by Peter Clines
“I think we’re there,” he said after the eighteenth step. He let the flashlight trace wide circles around his feet to make sure he wasn’t on a landing. It would suck to slip and break the flashlight. Or his neck.
The stairs came out along a wall. The floor was metal. It looked like he was standing on the hull of a battleship. Some of the rivets were ringed with bright orange circles. All of it was covered in dust.
He felt Veek step onto the floor behind him, and sensed Tim a moment later. “Everyone here?”
“Yep.”
“Yeah,” said Tim. “Do you see a light switch? There might be one down here, too.”
Nate shifted the light to the wall and found a push-button switch right where he would’ve reached for it. The lower button was in, the higher one was out. He pressed the higher one and it clicked into place.
Six china-hat lights blossomed across the room, hung in two rows of three. The one closest to them flickered for a moment, flared, and died. The explorers blinked. A few small spots of green, the only bright color in the room, skittered away. It took a moment to resolve the dust-coated shapes around them. They spread out to look at everything.
They were in a rectangular chamber a little bigger than the lounge three stories above them. The walls were wooden planks, shrunken and warped with age. The ceiling was steel beams and concrete.
A desk and a long table dominated the half of the room closest to the stairs. There were overlapping carpets laid out under them, covering the steel floor.
Six chairs were pushed in around the table. A few small jars were gathered at the center of it. Tim blew the dust off them. There was a white mass in one he thought was salt, which meant the jar of black and gray particles was probably coarse pepper.
Nate examined the desk. It was a large, solid piece of wood, the type of thing found in New England universities. He glanced over his shoulder at the staircase and wondered if they’d had to disassemble it to get it down into the sub-basement.
An ancient blotter covered the desktop. The edges around the pigeonholes were carved to resemble scrolling vines and leaves. A brass hook, brown with age, protruded above one pigeonhole. A ring bearing a trio of keys hung from it. They all had long shafts and blocky teeth.
There were a few papers in a box marked OUT and none in the box marked IN. Time had faded the ink and turned the paper to brittle sheets. A few of them had already crumbled on the edges under their own weight. A few more papers had been curled and inserted into specific pigeonholes, but most of them had cracked into fragments.
There was a calendar on the wall above the desk, hung by a nail. Like the papers, it had faded, but its ink had been thicker. Nate couldn’t make out the notes written on some of the days, but the calendar itself was open to November of 1898.
“I think that far wall’s just under the laundry room,” Tim said.
“No elevator here, either,” said Veek. She was standing at another steel-cage shaft a few feet from the stairs. The cables ran down into more darkness. She gave the gate a tug, but it was latched solid. She shook it and a cloud of dust formed in the air.
“Easy,” said Tim. “Kick up too much and you’ll choke us all.”
She snorted and snapped some pictures of the frame around the shaft with her phone. Then she dug into her pocket and pulled something out.
Nate tipped his head to her. “What've you got?”
“A nickel,” Veek said. “Call it.”
She tossed the coin through the gate into the shaft. It vanished. A moment later they heard a faint ping. Then silence.
“I think that was just it hitting the side,” she said.
Tim stepped closer and held up his finger for quiet.
“It didn’t hit bottom,” she said.
“How can you tell if you were talking over it?” growled Tim.
“It didn’t hit,” she repeated. “I think it’s still falling.”
Nate shook his head. “Can’t be.”
Tim pulled a quarter from his own pocket and silenced them both with a glare. He reached his hand through the gate and let the coin drop straight down. He cocked his head to the shaft and closed his eyes. Nate counted fifteen Mississippis before Tim opened his eyes again. There hadn’t been a sound.
“That’s disturbing,” said Veek.
Tim nodded in agreement.
“What are all those?” said Nate. There were three bundles leaning against the wall, like sheets of canvas wrapped around long boards. Each one was fastened with what looked like a pair of thin belts.
“I think they’re cots,” said Tim. He ran his finger along one and the canvas frayed at his touch. “Old camp beds.”
Veek walked past them to glance at the desk. She took pictures of the desk and the keys and the calendar. Then she moved to the back half of the room. It was separated from the front half by two concrete pillars sunk into the walls, almost making it a room of its own.
There were no carpets or wood plank walls in this section. The metal floor was a gong under her heels. A little further down the wall from the desk was what looked like a tool bench. Across from it was a row of lockers. Veek counted six of them. They were made of wood, but looked like every set of gym lockers she’d ever seen.
Her eyes followed the edge of the room and stopped at the back wall. The pattern of rivets was different there. They doubled up and traced a large rectangle on the wall. If she hadn’t been this close, she never would’ve seen it. Inside the line of rivets was a stubby handle, maybe six inches long, almost lost in the dust and cobwebs coating everything. She took a step closer and saw a dark blister at the center of the rectangle. It might have been painted black, but the thick layer of dust made it hard to tell.
Veek stepped to the wall. She crouched, took in a deep breath, and blew at the blister. The dust scattered and leapt into the air. A lot of it bounced back in her face. It revealed enough that she swept the rest away with her fingers.
“Oh,” she coughed, “wow.”
Nate looked over at her. “What’s that?”
