by Susan Finlay
“Does that mean you’re married?” Tobias asked.
“Tobias!” Sofie’s face heated up with embarrassment.
“That’s okay. I’m divorced. The kids live with their mom. Ryan’s here with me because part of this trip is his graduation present. His sister is on a trip in Canada with her mother.”
Oh,” Tobias said. “Do you think your daughter will ever come here?”
Max shrugged.
“Can we see more of the house now?” Tobias asked.
“Soon, but after our surprise trip to the zoo, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I realize I’m getting hungry. Maybe we should see what food is left, first, and eat it. What do you think?”
“I think that would be wise,” Sofie said. “We don’t want to lure more animals inside.”
“Mom, it’s okay to say you’re hungry.”
Sofie gave him another reproachful look, and Max laughed.
They gathered up the bags and cooler, and carried them into the kitchen. After lunch, Max stood up and walked around the kitchen. “Do you think this house has a real basement or cellar? You mentioned cellars in town, but I haven’t seen one here.”
“Many houses have some sort of root cellar, but not all,” Sofie said. “My house does, but I can’t say about this one.” She paused a moment, then continued. “Of course, there was the underground bathroom.”
“Oh yeah, right,” Max said. “But maybe we missed a different basement door.”
A few minutes later, Sofie yelled out. “Over here in the pantry.” She stood in the far corner of the large pantry that Max had investigated earlier. It was so dark in the corner next to one of the shelves that she’d almost missed seeing the stairs, as he had apparently done. “See the wooden staircase hidden behind this large shelf.”
“Cool,” Tobias said. “Can we go down?”
“Be careful,” Max said. “That staircase looks kinda rickety.” He was right behind Tobias and Ryan, but when Sofie turned to look questioningly at Max, the two boys dashed around her and proceeded down the stairs into the darkness.
“No, Tobias! Slow down and wait for us. It’s too dangerous.”
“Ah, Mom!” Tobias stopped in his tracks halfway down and looked up at her. “Look, it’s fine.”
Pointing her flashlight down the stairs, Sofie walked cautiously down with Max on her heels, his flashlight providing additional light, for which she was quickly grateful. The air was damp and musty, the smell taking her back many years ago to a fascinating yet macabre tour she’d taken of the Catacombs in the network of tunnels beneath Paris. The tunnels, more aptly described as a vast series of limestone quarries, contained the remains—the skeletons—of six million Parisians who had at one time been buried in a real cemetery. She shuddered at the memory, hoping to find nothing of the sort in this dank dark place.
When she and Max arrived at the foot of the stairs where Tobias and Ryan were waiting, she aimed her light to look ahead. The cellar was larger than she’d expected, with very old-looking wooden crates and barrels stacked up along two of the walls, like barrels in the wine cellars at a vineyard she’d visited once. Along another wall various antique tools, old rusted milk cans, and other items she couldn’t identify were scattered about. What could an elderly woman have stored in those crates and barrels? Perhaps Max would open one to see. Before she had time to walk over to inspect them closer, she also spotted an ornately carved wooden door tucked discretely behind the stairway. Boards with rusted nails were leaning against the wall next to the door.
Tobias and Ryan saw it, too, and headed straight for it. “Where do you think this door leads?” Ryan asked. “Can we check it out?”
A loud creak caught Sofie’s attention. She swung around and watched as Lotte took the last step into the cellar, her mouth pressed into a thin line.
“Nein!” Lotte said. “Wir mussen gehen. Das ist ein schlechter Ort.”
Max shook his head. “What did she say?”
“She says this is a bad place and we must go.”
Max’s eyes widened. “Why?”
Sofie said, “I guess it seems a bit spooky to her, and I have to agree. If you’d rather go back upstairs . . . .”
“No. I think we should keep exploring,” Max said. “I admit your great aunt’s warnings about the house and this cellar gives me the creeps, and my overactive imagination doesn’t help matters. I have a weird feeling, though, that something has drawn us both here. That probably sounds strange and maybe a bit wacky. I’m not normally superstitious, nor am I a believer in predestination. But don’t you think it’s a bit too serendipitous that you and I should accidentally meet in town, two complete strangers, and then end up in this house and find out that our grandfathers knew each other. What are the odds?”
