Are You Haunted (part forty-seven)

Are You Haunted

(part forty-seven)

Interlocking rings of the same foul soot marbled the walls, a pattern showing a strange liquidity. On the floor, he saw two lines of charred, brittle stuff fallen from the steel beams—

Finally, he saw what the flashlight had not picked out at first.

A human form…another…and another.

They were not corpses abandoned in this place. They were only traces, outlines, indelible records, of lives that had ended here.

Just as his flashlight flared and dimmed, warning him the batteries were going, he saw a glint from a mortared groove. He fingered the object; slipped it in a trouser pocket. The work had been too gruesome for such minute attention, or the diamond had, in the way of things, worked itself from cover.

Powell was no judge of carat weights, but it seemed to him fair-sized.

He shut the flashlight off, tucked it into his belt, patted the wall down to the floor, walking hand over hand along it, hating what he touched—but at all costs he could not get himself turned in circles. He moved back down the ramp, muttering his puzzle aloud.

Maybe Tovey could bring a flash camera, maybe gain some leverage. No newspaper would print such a picture, but the Drybrook trust might buy the negatives. And any sum could be a lot to a Tovey; seed money, a toe at least, in the water of some future scheme.

Water…again. Powell chose this time not to care. He kept a hand on the wall and let his shoes splash. And when the surface below felt almost paved, it crossed his mind the fireball had baked the dirt in a kiln of heat.

Glazed it in fat…

But he was remembering something from the war. Rumination had brought him to a hesitant standstill. He was certain he’d climbed, shuffled an ascending gangway, climbed again…

A second ramp already.

Two coming down, one up…or, not that exactly…counting the opposite way…

One down and two up. Only he hadn’t in full consciousness counted at all—that he ought to have occurring to him now, too late.

He took a step.

He stopped.

It made no sense he’d missed the vent. He retraced his way, hands searching near the tunnel ceiling, where the opening must be. He could not have been below ground as much as an hour. The distance was not that great. Daylight ought to shine down the tunnel like a beacon.

46

Haunted
Are You Haunted (part forty-eight)

(2019, Stephanie Foster)