Knock Before You Enter

by D. A. Bale

  “It’s numb now, at least.”

  Janine touched his forehead and shook her head. “You’re clammy.”

  “Maybe we could rest a bit longer,” Lucas said.

  I debated the wisdom of sitting here any longer. All I wanted to do was see daylight again. Well, being nighttime, at least breathe fresh air again. As long as I got out of this tunnel to Hell, I wouldn’t mind waiting a few more hours to see the sunrise.

  But Lucas’ needs right now were more important than my own. I think.

  “I have to confess something to you ladies,” Lucas said.

  “We’re not Catholic priests,” I returned.

  “Shh,” Janine admonished. “Go ahead, Lucas.”

  A rattled sigh. “Your grandmother asked me to keep an eye on you two this week.”

  “Ha,” I said. “Told you he was hiding something.”

  Janine pursed her lips. “But that doesn’t mean she told him about the journal…or about the gold.”

  “And I knew about the journal and the gold stories.”

  “Double ha!”

  The jolt of satisfaction warmed me up a smidgen. Only a smidge. If we got out of here soon, I’d never again complain about being too hot.

  At least not until next summer.

  “But all I was interested in was the historical value,” Lucas continued. “Miss Adelaide knew the history provided me with more fodder for keepin’ up with you two than any monetary considerations of phantom gold.”

  “So, you only hung out with us because Grandma-ma asked you to?” Janine’s bottom lip quivered.

  “At first.” Lucas clutched her hand in his whole one. “The gold stories have made people around here do strange thangs, and she was worried about what might happen to you…and I was too.”

  Time to get this wagon train moving forward before these two got stuck making goo-goo eyes at one another. “Think you can keep going, or should we come back for you once we find a way out?”

  “You’d leave me alone in the dark?” Lucas asked.

  “Does Homeland Security not teach survival training?”

  “They save bein’ stuck in spider-infested tunnels for the military…and the CIA.”

  I groaned. “Why did you have to mention spiders?”

  He released Janine’s hand with a chuckle. “I think my chances of survivin’ with you leadin’ the way are about as good as winnin’ the lottery.”

  “Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence.” I turned toward my bestie. “Okay, Janine, let’s go.”

  I snapped my fingers right in front of her nose to break her from the lovesick gaze and get her to focus. “Tuck the phone in the back of your waistband so you can breathe easier this time.”

  “You’ve got good vocal chords,” Janine said to Lucas, moving slowly to do as instructed.

  “Yeah, he’s got great projection, and you guys can discuss his opera career later. Time to put one knee in front of the other and get crawling.”

  Janine turned around and started singing about putting one foot in front of the other. Some vague recollection of a kiddie Christmas movie we’d watched a long time ago stirred in my memories. I’d listen to Janine’s lovely voice all day if it kept us moving forward – whatever it took.

  After what felt to my hands and knees like three hours of crawling later, Janine stopped short with a thud.

  “Ouch!”

  “What is it?” I asked, my voice muffled by Lucas’ butt cheek.

  “Oh-no.” She slapped her hands against something up ahead. “It’s the end of the line. We’re stuck.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Dear God, no! We’re stuck, Vicki. We’re never gonna get out of here. We’re gonna die in this Godforsaken aqueduct built after the Romans from Jesus’ time. We’re gonna…”

  “Shut up, Janine,” I yelled, then calmed myself down to think for a second after the echoes stopped. I squeezed past Lucas. “Sing another song. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Jesus Loves the Little Children. Anything but Itsy Bitsy Spider. Lucas, back up and get your face out of my carcass, or I’ll break your other arm.”

  Hmm. First time I’d ever told a handsome guy to get out of my business. I’d have to contemplate the ramifications of it all – later.

  “Technically, it’s my wrist.”

  His voice sounded weaker but at least he hadn’t completely lost his sense of humor – like I had. Being in charge of the rescue party kinda sucked that right out of you. The pressure was getting to me too, but at this point if I didn’t hold it together, we really were doomed.