“Come see.” She wiped the dust from her face and raised her phone. The camera clicked. She bent to blow another puff of air at the line of rivets.
Nate and Tim walked into the back half of the room. “Well, well, well,” said Tim.
Set in the back wall of the room was a vault door. It was tall enough for Tim to walk through without ducking his head. Veek had cleaned most of the dust from the combination dial. It was black with white numbers and lines, set into a silver ring. The squat handle was made of dull steel and still draped with cobwebs. As Nate studied the door he could see the recessed hinges along the opposite side. They’d been hidden by a century of dust.
Tim crouched to examine the dial. It was reset so the 0 was at the twelve o’clock position, just below the small arrow marking the position of the dial. To the left of 0 were four white lines and then a 95. “One hundred digits,” he said. “A million possible combinations, assuming there’s only three numbers.”
Nate glanced from the dial to Tim. “There could be more?”
He nodded. “There’s different classes of combination locks, depending on how the wheelhouse inside them is built. Nowadays you’ve got class twos, which are your basic combination padlock or gym locker,”—he glanced over his shoulder at the row of wooden lockers—“or you’ve got class ones, which are the things on bank vaults, big safes, and so on. One as old as this doesn’t follow the actual classifications, but the technology really hasn’t changed much since Houdini was breaking out of them.” He reached out a hand and rapped his knuckles on the door. It was the dead sound of thick, solid metal. “The combination for this thing could have three digits, or four, or five...” He shrugged.
Veek had turned to snap pictures of the room from the other direction. “You know what this place reminds me of?”
“What?” asked Nate.
“A break room.” She tipped her head to the lockers. “There’s a place to hang your work
clothes or your non-work clothes. A place to put your tools away.” She gestured at the other half of the room with her phone. “Have lunch, maybe get a quick nap. Somewhere for the boss to sit and get caught up on stuff.”
“You know what gets me?” said Nate. “This place is so neat.”
Tim smirked and puffed another cloud of dust off the combination dial.
Nate shrugged. “It hasn’t been used in a while, but look at it.” He gestured at the table. “All the chairs are pushed in. The table’s cleaned off. Everything’s filed away on the desk. Whoever was working here didn’t leave in a rush. They took their time when they were done here.”
“Not like the message on your wall,” Veek said.
“Right.”
“What are you thinking?” asked Tim.
Nate looked around the room. “I’m wondering if whatever was going on here wasn’t just a brief thing. What if it was going on for years? The date on the calendar’s four years after the date on the cornerstone.” He gestured at the lockers and the desk. “You don’t set up all this for a weekend project. Probably not even for something you’re going to spend a few months on. I think people were working here. All this...this was somebody’s full-time job. They had time to clean up, and they expected to come back. Son of a bitch.”
Veek tilted her head at him. “Yeah?”
He glanced at her, the vault door, and then at Tim. “Could that lock have six numbers?”
Tim nodded. “Class ones can still be set to six digits today. It doesn’t even change the mechanism that—shit. Do you have a picture of it?”
They looked at Veek. She tapped and swooshed at the screen of her phone, then held it up. On it was one of the images from her wall.
66–16–9—4—1—89
“Read them off to me,” said Tim. They tried it once, but the handle refused to budge. He spun the dial a few times to reset it and started again. This time he turned in the opposite direction for each number. The dial settled on the line next to 90 and he gripped the handle again.
The dull steel resisted for a moment, then swung up. They felt the vibration as bolts that had rested for decades shifted inside the door. The clang echoed through the room and made the floor tremble.
“Not ominous at all,” said Veek.
Tim pulled the handle. The vault door drifted forward inch by inch. The hinges groaned and sent another vibration through the floor. Nate and Veek added their weight. A foot of steel swung away from the wall before musty air spilled out from behind the door. It was warm. It smelled hot.
They stepped back to look at what they’d revealed.
“Well,” said Nate after a moment, “we should’ve seen that coming.”
Forty One
Inside the vault was a small space, not much bigger than a closet. Half the floor was a circular opening like a manhole. The edge was a smooth curve of metal, hammered over and riveted in place. Bolted to the back wall of the closet was a metal ladder leading down through the hole.
Nate leaned forward and switched the flashlight on. Veek squeezed in next to him. The beam sank into the hole and formed a circle of light a few yards below. “Looks like it doesn’t go far,” he called back to Tim. “Maybe twenty feet, tops.”
Veek looked around. “Ahhh,” she said. She straightened up and hit another pushbutton switch just inside the vault door.
Down in the hole, a light came on. They could see another dust-covered metal floor.
Nate handed her the flashlight and grabbed the rungs.
“Hang on,” said Tim. “We don’t know what’s down there.”
“That’s why I’m going down,” said Nate.
“Just take your time and be careful, ace. Just because we’re on a time limit doesn’t mean we should rush. This has all been here for over a hundred years. It’s not going anywhere.”
Veek looked at him. “What are you worried about?”
“I’m worried that a ladder’s damned easy to booby trap. Whoever built this place wanted to protect it.”
“I don’t think we need to worry about traps,” Nate replied. “Like I said, I think people were working here. You don’t booby trap the office if you’re expecting to come back the next day.”