“No, I don’t think you are strange. I was thinking the same thing,” Sofie said. “It probably is just an odd coincidence and doesn’t mean anything. However, Tante Lotte has been acting rather oddly today and I get the impression she knows more than she’s saying.” Sofie shivered at the thought of her great-aunt’s words moments earlier.
“Yeah, I agree.”
“All right. We’ll keep exploring. But I think we need to stay together. We can check out that other door after we look around a bit more.”
“That’s a good idea,” Max said. “Let’s make sure this place is safe before we go venturing off. Even if this is only coincidence, from the looks of this cellar, there could be spiders, snakes, or something worse lurking.”
“Ooh, that would be cool,” Tobias said. “I’ve never seen a real snake, except in the zoo.”
Sofie said, half joking and half serious, “Thanks. This place is unnerving enough without worrying about spiders and snakes.”
Lotte waved her flashlight around, distracting Sofie from Max and the boys, pointing at the walls first before settling on the ceiling. Sofie let the light from her flashlight follow and then she saw, in the center of the room, a string hung down from a light bulb. Oh, thank goodness. She rushed over to it and yanked the string. Nothing happened.
Lotte stood next to her now, pouting. Sofie understood only too well. With only the light from their flashlights, shadows danced around the room, creating scary nooks and crannies. Sofie inched forward and then jumped and shrieked as a mouse skittered across her feet.
Lotte clutched at her chest.
A loud grating squeak somewhere in the cellar made Sofie turn abruptly toward the sound and proceed to walk straight into a massive spider web. Sofie shrieked. Lotte squealed and ducked. Flinging her arms, Sofie knocked down the web and shrieked again. After she and Lotte recovered, Sofie’s thoughts returned to the squeak.
Where had that sound come from? And why hadn’t anyone said or done anything when she shrieked?
Shining her light all around the room in a methodic pattern, covering virtually every space without seeing another human besides Lotte, she realized that they were alone.
CHAPTER SIX
A DOOR SQUEAKING behind Max instantly clicked with the boys’ interest in the ornate door near the stairway. As he turned, he saw Tobias and Ryan enter the adjoining room. He shook his head. Just great. That’s kids, never doing what you tell them to do.
Max took off to go after them, grabbing the spring-hinged door as it was about to close. He shoved it inward and entered the room, keeping one hand on the door. A sharp difference in temperature made him shiver and run his free hand over one of his bare arms. He pointed his flashlight ahead. “Tobias, Ryan, are you in here?”
“Here I am,” Tobias said, shining his light on Max. He was moving toward Max from a dozen feet into what seemed to be a long corridor. “What is this place? It looks like a tunnel.”
“I’m here, too, Dad,” Ryan called out from a bit further down the corridor, switching his flashlight off and walking toward his father’s light. “We don’t see an end to this thing, whatever it is.”
Max said, “We better go back out and wait for the women
.” He turned toward the door and his flashlight shut off. He flipped the switch off and on. Nothing happened. Letting go of the door, he gently tapped the flashlight on the palm of his other hand. Still nothing.
A loud squeak made him jump and turn around. Oh great! The door had closed itself, making it even darker.
“Hey, could one of you come down here and bring your flashlight. I need get better light. I need to find the door handle.”
“I will,” Tobias said, his voice shaking. “Do you think this is a dungeon?”
Max stuffed his flashlight into his waistband and looked at the frightened boy. “I don’t know? Can I borrow your flashlight? I only caught a glimpse before mine stopped working.”
Tobias handed him the flashlight. Max waved it around to get a better look at the surroundings.
“You’re right. This does look like some kind of tunnel. It smells odd, too, don’t you think?” He sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose at the disgusting odor. “Smells kinda like a mixture of sulfur and gunpowder.”
“Yeah,” Tobias said. “It really stinks.”