  “Janine, move over and let me past you,” I commanded.

  After we sucked in our breaths and played a tight game of musical chairs – minus the chairs – the phone light reflected off our little impediment. A thick but rotting piece of old oak blocked our path.

  “Vicki?” Janine sniffled.

  “Hmm?”

  “Do you remember in third grade when you spent the night and George cut off one of my pigtails while we slept?”

  “Vaguely.” I pressed a shoulder hard against the wood and heard what sounded like a chain rattle.

  Maybe Jacob Marley really was coming for us after all.

  “Then the next day we went to the salon and I had all my hair cut off real short? And then you convinced my mom to let you cut off yours too so I wouldn’t feel so bad?”

  “Oh, yeah. My dad got mad ‘cause we were going to Spain the next week, and he thought he’d have to introduce me as his son.”

  Janine sniffled some more. “You’ve always looked out for me. Remember that summer after high school graduation when I left on that month-long music intensive in Venice?”

  “I got into a lot of trouble that summer,” I grumbled, smacking my shoulder into the wood again.

  “What’d you do?”

  “I can’t say in present company.”

  “What do you see?” Lucas called, interrupting Janine’s walk down memory lane.

  “It’s a big slab of oak,” I responded, feeling my way around the rough edges. “It almost makes me think of a cork in a wine bottle.”

  “That means we’ve probably arrived at the water source.”

  “But…but....,” Janine stuttered in a small voice. “If we remove the cork, won’t that let water in? And if we let water in, we’ll…we’ll...”

  “Not necessarily,” I said with a new realization.

  The survey popped again in my head, and I closed my eyes to bring it into focus. All of the lines led back to a single central point like the hub holding the spokes of a wheel. Janine’s words about Grandpa Lou’s story flooded into my mind.

  Uh, maybe flooded wasn’t the best term to use in this instance. Washed? No. Streamed? Uh-uh.

  Oh, hell. Everything these days came back to water. Like a well. Like the old well house that was boarded up after someone fell in and died and spoiled the source.

  “Lucas, could a hand-dug well have been the primary source of this water system?”

  “Sure. That would’ve been an excellent way to get water into the aqueducts. But you’d have to have some kinda way to direct the water flow. You know, to turn it on and off for each field.”

  “Like some sort of a pulley system operated from a well house?”

  “That would work.”

  “The well house,” Janine sucked in a breath. “Grandpa-pa told us the old story about it being closed up sometime during the war when a child fell in and couldn’t be rescued.”

  “Exactly. Here, Janine, hold my phone. Give me some more space.”

  Everyone squirreled a bit farther down the duct so I could stretch out with my feet in front of me. I hauled back and hit the oak blocking our path.

  Thwack! The reverberation traveled up my calves like a music beat and settled in my knees.

  “Vicki, what are you doing?” Janine cried.

  Thwack!

  “I’m knocking to see if someone’s home,” I grunted. “What do you think I’m doing?”<
br />
  Thwack!

  “But if you remove that cork thingy we’ll drown.”

  Thwack!

  “Not if Grandpa Lou was right.”

  Thwack!

  “Right about the well being filled in?”

  Thwack!

  “Uh-huh.”

  Thwack!

  “But that was a long time ago. What if he was wrong?”

  Crack!

  I stopped and felt around the oak cork to see if the efforts of my aching knees had paid off. “I guess we’re about to find out.”

  I pushed on the splintered wood and heard the definite jingle of Marley’s chains – but no water on the other side as the cork sunk away from the limestone duct.

  And hit another obstacle.

  ‘Cept this one had more give. I pressed my feet into service again and shoved with every last ounce of reserve I possessed, using Janine as my anchor. It moved aside as another substance edged around it and tumbled onto the lip of the tunnel.

  Dirt. Blessed sweet mother earth.

  “Janine, give me the light.”

