Hide and Seek

I was aware of a strong, fetid odor. The smell of old meat

spoiling.

I'd smelled it before but it was much stronger now, infecting the cool

summer breeze. I thought of death. I thought of a stale shallow tide

pool of sea water and rotted bivalves. I thought of skeletons

scattered throughout the litter of pots, pans, pitchforks and knives

around me. Not the skeletons of mice, either. I saw Ben and Mary

crawling out from under. The skeletons of cannibalized dogs.

The floor was wet, slick to the touch. I pushed myself up. I reached

into my pocket for a match. The game was over. I lit one and held it

in front of me. I cupped the match in my hands and stared into the

breeze. I thought of what Rafferty had told me about long ago, a quiet

warning none of us had heeded.

I moved along on hands and knees. There was no sound but my own

scraping sounds and the relentless gentle wind breathing at me. I

crawled in the dark. No more falling. In the match light I had seen

it well enough- a rough circular hole broken through the wall, no more

than two or three feet in diameter. Room to crawl through, or out of,

but no more. I followed the current of air, the damp scent of it,

slowly.

I approached it like the doorway to hell.

I knew she'd gone inside.

The smell wouldn't bother her, not for the short duration it would take

for me to find her. The darkness, the smell, the fear- all that would

make it more attractive. You fool, I thought. You damned idiot.

Make me mistaken.

I lit a match. I examined the opening. It was a tunnel cut or scraped

through the foundation. The clock was angled in such a way that,

standing, that and a pile of newspapers hid it partially from view.

Lying to one side was the old metal bucket. Was that what Casey had

tripped over the sound I'd heard upstairs? I pushed way the papers and

leaned inside.

I looked more closely. I saw broken concrete heaped to one side. As

though the hole had been dug from inside the tunnel.

Beyond the foundation work the tunnel led back a few feet through solid

rock and then turned a corner, so that the rest of it was blind, its

depth unknowable.

IV