“Depends on the office,” said Tim.
Nate smiled and swung out onto the ladder. It was flecked with rust but took his weight without a sound. He looked over his shoulder and locked eyes with Veek.
“Right behind you,” she said.
He climbed down through the manhole. The inside was a circular tunnel of steel. He paused on the ladder to glance over his shoulder and saw a line of shadows he was pretty sure were rivets. He had a brief moment of claustrophobia, but a moment later the shaft opened up into the next level. His feet touched the floor and the first bead of sweat ran down his temple. It was warm down below, and the temperature shift was like stepping out of an air-conditioned store on a hot day.
The lower room was the size and shape of Nate’s kitchen. The metal tube he’d climbed down through extended a foot and a half through the ceiling. The walls were bare metal. A single bulb lit the room, connected to two thin wires twisted into one. The bulb looked swollen and had an odd shape to it. The glass was clear and he could see the filament glaring inside of it.
The entrance to a wrought-iron spiral staircase filled the other half of the room. It sank down into the floor and out of sight.
Veek came down out of the tube. “Oh my God it’s hot.”
Nate dabbed at his forehead. “I don’t think it’s that bad,” he said. “I think it’s just the sudden change.”
She shook her head as she stepped off the ladder. “It’s that bad,” she said. “I hate the heat.”
Tim let go of the rungs and dropped the last few feet to the floor. “Been worse places,” he said, looking around the room. He squinted at the light. “That’s not a standard bulb.”
Nate shook his head. “If upstairs was old, I’m guessing this is older. No one’s opened that door in a hundred years, I bet.”
They gathered around the staircase. With its steep curves, the bottom was nowhere in sight. Nate stretched his neck out and looked as far as he could. There was light shining around the phone-pole-like center of the stairs. “It’s made of rock,” he said. “This isn’t a finished tunnel, it’s just cut into the ground.”
Veek looked around the room. “We’re three stories down now, right? The sub-sub-basement.”
Tim nodded. “We’re probably about level with the base of the hill,” he said. “Maybe even a little lower.” He pulled something out of his pack and held it on his palm. “Compass still doesn’t work.”
“Well,” said Nate, “do we keep going?”
They looked at Tim. The older man glanced at his watch. “We’ve got a little over thirty-five minutes left,” he said. “Going up always takes more time than going down. Let’s say we’ve maybe got fifteen more minutes before we need to head back. Hang on a minute.” He slid his pack off his shoulder and pulled out a large bottle of water. “Everyone take a hit.”
Veek took the bottle, cracked the plastic seal, and chugged three big swallows.
“You really came prepared, didn’t you?” Nate said. He took the bottle from Veek and let it pour down his throat.
“I was a kick-ass Boy Scout,” Tim said. He wiped off the lip of the bottle with his hand and took two big swallows. “Let’s see how far we can get.”
Nate led them down the staircase. Veek was behind him, one hand on his shoulder again. Tim brought up the rear. It only took a few steps for Nate to realize the spiral staircase would get dizzying if they moved too fast.
A pair of twisted black wires ran along where the steps connected to the stone. Every ten steps or so the wires split off and ran up to a crude alcove chopped out of the rock just above head height. A bulb sat in each one on a ceramic base. One or two of them had frosted glass blocking the alcove. Some just had shards.
“Fifty steps,” said Veek after a couple
of minutes.
Tim let his foot come down heavy. “Yep.”
“I’m glad you guys thought to count,” Nate said.
“You’re in front,” said Veek. She patted his shoulder. “It’s your job to block the crossbow traps.”
Tim made a grunting sound that might have been a laugh. “You feel that?” he said.
Nate stopped. “What?”
Tim had his hand on the center post of the spiral staircase. He waved at them to do the same. Nate set his palm against it. Veek reached out with cautious fingers.
A vibration echoed through the post. It was low enough it didn’t spread out into the air, but strong enough it couldn’t be denied. Nate shifted his hand, then took another few steps and shifted it again.
“It’s like high tension lines,” said Veek. “The way they make the air buzz.”
They exchanged looks and continued down.
A few moments later Veek called out sixty and then seventy. The thought crossed Nate’s mind that one hundred was a good landmark to stop at. Maybe they’d be able to leave a mark of some kind.
He took another lopsided step around the curve of the staircase and saw the bottom in the light from the stairwell. Another two steps and he was standing on dirt and stone. Veek and Tim appeared on either side of him in the gloom.
On the wall was a square of wood. A large knife switch was mounted on it, one of the blocky, Y-shaped ones used by mad scientists to activate doomsday machines and bring monsters to life. It was in the down position.
Nate stepped past Veek and heaved the switch up. The contacts crackled. Light overthrew the darkness.
“We are in a Scooby Doo cartoon,” murmured Veek.
They were in a mine shaft. Nate had never been in one before, but the tunnel matched every mine shaft he’d ever seen in films and television shows. The floor, walls, and ceiling were all carved out of the earth and all flowed into one another. Every seven or eight feet an arch of thick timbers braced the tunnel. He could see one place where three arches stood right next to each other.