Are You Haunted (part forty-one)

Are You Haunted

(part forty-one)

Rays of sun, broken by the grid, cast disparate shapes on the tunnel floor, like small ashen figures.

“Well, we’re on fire.” Davis Drybrook had said it, and punctuated the words with a chuckle.

He did not misunderstand the seriousness of the matter. This chance, this emergency of which to take charge, seemed to brace him. Only that. Shirtsleeves rolled and tie loosened, Drybrook was walking the floors, issuing orders.

But he was nervous, too, and as Rohdl hurried past, shot a hand to grip him by the arm. “I was told it’s on one of the loading platforms. Nothing to do with the lab.”

“For one thing, you will want to shut off the ventilation system, however.”

Rohdl recalled edging away, smiling uncomfortably.

Drybrook had frowned and dropped his hand. Rohdl hadn’t felt they were in danger, but he preferred to recover his notes from the lab. And he had not had another conversation with Drybrook.

He did not think he had.

He might have known the one he’d spoken to…there was life there still. He tried to bear the suffering and the humanity in mind, not the horror.

Bending to the face, he had said: “Can you speak to me? Is there anything that you can tell me?”

Powell stretched his neck at a motor’s noise, and saw the flank of Lloyd Guy’s Ford. A passenger’s head at the back window. Guy, he figured, had something to say to him about Toveys.

What did he need to ask Rohdl?

Not what happened, but what was unresolved—what, about the work done here, still had the power to threaten.

“Do you need a hand up, Mr. Rohdl?”

For a moment they stood facing each other, and when Rohdl began a slow shuffle uphill, Powell asked: “When did it happen? What day?”

“In May.” Rodhl spoke with an air of surprise. “Yes, May the sixteenth, four years ago.”

That the anniversary drew near must at any rate please Lettie. “But you’re here, Mr. Rohdl, you…”

He recalled what Summers had said. “You have something in mind.”

“I believe that it will all begin again.”

“But, you appreciate, I’m caught up in this, too. And I don’t know why.”

“First,” Rohdl said, “you must consider the answer that will satisfy you most. And the facts will not support it. So you are left to say, this is not the answer.”

41

Haunted
Are You Haunted (part one)

(2019, Stephanie Foster)