The Grayson Trilogy

by Georgia Rose

  I jumped, definitely hearing a noise. I could see Grace had been startled too. I was pleased to see she looked stronger, with a spark in her eye as she urged the children on. Eager to make the most of this new burst of energy, I turned and smacked straight into a jagged piece of overhanging rock. I cried out at the sudden pain, my hand coming up to my face, my icy skin feeling good on the wound as my head swam for a moment. I bent double, leaning against the damp wall as I tried to collect myself, blinking away the tears that had come with the shock. Grace moved closer, concerned, but I waved her away. Damn it, I thought, I’d tried to keep silent, but if we’d been able to hear them, they must certainly have heard me cry out. I’d split my eyebrow open. I could feel it sticky wet on my fingers, could see the blood in the torchlight. It didn’t seem too bad, only a bit messy, I thought as I gathered myself and motioned for us to go on. I didn’t want our pursuers catching up. I could feel wetness trickling down my face, though I tried to leave the wound alone, knowing it would soon dry up and stop bleeding. But I wished I had some painkillers for the thumping ache that now radiated out from my eyebrow.

  The passage was changing, rock being replaced by dark earth, but more telling were the signs of human activity. Beams and struts now shored up the walls and the tunnel roof, and this I found alarming. When I’d investigated the cave the previous summer, claustrophobia had put me off going any further and I’d returned to the sunlight. On entering the cave this evening I’d been driven by fear and adrenaline to go on as far as possible, never believing anything like this lay ahead. The darkness in itself had been claustrophobic, but I’d refused to allow that fear to take over.

  Now it was a different story. The passage needed to be held up. From the groove marks on the walls, parts, if not all, had been dug out, manmade, and suddenly all I could think about was the weight of earth above us. My breath stuck in my throat as the air changed. No sea tang now, but a smell of earth. Usually it was one of my favourite scents, rain on moisture-deprived woodland, redolent of beautiful rich soil coming up at me as I rode through the trees, making up for the fact that I’d been soaked through by an unexpected shower. Here though the air felt stale, and I suddenly wondered if there would be enough of it to go around, what with all of us breathing heavily as we were with the route march speed I was setting. I could almost feel the air running out, my breaths becoming shallower, panic sweeping over me as I imagined what suffocation would be like.

  I tried to shake off these thoughts, but having anticipated that at any moment it was likely we would find the tunnel had caved in and we would have to turn around and face our fate, my mind now jumped to the likelihood of the roof collapsing on us. It must be unstable, I thought. It would have been many years since anyone had come down here; the walls were probably crumbling, the props and struts rotten. I could see the whole lot crashing down, burying us, and I didn’t think it would be like being crushed under rocks, which we wouldn’t know much about. It would be a painfully slow way to die, and no one knew we were here. As my panic built I could feel myself starting to shake. I drove on at a relentless pace, not allowing the others to slacken speed in my need to escape the darkness.

  For God’s sake, get a grip, I told myself. Now was not the time to end up as some pathetic shaking wreck, unable to go on because of a bit of claustrophobia. There were worse things in life to have to deal with. I knew that only too well, and I needed to fight these overwhelming feelings. Others were counting on me to get them out of this, and it would not help if I went to pieces. I tried to reassure myself that at any moment we were likely to come to the end of the tunnel. I was assuming it would be up in the village somewhere, and then we could seek help and this would all be over.

  Forcing myself to take deep breaths to calm down, I turned my thoughts to lighter things. Imagining I was riding Regan through the woods in a sunny bright shower; imagining the earthy smell rising up from the woodland floor imagining fresh air and sunshine and warmth. Warmth.

