by Julie Hyzy
I wrapped my fingers through the metal ring before he had a chance to beat me to it. “Nope. It isn’t hard to open. It’s the noise I’m worried about.”
I knew he meant well, but I should be the one who opened the door for the first time. This was my house and my responsibility. Plus, I wanted to do it.
“Stand back,” I said to him. I raised my voice and addressed the rest of the group. “Cover your ears, I’m going in.”
I wished I could take my own advice. Shriek-y, high, and horrible, the noise was worse than nails on a chalkboard times a thousand. The hinges screamed for mercy as though they were being torn apart by a surprise enemy. Maybe that’s what I was.
“I can get some grease on those now,” Larry said over the din.
I blinked and ceased pulling. A cool, earthy gust rolled in as the door screeched its last protest. The overpowering smell of wet dirt held an underpinning of rot. I worried how much that dank aroma might permeate the rest of my house and I started to wonder if maybe there were dead bodies in there.
“Ugh.” I waved a hand in front of my face. “Can we get some windows open?”
Hillary turned to one of the workers and directed him. “See to that, Joe, will you?”
I peered into blackness. The room, or whatever it turned out to be, was definitely deeper than I’d expected, but I couldn’t tell precisely how large. The darkness was blinding, although I detected a faint reflection of light on a back wall. Cupping my hand to my mouth, I called, “Hellooo?”
“No answer, thank goodness,” Larry said.
“I would have fallen over,” I said. Looking around the interior, I asked, “Anybody got a flashlight?”
Larry pressed one into my hand. “Here you go.”
I turned and noted the group’s rapt expressions. “Anyone game to join me?”
Larry put his hands up and took a step back. “I open doors. I have no need to go through them.”
Rather than dissipate, the cold aroma of wet earth grew stronger. Wrinkling her nose, Hillary leaned to peer into the void and shook her head. “Dirt floor.” Pointing to her feet, she went on, “My heels will sink.”
I raced my flashlight back and forth, seeing nothing. “It doesn’t look too promising.”
The video person had come up behind me and flicked on her spotlight. I felt crowded with her hanging over my shoulder, but her light illuminated the entire space far better than the little flashlight could.
“There,” I said. My tone was triumphant but only to mask my disappointment. “It’s exactly as I expected. A tiny room.” I pointed to bits of long-forgotten coal. “Nothing.”
Larry leaned in, took a long look, and when he straightened again, he agreed with me. “Yep. Old coal bin.”
“No treasure?” someone asked.
Larry answered him. “Doesn’t look like it.”
The camera girl, probably disappointed to have accompanied her boyfriend only to come up empty, gave the room a long, final sweep, the bright beam light hitting every chunk of coal, every pitch-black angle of the rock-walled room.
“Hang on,” I said.
When she didn’t respond, I touched her arm. “What?” she asked.
“Can you direct the light that way again?”
The back wall of the little room was solid, smooth. But that didn’t make sense. Why should it look different from the sides? The rest of the room’s walls consisted of jutting, uneven stone, blackened from decades of storing coal. I pointed my flashlight upward, looking for a chute. “Where did the supply come in from?” I asked. “When it was delivered, I mean.”
“Probably sealed up the opening a long time ago,” Larry said. “To keep intruders from sneaking in.”
The cameraperson started to move away, but I asked her to give it one more pass with her spotlight. That smooth back section didn’t look right. “I wonder if the coal chute was behind that wall at one point,” I said, still trying to figure out what was amiss.
Larry was already packing up his tools. “Could be.”
I thought about it. “I’m going in,” I said.
Hillary blinked. “You’ll get dirty.”
“Something isn’t right.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I don’t know. But while we’re all here, I may as well check.”
The group shuffling ceased. The audience had come for a show and apparently decided to stick around a little longer in the hopes of getting one.
The camerawoman gave the space a dubious glance and asked, halfheartedly, “You’re not expecting me to go in there?”
With enthusiasm like that, no thank you. “I’m sure there’s nothing worth filming,” I said.
She backed away, shut off her spotlight, and held the camera at her side.
I lowered my head and eased myself through the small opening, standing up straight once I was fully inside. I traced the flashlight’s beam along the left side wall, to the corner, where it met the back.
“Hey,” I said. My voice echoed against the metal wall I’d climbed through, making it sound as though I was in a giant cavern rather than a small coal room.
“What?”
I couldn’t tell who’d asked that, the camerawoman or Hillary.
Didn’t matter. My focus was elsewhere.
The corner wasn’t right. Using my flashlight as a guide, I placed my hand against the back wall and skimmed all the way to the left, where I should have hit brick. I didn’t.
“This back wall is—” I didn’t have the words.
“Is what?” Definitely Hillary this time.
I ran my fingers up and down the back wall’s edge—which, if it had been attached to the side wall, shouldn’t have been possible. “It’s like a freestanding board here,” I said. Not only that: It smelled terrible. Of wet and rot. I was afraid of slivers and the long-buried germs that would accompany them. Using my flashlight again, I started to realize that there was a sizeable space between the side and back, running from ground to ceiling. “I think this is a fake wall,” I said, then checked the far right. Same thing.
