tightly into the sinuses behind his eyes and nose, bringing forth a sudden and ferocious fit of sneezing. Holding tightly to the lamp, he rode out the involuntary convulsions, finally sighing loudly as he inhaled a deep breath. Resting his hand on the table, he could feel a long, thin sliver of wood beneath his palm. Fishing it out of the dust, careful not to breathe in too deeply as he did, he held up the wooden piece between his thumb and forefinger. Shining the flashlight on it, he smiled to himself. Setting down the flashlight and the lamp on the table, he held back the flap of cloth that covered the zipper that ran up the front of his jacket with his left hand. He ran the head of the match straight down the zipper, the teeth grabbing at the phosphorous surface of the match. With a burst of black smoke and light, the head of the match flickered to life, the yellow flame hidden beneath Scott’s cupped left hand as he lowered it through the glass top of the lamp and down to the wide wick, the kerosene stinking awfully as it lit. Thick, black smoke billowed from the lamp, the insides of the glass charring with soot. The dancing flame encased within flickered. Settling down, the excess finally having burnt off, the circle of light around the lantern slowly expanded, pushing back the shadows into the corners. At least a portion of the room was now visible.
“Where did you find that?” Harry whispered, his face appearing from the darkness only feet away.
“On this table over here,” Scott responded, looking down through the cloud of dust that still swirled around him.
It was a long, hardwood table, almost resembling a picnic table, only much more elegant. There was a chair to either side of it, a stack of books lined neatly in the center of the table, bracketed by two iron bookends crafted to look like hands that if pushed together they would give the impression of a child’s hands praying. The old, leather-bound books were buried beneath dust. Not even the embossed letters on the spines were visible beneath the wan light and the layer of dust.
Turning, he led the lantern through the room, surveying the area in hopes of finding a way out of the room.