  She handed me the phone. “Can we climb up? Can we get out? Please tell me we can get out.”

  I shone the light over the dirt then reached beyond the opening into the wide well to see rusted chains hanging from above and linked to additional oak corks wedged into what I could assume were the openings to the other ducts. I jiggled the chains and was rewarded with a shower of rusty flakes.

  “How does it look?” Lucas called past chattering teeth.

  “The chains are in rough shape,” I responded, my voice echoing up the well. “I’m not sure they’ll hold us.”

  “We have to try,” Janine whined.

  “Is everyone up on their tetanus shots?” Lucas joked.

  The phone light revealed the dirt leveled off roughly at the base of the duct system. How soft it was I really didn’t want to find out.

  “The dirt fill comes right up to where we are, but it looks pretty loose.”

  Lucas’s grunt carried up the flue. “At least we’ll have somethin’ soft to land on this time if the chains break.”

  “We’ll never know if we don’t try,” Janine pressed.

  “Ladies first.”

  I tugged on a chain and my body screamed in agony as I wormed my way from the tunnel and stood on the lip. Even with the stiffness, it felt good to straighten up again – and breathe the fresh air flowing into the well.

  “Do you want to go first?” I asked my bestie. “Of the three of us, you weigh the least and have a better chance getting all the way out and going for help.”

  Janine was the one having the worst time down here anyway, so it made sense for her to try for the top first. Oh, me and my unselfish, practical self.

  Wait – me practical? Unselfish? Two words I’d never thought of to describe myself.

  Hmm…

  Yeah, I’d ponder that one later too. Right now we had to drag our sorry carcasses out of this mess. I reached down and guided Janine to stand beside me, holding for dear life to the chain as it clanked against the limestone.

  “Just hold on and brace your feet against the wall,” Lucas called.

  “One hand over the other,” I reassured. “You can do it.”

  Janine nodded and began her tentative assent, my gaze and phone light practically glued to her butt as she clinked and climbed her way up the wall.

  “You’re doing great,” I called, stretching away from the wall so the light glowed brighter against the limestone until she reached the top.

  With a cry of relief, she scampered out onto firm ground. Lucky.

  “You’re next,” Lucas said, poking his head from the duct and smiling up at me from his supine position.

  I held my phone out to his good hand as he reached for it – then stopped when something below glinted from the dirt.

  “Wait a second,” I said, squatting down to shine the light toward the object with one hand while I held onto the chain with the other.

  “What do you see?”

  “Vicki, what are you doing? Get out while you can,” Janine’s voice echoed from above. “Oh wait…I can hear voices out here, calling our names.”

  “Run out and let everyone know we’re okay,” I yelled.

  “But the door is always kept padlocked from the outside.”

  “Then stand next it and scream those soprano lungs out until someone comes.”

  “Okay,” she said and disappeared.

  “And Janine?” I called again.

  Her pale face returned over the well opening. “Yeah?”

  “See if Addie has a bucket and some rope.”

  “Why?”

  “Cause there’s something interesting down here I think we’ll all want to see.”

  I stuck the phone in my mouth and stretched with my free hand to pluck the glinting object from its grave. The brass button didn’t come easily for a second until I tugged harder. I finally understood the resistance when tattered and moth eaten – or worm eaten in this case – cloth rose from the grime.

  And a bony hand followed.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I’ve heard it said by experts that the true test of a person’s character is to see how they react to increasingly difficult circumstances. Apparently those idiots never spent Thanksgiving in cramped and uncomfortable circumstances – and I ain’t talking about being around family. If I never again had to spend time trapped underground with my bestie in a cold, dark tunnel with the potential of death hanging over our heads – quite literally in this case – it’d be too soon.

  So here’s a southern salute to all those experts, along with a raspberry chaser. Better yet, a fist to the kisser, the way I felt after climbing out of that hole.

  Where was that cotton-pickin’ gardener when you needed him?