“What do you mean, fake wall?”
I nearly rolled my eyes in exasperation. What else could I mean? “I think I can squeeze behind it.” I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of getting my clothes filthy, but I couldn’t stop now. “They’re washable,” I said under my breath.
“What?”
“I’m going to try,” I said. Easing slowly to the far left, I flattened myself as much as possible in order to fit into the space between the walls. I had no idea what I’d find behind the fake wall—probably nothing—but I wanted to get my head around the corner, if only to take a peek.
There was more room than I’d anticipated. My flashlight had distorted the perspective, and squeezing through turned out to be not hard at all.
I eased my left hand, the one holding the flashlight, around the corner, then followed with my torso, moving gingerly, worried about dislodging the giant wooden barrier and having it land on me.
When I managed to get my face around the corner, I pointed my flashlight forward. Nothing. But this time, there was lots of nothing. “Oh my gosh,” I said aloud.
“What, what?”
I pulled back into the coal storage room and crouched to face the group gathered at the opening. They stared at me, wide-eyed. “What’s back there?”
“A passage,” I said. “It’s a secret passage.”
Chapter 17
I stepped out of the coal room and back into the basement. “Well,” I said to the group as I slapped fine, black dust from my clothes, “there’s more back there than I expected.” I explained how I’d been able to sneak around the fake wall. “I’m going all the way in. If I’m not back in ten minutes,” I said, half joking, half serious, “send a search party.”
Bruce
had elbowed his way to the front. “You are not exploring an underground tunnel by yourself,” he said. “I’m going with you.”
Wes rubbed his beard, looking perplexed. “Count me in, too.” He pointed. “I have a guess as to what this is. I’d like the chance to take a look and confirm. You don’t happen to have another flashlight, do you?”
Bruce knew where we kept extras, and hurried to get a couple more. While he was gone, the reporter offered to join us. I declined. “Thanks, but until we really know there’s a story here, I’d rather you stay back.” I did think twice because his partner’s spotlight would come in handy, but I preferred not to be accompanied by a stranger, and in close quarters, three flashlights ought to serve us just fine.
“You don’t really think they buried people in there?” one of the workers asked. “I mean, that smell is pretty bad.”
“Can’t be dead bodies,” another person said. “Look at how old that wood is that was covering the door up. Anything buried here would have disintegrated long ago.”
“Burying people at home would have been illegal, anyway. It wouldn’t be allowed.”
One of his colleagues smirked. “Only if the law found out. I mean, if whoever owned this place murdered people, then no one would be the wiser, right?”
I shivered, both from the idea of walking into a homemade crypt and from the chill of the dank, deep air.
“Do you think we should call the police?” Larry asked.
“No,” I said quickly, imagining Flynn’s reaction. I didn’t want to deal with his snide commentary about how I was always caught in the middle of things. The chances of my basement turning out to be a tomb were slim. Less than that. My best guess was that this had been some sort of root cellar, closed up years ago when the owners no longer used it, or to keep pests at bay. That’s what I told myself, and that’s what I believed.
“There’s nothing here to see,” I said firmly. I forced a laugh. “You people have been watching too many TV murder mysteries.”
“I don’t know,” Hillary said. Her pert little nose remained squished up tight. “Things get hairy whenever you’re involved, Grace.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” I said with more bravado than I felt. At that moment, Bruce returned with two more flashlights. He kept one and handed the other to Wes. As he did, I continued, “Let’s all tamp down our imaginations, shall we?” To the other two men, I said, “You ready?”
They both nodded.
I climbed back in. Bruce followed and hung to my left, Wes to my right. This was tricky because there wasn’t much room for three adults in this small space. We ran the beams of our flashlights up and down the sides, and I immediately headed back to the space between the left and back walls and began to inch my way through. I was aware of the rest of the group crowding the doorway behind us to watch, jockeying for position.
Bruce stayed with me. Wes moved to the far right side, where he managed to make his way around as well. We waited for Wes, who gave an appreciative whistle as he cleared the wall into the tunnel of darkness. “Who’d have ever guessed,” he said.
“We should check out how far this passage goes,” I said. They murmured assent and we moved forward.
The temperature was cooler in here than in the basement, but the smell had become less intense. “Hang on,” I said, tracing a path at our feet. “I think we’re on a slope.”
We took a few steps forward, downward and deeper into the room. The dirt floor was surprisingly solid.
“Brick walls,” I said as my flashlight traced a path along one side and then above my head. “Wood beams above.”
“Thick beams,” Bruce said. He waved the bright light from side to side. “They look like railroad ties but thicker. Like the one that was installed over the top of the workbench.”
“I don’t recall coming across wood beams buried underground when we were working on the landscaping,” I said, but suddenly I did. “Wait. Remember those chunks of concrete?”
