Chapter 28
I stare up at the dilapidated building and press my lips into a flat line. I never thought I’d be anywhere near this place again, much less willingly walking in at night, but this is so much bigger than my stupid fear. I need to be there for Ivy. I want to be there for Ivy, to help her through this.
I don’t know when it happened exactly, when she managed to wiggle her way past the steel walls I’d put up, infiltrating my heart from the inside out. All I know now is, she’s the sun I revolve around. She’s sunny spring days and beams of sunshine that warm your skin after a bitter, cold winter that seemed to never end. She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. She’s everything I never knew I needed.
“Watch your step.” I take her hand and lead her through the old metal door dangling on broken hinges.
We duck inside, letting our eyes slowly adjust to the darkness—a darkness that seems almost unnatural, blacker than any night sky. I turn the flashlight from my phone on, illuminating the dark, dusty space as we work our way inside, the floorboards creaking underneath us with every step.
It’s so eerily quiet, I can almost hear the dust stirring in the air from our footsteps.
We move farther inside, past piles of bricks and mangled steel, stepping over rubble and debris. You can’t make out anything from the original setup, but it’s not hard to imagine how it used to look.
Ivy spins around, taking it all in. “I can’t believe this is where it all happened. How many people did you say died in the explosion?”
“Sixty-three,” I answer automatically.
The number’s been burned into my memory since I was a kid, the same number that’s haunted me from my own past. The past I never talk about.
“Didn’t you say that’s how many people died in your factory explosion too?”
I grit my teeth. “Yeah. Sixty-three.”
“That’s so ironic,” she says, squatting to pick up an old black-and-white photo.
In the picture, a young woman beams as a man stands behind her, his arms wrapped around her playfully as he kisses her cheek. They look so happy, so in love. It’s probably an engagement photo, if I had to guess. Their smiling faces are like a punch straight to the gut.
“Do you think they knew? Before it happened?”
I turn to Ivy, confused by her question.
She pulls at her hair—her tell that she’s nervous or uncomfortable. “I just mean, my sister used to say that people have a sixth sense about when death is near, like a way to help prepare them or whatever.” She shrugs. “Fern knew. She told me two days before she died. She’d actually just gotten some really great news about her levels. The doctors thought she was going into remission, but she knew. She predicted it down to the hour.” She bites her thumbnail nervously.
I kick the dirt at my feet, unable to look her in the eyes. “I don’t know. Part of me hopes they didn’t know …”
“Yeah. Me too.” Her voice is small and quiet, like we’re both talking about something else entirely.
Not a day goes by that I don’t think of the people who lost their lives because of my negligence. If I could go back in time, I’d do so many things differently. But that’s the thing; I can’t. I’ve done everything I can to try to atone for my mistakes. With my own personal funds, I paid their families a generous settlement, as well as a monthly stipend for the next fifty years, and I’ve tripled our company’s safety requirements.
Torturing myself isn’t going to bring anyone back to life, but maybe it’s possible to remember them without the soul-crushing guilt I’ve been carrying.
For the first time in my life, it’s like I can see a light at the end of the tunnel, but the light isn’t some mystical thing; it’s Ivy and her rays of sunshine slicing through the edges of my darkness. It hardly feels like a coincidence that I’d meet her while walking alone in the woods at night, and at this point, divine intervention seems like a better explanation than happenstance.
“What’s that over there?” She points to a hatch door leading to the bunker below.
My chest pinches at the sight of it. Swallowing a gulp, I say, “It’s a bunker; it was supposed to be a safe space to protect people in the event of an accident …” I trail off, and the unsaid words hang in the air between us.
I open the door, revealing the top of the metal ladder, and shine my flashlight, illuminating the narrow space below. “It connects to the cave underground. They built a tunnel system so they’d have access to both sides. It’s … actually the exact spot where the Phantom allegedly appeared.”
Her eyes widen. “Can we go down there?”
I knew this was coming, but that doesn’t make it any easier, and there’s no way I can deny her this, not after everything she’s told me today. “Yeah, I’ll take you down there, but you have to promise to stay close to me. It’s pretty far down.”
“Promise.” She loops her little finger in mine before kissing her hand.
“Let me climb down first, and you can follow me. That way, I can catch you if you slip.”
I take a deep breath as I squeeze through the narrow opening, slowly making my way down the ladder. I breathe through my nose, counting backward from one hundred. I try to imagine a spacious room, full of fresh air rather than the dank, cramped cave surrounding me.
When my foot touches the solid earth, I let out a sigh of relief as I reach to help Ivy down the rest of the way. At least this way, I know she won’t hurt herself.
I lead her through a wide pathway, and it’s so much tighter than I remember when I was twelve. I almost lose my battle to keep my panic at bay when I have to turn to the side just to squeeze through, but then the tight space opens up, and we’re inside the bunker area. It’s still pretty cramped but light-years better than what we just came through.
Rows of cots and metal bunk beds line the space, and a large metal shelf sits on the opposite end with century-old soup cans and supplies.
“Whoa, this is so cool.” Ivy moves to explore the decade-old stash of supplies, covered in a thick layer of dust and soot. She holds up a pocket watch. “Look at this stuff. I can’t believe all of this is still down here …”
When I don’t respond, she turns around to find me bent at the waist as I try to calm my breathing. I hold up a hand to wave her off. “Don’t worry; I’m fine. I just need a minute.”