  Though I was sweating with exertion, my sweat was cooling too quickly so I felt clammy and shivering, and I knew the warmth I needed. Trent. I imagined him wrapping himself around me as we lay in a tangle of bed sheets. I imagined the warmth that came with being loved by him, from knowing he was there. Strong, dependable and warm. I gulped as my thoughts dived to another dark place. What if he was gone? What if I was alone again? It kept happening: I kept losing people. My parents – although my memories of them were nonexistent, I remembered the feeling of loss, the loneliness growing up. Eva, my treasured daughter, whose death I would never recover from. If I’d now lost Trent, I didn’t know what would become of me.

  I thought back to that moment only a few weeks ago when I’d nearly left the estate, afraid of the very thing that could now have happened. I forced myself away from these black thoughts. I couldn’t afford to let despair set in. Turning instead to more practical matters, hoping they would stabilise my emotions, I wondered how long we’d been walking and briefly shone the light on my watch. It was just after 2am. No wonder we were all flagging. I hadn’t looked at my watch before so I didn’t know how long we’d been going, but at a guess I thought we’d probably left the stables at around eleven. My thoughts briefly distracted me again as I worried about the horses, wondering if they were all right. Then back to the task in hand. I reckoned it could have taken as long as one to one and a half hours to get to the beach. It had taken quite a while to get through the woods, so that meant we had probably been walking for an hour to an hour and a half. I thought people walked at about four miles an hour, so we could be as much as six miles along this tunnel by now. No – even though I’d been moving us along as fast as possible, we were considerably slower than that, lucky if we were making half that speed. So, two to three miles, still quite a distance. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be a smuggler carrying goods up this passage. As my thoughts turned to wondering what they might have been smuggling, I realised how tired I was. My head dull and woolly, aching from the crack it had received, and with my difficulty in concentrating and my thoughts all over the place, I wondered if I was becoming a little delirious.

  Suddenly I felt Reuben pulling on the back of my jacket as he said, “I know where we are.”

  In my dazed state I wondered how that could be possible, but when I looked around I could see the passage had changed. It was now solidly built in dark red-brown brick. I stopped walking, and with huge relief collapsed to the floor. The others sat down too, and we huddled together in our exhaustion as Grace passed round our remaining bottle of water and handed out handfuls of the biscuits I’d packed. I asked Reuben how he knew where we were.

  “I found this place – well, it looks like this place – when I was exploring last summer.”

  Grace’s eyebrows rose, but all she said was “Where does it lead to?”

  Reuben paused for a moment, trying to swallow his biscuit, and took a swig of water. “It comes out…”

  I put my finger to my lips. “Not so loud.”

  “It comes out in the shed at the end of the vegetable garden,” he whispered.

  “I know where he means,” said Grace, ‘it’s an old brick building. We call it the shed. It’s where the gardeners store lots of their stuff. How did you come across it?” she asked. I could imagine she couldn’t quite believe how far Reuben’s explorations had taken him.

  “I like finding secret places on the estate, and the building was open one day and I looked inside before the gardeners shooed me away. I’d seen some doors in there that looked like a cupboard, although they were on a slope up from the floor.” He showed what he meant by gesticulating with his hand, and I imagined they must have been like the doors at the back of pubs for the barrels to be delivered through. “...And I wanted to see what was inside the cupboard so I went back when the garden was empty...” He tailed off as he realised he was on the brink of telling us something he shouldn’t have done. I saw him look up at his mother through his long eyelashes; a look that would b
e hard to resist.

  “Go on,” she prompted him gently, “you’ve got this far.”

  He sighed. “Well, I went back and it was all locked up, so I...” He looked down guiltily before confessing, “So I went round the back. There’s a small space between the wall and the building, so I went along there and broke a window.” I heard the intake of breath from Grace, but she didn’t say anything. Reuben added in a rush, “It wasn’t like I broke the glass, but the window was really old and loose, and when I pulled at it the catch didn’t hold, so I broke that off and climbed in.” I was quite impressed by his adventurous spirit but, mindful of Grace’s feelings, I tried not to look too admiringly at him.

  “So what did you do then?” I asked, needing to move the story along. I was very aware that our potential captors could be drawing ever closer, even though we hadn’t heard anything for a while.