  As George said, payback’s a bitch. Turns out, everyone searching for us got royally freaked out when the lower part of a dismembered arm was discovered, the hand gripping Janine’s drawing of the aqueduct system. Only one other piece of a body was ever discovered and was enough to convince authorities of Maurice’s untimely demise.

  Don’t ask.

  Guess he wasn’t so senile after all. I sure hope that gator enjoyed his Thanksgiving meal ‘cause he deserved it.

  Maurice, that is.

  As for our Thanksgiving meal, we ended up spreading the love with the local police force, the parish sheriff’s department, and the state police Addie called after no sign of us was found and no one could reach us on our cell phones. Maisie did make about a thousand pies to go with our meal.

  Okay, more like thirty – and I enjoyed a sliver of each one throughout Friday’s machinations both in the house and outside.

  While Marcel oversaw preparations and a swirl of staff brought in for the Saturday soirée on the mansion’s inside, Jerome Barthélémy from the Historical Society oversaw the archaeological dig inside the well with the help of a few local students from Southeastern Louisiana University. I mean, the guy was nearly a hundred and couldn’t rightly go in there on his own – and neither Janine, Lucas, nor I were gonna volunteer to go back in there anytime soon.

  Especially not Lucas, after making it through a three hour surgery to put all of his wrist bones back together. It was a toss-up whose noggin goose egg was biggest, but since his drew first blood I’d have to defer to him. It was only fair.

  Mr. Barthélémy shuffled around the plastic orange safety fence surrounding the well house work site and over to where Janine and I sat in lawn chairs with some of the rest of the family gathered nearby, sipping Maisie’s warm Christmas cider.

  Funny, I actually enjoyed the warmth spreading through my innards.

  “We’ve sifted through the dirt and found something I think you’ll find interesting about the body,” he called.

  Janine leapt from her chair then groaned. “I still hurt in places I didn’t know I had.”

  “Just wait ‘til you lose your virginity,” I said, and g
ot a whack on the shoulder.

  “Victoria,” Mom admonished. “Don’t be crass.”

  “Ow! That wasn’t crass, it was crude,” I said, smacking my lips for emphasis as I finished off the last bite of chocolate pie straight from the tin.

  She smiled down at me from where she stood behind my chair and rubbed my offended shoulder. “I’m just glad you’re both alright.”

  “And that that gator didn’t get you,” George said, getting a smack on the arm from his mother.

  Holy buried bodies, I didn’t think I’d ever live to see the day Charlotte De’Laruse raised a hand against her son. I grabbed my phone and surreptitiously aimed it down the line of chairs to capture the moment for posterity.

  The sperm donor came around and sat in an empty chair beside me. “You’ve got to stop putting yourself into these ridiculous situations. This time you endangered not only your life but two other lives as well.”

  Mom’s hands gripped my shoulders before I could issue a retort. “I think what your father is trying to say is that he’s glad everyone is okay.”

  “Well, except Maurice,” I offered.

  My dad grunted. “Nothing more than he deserved, after throwing my daughter down a drainpipe.”

  Was that concern I discerned in his tone? The sperm donor? Hmm. I wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that one.

  “Vicki!” Janine shouted, her head popping up from others gathered around. “It’s Bonafeld.”

  “What?” I said, rising slower than Janine. “Why do you have the journal out here?”

  “Not the journal, the body…er, skeleton. It’s the skeleton of Lieutenant John D. Bonafeld.”

  “He was the one who fell in the well?”

  I rounded the safety fence to see mounds of dirt spread out and sifted over blue plastic that reminded me too much of Lucas’s blue tarp where we’d entered our almost-doom. A faded and worm eaten dark jacket with tarnished brass buttons was visible through the clear plastic tub, while someone else worked over what appeared to be the trousers.

  “Appears so,” Mr. Barthélémy said. “His papers were in an oilskin pouch inside the jacket. From what you ladies have shared, this Yank must’ve taken a tumble and couldn’t be fished out.”