“Yeah,” Bruce said. “They were too big to pull out easily, so we left them there for another day.”
“We wondered why someone had buried concrete,” I said. “Now we know. They wanted to cover this room, or whatever it is.”
Wes aimed his flashlight deeper in. “Can’t see a thing, yet. It keeps going.”
“Going where?” I asked.
“Only one way to find out,” he said. “Would you like me to lead?”
The thought of insects, spiders, and other critters roaming around with us in here made me want to say, “Yes, please,” but my ego got the best of me. “No, I’ll go first,” I said. “Makes me feel a little like Nancy Drew.”
Wes chuckled.
Bruce said, “I preferred the Hardy Boys.”
I nudged him in the side. “You look like a Hardy Boy. You and Scott both.”
“I’m sure their fans would love to hear that,” he said.
“Ready?” I asked.
Hillary raised her voice from the basement. “Of course we’re ready! What’s down there? Have you found anything yet?”
I rolled my eyes good-naturedly before answering her. “Not yet. You want to come down and see for yourself?”
She mumbled a reply, which I took as a refusal.
“How far down are we?” I asked my companions.
Wes studied the walls and floor, but didn’t answer.
Bruce placed a hand atop his head and then reached up, gauging. “The walls here are about six and a half feet tall. When we first came in we were probably standing about ten feet underground, if you figure three and a half feet of dirt between the ceiling and the ground outside. Now, however—” He turned to face the way we’d come and ran his beam up along the descending walkway. “Maybe fifteen feet down?”
Wes scratched his beard, still saying nothing.
I turned to him. “At the outset, you told us that you had a guess as to what this was. Any theories you care to share?”
“Mm-mmm,” he said. “I’d like to do some digging, pardon the pun. I’ve visited many of these, but I’ve never encountered one quite this large.”
“One of what?” Bruce asked.
Wes flashed his light up, sideways, and deep into the dark again. “The small door was the first giveaway. Easy to camouflage and it’s likely we’ll find latches that can be worked from the inside. It will be interesting to see what we find on the other end. Depending on when this was created, it could be either a secret passage for bootleggers during Prohibition or a hideout for escaped slaves. A safe haven along the Underground Railroad.”
I thought about that. “Or both.”
Wes nodded. “Or both.”
We continued walking. The passage was dark as a tomb and probably as chilly. Bruce and I kept our beams forward, expecting to encounter an endpoint. Wes swept his light back and forth across the floor.
We’d gone another twenty feet or so when Wes gave a happy exclamation. Bruce and I stopped as Wes reached down to pick something up.
“Look at this!” he said.
Wes beamed his light at a small dark-blue glass bottle, turning it one way, then the other. The skinny flagon, not much bigger than Wes’s palm, had raised, vertical ridges and had been closed up with a stopper.
Bruce asked, “Is that significant?”
“It’s a poison bottle,” he answered with obvious delight.
“Poison?”
“These little bottles are highly collectible,” I said, taking the item from Wes and shaking it close to my ear. I hadn’t really expected there to be any liquid remaining inside, but was disappointed nonetheless. “Reproductions have been manufactured in mass quantities over the years because collectors like them a lot.” I exchanged a glance with Wes. “This one is probably an original.”
“That would be my guess,” he said.
I
continued to explain to Bruce. “Originals, like this one, came into popularity during the nineteenth century, to help prevent accidental deaths. The thought was, if the bottles were easily identified as holding poison, fewer folks would be likely to take a curious swig.”
“You know your history,” Wes said.
“Part of the job.” I rolled the small bottle in my palm then fixed the light on it to do a closer inspection. “This one appears to be in beautiful condition.”
“With its stopper intact,” Wes said.
“How valuable is it?” Bruce asked.
“Not enough for us to retire on,” I said with a laugh. “But if this is as old as I think it is, a collector might be willing to spend a hundred dollars on it. Maybe a little more than that.”
Wes took the bottle back and held the blue against his flashlight. “Yeah, maybe a little more,” he said.
I thought about it. “I’m not going to be able to do any homework on this find. Not for a while.”
Wes’s expression lit up. “I’d love to take that on. We don’t have any current projects at the historical society,” he said. “You don’t mind?”
I thought about my responsibilities at Marshfield, the continuing renovation here at home, and, most important, the investigation into Dr. Keay’s murder. I’d have no time to look into this myself. If Wes was as eager to dig as he appeared to be, it was a win-win for us both. “Not at all. I’d be thrilled.”
We continued walking. Bruce and I directed our lights forward; Wes kept his pointed toward the ground. We were silent for about a minute as we made our way through, which is a long time to be underground in a tunnel with no windows or ventilation. I wasn’t prone to claustrophobia, but I wasn’t wholly comfortable, either.
“How far does this go?” Bruce asked.
As though in answer, the ground began to rise. To say we walked uphill would be to overstate the situation, but as the floor had gently sloped down before, it now began sloping up.