  “I opened up the big doors that were in the corner. It didn’t look like anyone had opened them for a long time, but when I did I could see right down in this tunnel. At least, like I said, I think it was this tunnel...it was built like this.” And he ran his hand over the brickwork of the wall. “I went down it a little way, but it was a bit scary even though I had my torch, so I turned back.” He ended with a shrug as if it was nothing out of the ordinary. Goodness only knew what else he’d found on his explorations.

  “Okay, thanks, Reuben, we’d better get moving again,” I said, trying not to groan when my body complained as I pushed myself up off the ground.

  I cast the torch back down the passage, running it over the earthen walls and the tunnel roof, briefly examining the wooden beams of the framework. I wondered if I should attempt to cause a cave-in behind us to slow down and perhaps even stop those we suspected were coming up the tunnel. I tested one of the upright posts with my weight. Feeling it give a little, creaking as it moved against the board above, a light shower of dirt falling, I felt fluttering panic rise up in me again at the thought of following through with my theory. In practice it might bring down more than I was expecting, and would I be able to get out of the way quick enough? On the other hand, there was no guarantee I’d bring down enough to block the tunnel sufficiently, and what if we found we couldn’t get out of the doors at the end, supposing this even was the same tunnel? What if the doors had been locked since Reuben had been exploring? There were too many unanswered questions that might mean we’d be trapped in here with no way out, no phone signal, and – as was likely, and I had to face it again – the very real possibility that no one knew we were here. That thought depressed me enough to decide against my destructive plan.

  I took the lead again as we started up the passage, though now I was a little more hopeful. We hadn’t been caught yet, and it felt like we were coming to the end. How far would anyone have been able to build in brick anyway? It couldn’t be that far, I reasoned, and it was a lot safer being surrounded by solid walls. It definitely felt as if we were in a better situation than we’d been in for a while.

  Barely a minute later my torch shone on a brick wall directly ahead of us. My heart sank, thinking the passage had been blocked off, but then I realised with relief that this literally was the end. Raising my torch, I could see the doors above us, lower where they met the brick wall, then they slanted upwards into the tunnel roof. We stopped, allowing ourselves a brief celebration which consisted of us grinning at each other; a moment’s respite. I was the tallest and the only one with any chance of reaching the doors. Even then I could only just manage to place my palms on their surface with my arms nearly at full stretch. This could be a problem. After warning the others what I was about to do, I turned off the torch and plunged us into darkness.

  “Reuben,” I whispered, “when you opened these doors, did they make a noise?”

  “Yeah, they made a terrible racket.”

  Brilliant.

  I reached up and placed my hands on one half of the door, the wood rough on my skin as I tried to push it up. I mentally crossed my fingers, hoping that I’d be able to shift it at least a little; at least enough to prove it wasn’t locked. It was heavy, good solid wood, but as I pushed I felt it give. It rose a couple of inches, and I lowered it gently.

  It wasn’t locked, but now, having tested it, I didn’t know if I was going to be able to lift it as far as I would need to. I didn’t have enough strength for more than one attempt, and knew I was just going to have to go for it. There was nothing I could do about the noise. My overriding desire was to get out of what increasingly felt like a prison. I desperately craved fresh air again, so planting my hands back on the door I silently counted to three then drove up hard and fast, pushing up and over to the side as I struggled against the weight. The door groaned, unused hinges screeching as the old wood creaked. I stretched as far as I could, my fingertips the only things left in contact. The load lightened as the door reached the point of no return and fell back under its own weight – open.

  From where we stood, the crash of the door slamming back was deafening. As I collapsed back, gasping with the effort, I imagined that sound echoing across the estate, drawing our enemies towards us.

  Dust and debris, shaken into life by the reverberations of the falling door, rained down on us, and, as I waved my hand in front of my face to clear the air, I looked up, pleased to see the edges of the hole framing the lighter room above. Reuben had said the building had windows, and though it was still night, the darkness of a summer’s night was nothing compared to the blackness of the tunnel.