Max focused the light with one hand and ran his free hand along the wall in front of him, searching for the doorknob.
Ryan moved closer and shined his light on the wall, too.
When Max found the spot where it should be, he groaned. “Damn! The handle is broken off.” He tried to pry on the edge of the door, but it wouldn’t budge. Seeing no other choice, he started pounding on it with his hand and yelling Sofie’s name. While he waited, hoping Sofie had heard him and would open the door, he shined the flashlight on the walls on either side of the entrance. They looked extremely rough and contained miniscule crystals that sparkled like diamonds. He touched the crystals, then drew his brows together, remembering what Sofie had said about the meteor. Unlike the common stone of the rest of the cellar, the wall blocks were made from meteor material. Odd, he thought, logically, this hallway should have been constructed with the same rock as the rest of the house.
“I’m scared. What if my mom and Tante Lotte don’t hear us?”
“It’ll be all right.” Almost as soon as he said it, though, Max felt a rush of frigid air that sent shivers through his body.
“Where’s that cold coming from?” Tobias asked, his teeth chattering.
“Damned if I know.” As he touched the wall again, it began to tremble, along with the floor beneath him, gently at first but with increasing intensity. An earthquake. He’d experienced hundreds of earthquakes in California over the years, including one that shook his next door neighbor’s house off its foundation and sent it tumbling over the crumbling cliffside and into the ocean. He pulled Tobias closer and started to reach out for Ryan . . . and his flashlight went out again. Ryan wasn’t there. “Ryan! Ryan! Where are you?”
“Here, Dad. I’m here, but I can’t see you.”
His voice sounded close, and Max caught a fragment of light from Ryan’s flashlight, before it too seemed to extinguish. Max swung his hand this way and that, hoping to touch Ryan and pull him close, yet he still couldn’t find his son. A deafening roar that sounded like a jet engine revving up made Max jump. The shaking stopped for a second. Max let out his breath, which until now, he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in. Before he had a chance to think, however, the sound changed to an explosive whooshing, and the shaking began anew. While they stumbled and swayed, Max tried desperately to hold onto Tobias. Max wondered if he’d blanked out because the next thing he knew, he was spinning . . . Oh God! A hurricane and an earthquake? How was that possible? The whooshing noise hammered his ears, distorting his senses. Was he really moving in circles? He felt as if he was being turned inside out and he thought he was going to be sick. This wasn’t like any earthquake he’d ever been in.
Just when he thought he would pass out, Max slammed onto the ground. “Ouch! Damn it.” It was pitch black around him but the sound and shaking seemed to have stopped, except that his ears were ringing and his head was still spinning. At least he thought it was. He flipped onto his back, put both his hands on his head, and moaned. As his dizziness subsided, he slowly pulled himself to a sitting position. Suddenly, he remembered the cave tours he’d gone on with his family, back when the kids were little. The tour guide inevitably would turn off all the lights for a moment to give tourists a chance to experience the cave the way the first explorers had. Max didn’t like it then and he didn’t like it now. He got onto his knees, then stuck out his hands, feeling along the ground for Tobias and Ryan. The movement was painful and he imagined the bruises that were probably developing on his side.
“Tobias! Ryan! Where are you? Are you okay?”
“I’m over here, Dad! What happened?”
“I’m scared,” Tobias said, his voice shrill. “Everything’s black.”
“I don’t know what happened,” Max said. “I can’t even see my own hands in front of my face.” He reached around, but had lost Tobias’s flashlight in the confusion. Trying not to panic, he turned his head to the left and then to the right, looking over his shoulders. Was he really seeing slivers of light, or was his mind playing tricks on him? Please let that be light from outside. He bent down onto his hands and knees and started crawling toward it, while trying to push out of his mind the classic stories about near-death experiences—those stories about awakening in darkness and about going toward the light.
