Inching forward, not making a sound, I reached down for the steel bar. I cringed, expecting something to reach out of the Hellhole and grab me, but nothing did.
I stepped back with my new weapon in hand, practicing swings and jabs. It was a lot smaller than I was used to, but it would have to do.
I picked up the miner’s carbide lamp next. It was small, the kind that would fit on the front of a miner’s hard hat. The brass had dulled with time, but the striker roller in the mirrored plate still moved. I doubted there was any way it would light up after sitting for who knew how long down in that Hellhole, but maybe I could use it as a weapon of sorts.
Turning it this way and that in my hands, I tried to remember how to light it. I’d only seen carbide lamps like this one in the mining museum in Lead. According to the video that Layne had insisted we sit and watch through to the end that day we’d visited the museum, there was supposed to be calcium carbide in the base and water in the top part. I shook it, hearing some clinking in the bottom, but it felt empty up top. Maybe I was wrong about the water part, though. I clicked the valve control lever and cupped my hand over the front, like I’d seen done in the video, and then tried to run my hand across the striker.
Nothing happened.
Of course it didn’t. It wasn’t like I knew what the hell I was doing. Besides, if the top had no water in it … I set the candleholder down on the ground so I could unscrew the little cap on the top. I tipped the lamp upside down. Nope, not even a tiny drop of water in the sucker.
A blast of air whooshed up and out of the Hellhole, blowing out the candle.
Shit.
I coughed and gagged on the musty, curdled-milk stench in the dark, squatting to feel for the candle, but coming up empty. Where was it? I patted around on the ground some more.
It was gone.
Son of a crack whore! The next time Cornelius talked me into channeling a ghost—if there was a next time—I was packing a lighter. No, better yet, a flamethrower.
I stilled, listening, relying on my other senses. The pitch blackness surrounded me, closed in on me, wrapped me in its cold embrace. I shivered, trying not to panic, but judging by my pounding pulse, I was doing a lousy job at it.
“Violet,” Jane called up from the Hellhole.
I didn’t answer her. Heck, I couldn’t at the moment. My heart had scurried from its hiding spot between my ears and was now lodged in my throat, making it hard to breathe, let alone talk.
“Turn on the light and come down here, Violet.” Jane’s voice sounded like she was talking to me through a hollow pipe.
Turn on what light? I couldn’t remember if there was a light switch somewhere down here. Could I risk fumbling around in the dark? This must have been what it was like down in Homestake’s mine back in the day, working in total blackness with the only light coming from a … carbide miner’s lamp.
Like the one in my hand.
I looked down at it. Turn on the light.
Yeah, but … Oh! Well, duh.
I closed my eyes and focused on the lamp, imagining a little flame coming out of it like I’d seen in the video.
When I opened my eyes, a one-inch flame was shooting through the center of the lamp and reflecting in the tiny mirror. The glow was brighter than the candle had been, lighting up this part of the basement so that I could easily see into the previously dark corners.
Holding the light out in front of me, I hurried back to the stairs leading to the trapdoor. It was still closed. I pounded on the wood several more times for good measure, but all was silent up above.
“Come on, you guys,” I whispered. “Open up.”
“Violet,” Jane called from the Hellhole in a singsong voice. “Come down here. I need to show you something.”
I tiptoed back to the hole and peeked over the edge, my body already tensed up in a pre-wince at what I might find staring up at me.
The Hellhole was empty.
I blew out the breath that I’d been holding. My heart eased back a little, leaving room in my throat so that I could speak around it.
“Show me what?” I asked.
“The answer to your question, of course.”
What question? Had I asked a question? I’d been so busy freaking out that I hadn’t thought to ask any questions.
Oh, maybe she meant a question being asked up in her office by Cornelius or Cooper or whoever was running the show up there.
I still hesitated, though. Crawling down into a Hellhole was not something to do on a whim, let alone a command from a disembodied voice.
“Come on, Violet.”
Jane’s face appeared in the shadows below, smiling up at me. She was wearing the same sweater and scarf that she had on in the picture that had been displayed at her memorial service. She still looked like the mom from that old show The Partridge Family, except for her eyes. They were more like two pieces of coal. Although it was hard to get a good look at them due to the shadows, not to mention that she was a ghost, and how much did I know about what ghosts looked like? My only experience was with Prudence and her white eyes.
“Hurry up,” she said in that singsong voice again. “Or I won’t tell you my secret.”
What secret? I already knew about her and Ray. “How can I trust you, Jane?”
I needed something more than a shadowy image of her to risk going down into that hole. Some connection that would prove it was really her, or at