  The next challenge was going to be getting out. The bottom edge of the door was buried in a wooden frame which was a little above my head height. I glanced round at the others, pleased I could now pick them out in the dark.

  “Grace, can you give me a leg up?”

  She nodded, moving towards me, cupping her hands by her knees as she braced herself, her back against the wall. I put my foot in her hands and counted down, then launched myself upwards, flopping up and out of the door much like a sea lion coming out of a pool, though considerably less gracefully. The edge of the wooden frame bit into my hips as I wiggled forward. I planted my hands to each side as I struggled to hoist myself out of the hole, my legs flailing behind. One last heave and I rolled over onto my back, giving myself a moment as I lay there, gratefully taking in a deep breath of fresh...ish air – we were, after all, still in a shed.

  Eventually I sat up, crawled back over to the hole, and reached down to grasp Reuben’s outstretched hand. I pulled him up at the same time as Grace pushed from below, depositing him next to me before returning for Sophia. Lastly came Grace, needing two hands and more effort.

  Looking at Reuben’s small size, I said, “How did you get out when you came exploring?”

  “I used that ladder, over by the door.”

  A shame he hadn’t mentioned that before.

  I took a moment to look around. It was still dark, but not the absolute absence of light we’d experienced in the tunnel. Cobwebby wire-meshed windows on each side of the shed door as well as smaller windows on the back wall allowed moonlight in, giving enough light to see by. I closed the door to the tunnel, wincing at the noise that came from the hinges, then, looking around, spotted some bags of compost leaning up against the far wall. I carried one over and dropped it on the tunnel doors. Grace and the children followed my lead, Grace dragging the bags across the floor while the children carried them over between them, until eventually enough bags weighed down the doors and I was confident that no one would be able to shift the doors from below and follow us out.

  For the first time in what felt like an age I breathed out a sigh of relief, and we sat in a small circle on the floor, exhausted and filthy, as we finished the small amount of water we had left and handed out the last of the biscuits.

  I looked at the tired faces around me and I wondered how much more they had left in them. I was impressed by the bravery and strength Sophia and Reuben had shown; clearly they took after their parents. Not an ounce of whinging o
r moaning had come from either of them, but as both now leaned against their mother they didn’t look that far from sleep.

  We were now in the early hours of the morning, and as I contemplated our next move I realised I could hear nothing. Well, nothing other than the munching of biscuits. No gunfire; absolute silence. I went over to the door and tried the handle. It was, as I’d expected, locked or bolted, or both. Peering round the edge of a window that was dirty and thick with dust I struggled to see anything, though I was reluctant to wipe away the dirt in case someone was looking. I told myself I was being paranoid. Why would anyone be watching an old building in the corner of the vegetable garden? As my eyes adjusted I found I could pick out the shapes of the garden in the moonlight. The Manor was further away, but comfortingly there were a few lights shining from windows: a welcome sight.

  I went back to the others and pulled out my phone. There were a number of missed calls – none from Trent. Now, I thought as I called him, the moment of truth. There was no response at all: no ringing, no opportunity to leave a voicemail, nothing. It was as if the phone was...I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t think it. I tried a couple of others – Cavendish, Carlton – both times straight to voicemail. At least that was better than nothing. I left a message on each phone about our situation, but wondered why they didn’t answer. I didn’t make too much of it to spare the others, but saw the look that came over Grace’s face and had to turn away.

  I gently brought my fingers up to my eyebrow, tentatively feeling the wound. Though it was tender to the touch, the bleeding had stopped. I could feel the crusty scab and left that alone. I tried to rub away the dried blood that, by the tight, dry feel of my skin, had streaked down my face. I examined the wound on my leg. Dry now and bruised. I’d been lucky the bullet hadn’t gone deeper. I thought back to Regan and hoped his wound was similarly shallow.