As he began to crawl along on the dirt floor, his flashlight bumped against his stomach, reminding him that he’d stuffed it in his waistband. Oh, thank God! He grabbed it and flipped the switch. Nothing. Come on. Please come on. Desperate now, he shook the flashlight. A dim light splayed. He could, just barely, make out the dim outlines of two forms sitting on the ground, a dozen feet away, maybe. He couldn’t be sure. Hell, he wasn’t sure of anything right now, except that he couldn’t continue crawling. His body ached, especially on his right side, not to mention that his knees weren’t in great shape anymore due to an old football injury. He needed to get up, but he wasn’t sure he could manage because of the pain from his crash landing and his slight dizziness. He stuffed the flashlight back into the waist of his jeans, with the light pointing toward a wall to guide him. He crawled over to the wall, reached out and grabbed hold of a rocky protrusion. As he pulled himself up, his fingertips brushed against something fuzzy. His first thought was ‘tarantula’, and he automatically pulled his hand back. No. Gotta risk getting bit. He reached out again, this time finding that it was only moss.
Pitch black darkness, rocks, moss, cave tour, dirt floor . . . his mind was working, calculating, tossing around what his senses were trying to tell him. This wall was completely different from the surface he’d felt moments ago near the door in the cellar. What the hell? Was he now inside of a cave?
Now standing fully upright, he retrieved his flashlight and carefully began maneuvering toward Tobias and Ryan. Halfway there, Ryan’s flashlight came on. With a second light now shining, the boys began moving toward Max. Max almost tripped over something, and bent down to see what it was. It was Tobias’s flashlight. As Max bent over to retrieve it, the flashlight miraculously came back on. It was providing more light than his own, consequently he turned off his flashlight and stuffed it back into his waistband. He stood up straight again, and was nearly knocked over when Tobias threw himself against Max and wrapped his arms around his waist, crying. Max was still confused and worried about their predicament, but held onto Tobias, stroking his hair. “I don’t know what happened, but we’ll figure it out. Don’t cry. It’ll be okay.”
Tobias pulled back slightly, wiped his eyes with the back of his free hand, and looked up at Max. “Where is my mother?”
Max looked around but didn’t see any sign of her. “We’ll find her. She’s probably still in the main part of the cellar. We should go back right away. Come on.”
Ryan said, “How do we get back?”
Max scratched his head. He opened his mouth to speak, to admit that he didn’t really know, but a lo
ud roar similar to before followed by a big whoosh of wind made them all turn their flashlights in the direction of the noise. “What the . . . ?” Max blinked and stared at a large spinning vortex-like opening, or doorway, wormhole, who knew what it was . . . that had appeared before them. He knew he was awake because his side still hurt like hell. He smacked the side of his head with his palm just the same, hoping that would rid him of the hallucination. Nope, still there. So much for watching sci-fi movies. They’d apparently warped his brain.
“Do you see what I’m seeing?” Ryan asked.
“What is that thing?” Tobias asked.
Max couldn’t think of a damned thing to say that wouldn’t make him sound as if he were a raving lunatic and scare the kids even more.
Ryan said, “That . . . looks . . . that looks like a . . . a temporal anomaly.”
Okay, yep. Like father, like son, Max thought as he patted his son on the shoulder. He opened his mouth to respond, then let his mouth fall open again as Sofie came flying through the . . . whatever it was, and landed with a loud thud on the ground about fifty feet from where the three of them were standing. Immediately after, Lotte followed, sprawling partially on top of Sofie.
Sofie screamed, then moaned and fell silent.
Max, thinking she might have lost consciousness or died, rushed to her side and checked her vital signs. Lotte, having a much softer landing, had moved off Sofie and was lying on the ground looking very confused but alive. With great relief, he found that Sofie was still breathing. “Sofie. Sofie. Are you okay?” No response. “Sofie. Can you hear me?” He took hold of her hand and rubbed the palm. “Please be okay.”
Her fingers flicked, and her eyes slowly opened. “I—I’m okay. What happened?” Her voice, though barely above a whisper, sounded shrill.
“We don’t really know.” He helped her sit up. “Did you hit your head or break any bones in the fall? Are you in pain?”