Bad Glass

“Yeah, he hasn’t been around much. Not since you got here.” We reached the stairway, and Floyd traced the wire back down the wall, where it disappeared over the edge of the landing. “He’s always been a bit of a flake, but …” He stopped in his tracks and turned back toward me, a perplexed look appearing on his face. “Actually, he asked about you last night, asked about your photography. He wanted to know what you were planning to do with all of your pictures.”

Uneasy gooseflesh prickled up along my back. My pictures. Was that it? Was this all about me?

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothing. I told him the truth: I have no idea what you’re doing.” Floyd paused for a moment, his face contorting as he tried to piece it all together. “What’s going on, Dean? Why’s he spying on us? And who’s he talking to on that radio?” He held out his hands, then looked left and right, a gesture that encompassed the entire house. Then his voice dropped down to a whisper: “And where’d he go?”

“I don’t know. I’m new here, remember?”

Floyd stared at me for a couple of seconds. His eyes were cold and accusing, like he didn’t quite believe me.

“Really, Floyd,” I assured him. “I’m as lost as you are.”

Finally, after a couple more seconds, he nodded, relenting. Then he turned and started down to the foyer.

The wire crossed over the side of the landing and proceeded down the wall, continuing to a doorway recessed beneath the stairs. The wire disappeared inside, squeezing between door and door frame.

Floyd nodded me forward, once again making me take the lead. His eyes were wide, and they kept darting back and forth between me and the door. His nerves were contagious. I paused with my hand on the doorknob, suddenly paralyzed by fear and doubt.

Is Devon waiting for us? I wondered. Does he have a weapon?

Or is there something worse in there? The thought made my blood pump cold inside my chest. Something not Devon. Or just part of Devon. An arm or a face, jutting out from a broom closet wall.

I cast the image aside and pulled the door open, releasing a gust of cold air that buffeted my face, making my eyes water. On the other side of the door there was a stairway leading down to a cellar. Only a couple of rough-hewn steps were visible in the dark, and the smell of damp earth gusted up from below.

“Fuck,” Floyd grunted. “Are we really going down there?”

“That depends. Do you want answers?”

Floyd let out another grunt. “I don’t know. I’m getting pretty good at living with mystery.”

“C’mon,” I prodded. “Shine your light on the steps.”

Floyd’s flashlight was tiny, and it barely scratched the thick veil of darkness. I took the stairs one step at a time, pausing to feel ahead with the tips of my toes. Our footsteps did not echo in the dark; every sound was absorbed and consumed inside a heavy, damp silence. I paused when we hit the concrete floor and fumbled my camera from around my neck. I worked the buttons from memory, turning on the LCD display and scrolling back to one of the pictures of Devon inside the house’s snow-shrouded window. It was a bright picture, and it lit the display like a fluorescent panel. I turned the camera around and used it to illuminate our surroundings.

The cellar was only partially finished. The walls and floor on the near side of the room were smooth stretches of dingy gray concrete, and the ceiling overhead was an exposed grid of joists. Three-quarters of the way across the room, the concrete gave way to damp earth, breaking off in a ragged arc that surrounded a hole in the far wall. The hole was a gaping dark void—about five feet around—and it absorbed the light from my camera, swallowing every trace like a giant hungry mouth.

“A tunnel,” Floyd whispered in surprised wonder. “A motherfucking tunnel!” I heard his jacket rustle as he sat down at the base of the stairs.

The dirt floor slanted down into the tunnel’s mouth. I panned the light across its width, finally noticing the thin white wire. It entered the tunnel halfway up its wall.

“Where’s the dirt?” Floyd asked. His voice remained a thin, breathless whisper. “The cellar’s empty. Where’d they put the dirt?”

I panned the camera around the room. Floyd was right: there were no mounds of displaced dirt, no equipment, nothing at all to support the logistics of such a massive project. “I guess it’s on the other side,” I said, taking a step toward the tunnel’s mouth.

Floyd was at my side in a matter of seconds, grabbing my elbow before I could even reach the damp earth. “You’re not serious,” he hissed, still keeping his voice low. “We can’t go in there. We have no idea what might be waiting.”

“Devon went this way,” I said. “He had to. There was nowhere else he could go! How dangerous could it be?”