She’s by my side before I can even finish. “Are you okay? Here, why don’t we sit down?” She leads me to sit on the cool stone ground beside her.
“It’s fine. Really, I’m fine,” I try to assure her, but the worry on her face says she’s not buying it. “I’m just a little claustrophobic—that’s all.”
“It looks like it’s more than a little. I can feel your heart racing, and you’re white as a ghost. Why’d you bring me down here? You could’ve said no. I would’ve understood.”
I wrap an arm around her, letting the scent of her shampoo ground me back from my panic. When my breathing finally returns to a semi-normal pace, I find Ivy staring at me like she’s waiting for an explanation.
“Have you always been claustrophobic like this? Is that what your brothers were teasing you about that night when we were camping?”
I clench my teeth and brush my hand over my jaw. “Sort of. I, uh … remember when you asked me about my scar?”
She nods, placing a hand on my thigh.
“I actually got it the first time I ever came down here—the only other time I’ve been down here. I was twelve, and everyone at school was obsessed with the Phantom. We’d all grown up hearing the stories, and we used to argue about whether or not he was real. I, of course, didn’t believe in him while all the other kids in my class did. One day, I made a big deal about how I wasn’t afraid of the Phantom. I was just trying to be cool, but they called me on it. They dared me to spend the night down here and provoke him, to prove that I wasn’t scared. And if I survived, then they’d believe me too.
“It was so stupid, idiotic actually, but I did it even though I was scared shitless.
“Anyway, I waited for my parents to fall asleep, and as I was sneaking out of my window, Jett walked in and caught me. He’s only eleven months younger than me, so he knew about everything from the kids at school. He tried to talk me out of it and finally threatened to wake up our parents if I didn’t let him tag along.
“We were both scared; we’d never done anything like this, and the only knowledge we had of the Phantom had come from the scary stories we’d grown up hearing. But neither of us talked as we walked the two-mile hike, cutting through the forest, and made our way inside.
“We came down here to the bunker and laid out our sleeping bags on the cots, both of us pretending we weren’t terrified. Somehow, we eventually fell asleep.
“At some point during the night, I woke up shivering and realized our lantern had gone out. There was a horrible stench in the air, and when I reached for my flashlight, it wasn’t there.
“I was growing more terrified by the minute. I tried to call for Jett, but I couldn’t see anything. It was pitch-black dark, and I started to feel like the walls were caving in on me. I had this bone-chilling fear wash over me. I know now that I was having a panic attack, but I felt like I was suffocating.
“I couldn’t find my flashlight anywhere—I guess it’d rolled underneath my cot or something when I panicked. All I could do was scream for my brother. Jett woke up, not knowing what was going on, and I know I must’ve scared the shit out of him too. He couldn’t find his flashlight either, but he was able to lead us back to where we had come in.
“He went ahead of me on the ladder so he could open the hatch door as I struggled through panicked tears right behind him. My arms and legs were shaking so violently that I had a hard time keeping my balance, and when I got to the top of the ladder, my foot slipped. My hands were so sweaty that I wasn’t able to get a good enough grip to catch myself.
“I fell almost thirty feet, landed on my leg so hard that the bone snapped completely in two, breaking all the way through my skin. I’d never experienced so much pain in my life, and there wasn’t anything Jett could do to help me.
“He ended up running the whole two miles home in the middle of the night to get my parents. They had to send a rescue crew to pull me out. I had to have two surgeries to repair my leg and spent the rest of the school year in a wheelchair.”
“Oh my God, Leo, that’s awful. You must’ve been so afraid, waiting down here all by yourself, not to mention hurting.”
I nod, remembering that fear all too well. “I had nightmares for years after that. I’d dream the Phantom was there with me, watching me, taunting me for being reckless. At one point, I was convinced he’d been the cause of it, that he was the reason I slipped.
“Eventually, my parents had to put me in therapy because the dreams wouldn’t go away. After a while, they stopped, but the weird thing was, as soon as I got promoted and put in charge of safety, they came back. Only this time, rather than being trapped and alone, I would see an explosion. Sometimes, I was working with the crew, and other times, I was spectating, but every single time … I was the one responsible, and the number was always the same. Sixty-three.”
I let out a sigh and shake my head, and Ivy runs a hand over my jaw.
“You think the Phantom was warning you because you were being reckless again?”
I shrug. “I don’t know what to think, but when it actually came true, I vowed I’d never be that negligent ever again.”
“And you never told anyone this? Not even your brother?”
I shake my head. “No, Jett and I have always had a rough relationship. We were hardly speaking at that time in our lives. Besides, he’s got his own shit to deal with.
“So, that’s all of it. Now, you know every dark secret about me …”
She loops her hands behind my neck and pulls me into a hug. “Thank you for trusting me with that. I get why that would make you so uptight. I just wish you’d told someone about it before now. You might’ve been able to let go of some of your guilt.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to see that you’re right.” I push myself up to stand and offer my hand to help her up. “Enough about all of that stuff.” I gesture over my shoulder with my thumb. “This could be a pretty awesome place to sprinkle your sister’s ashes if you want to check out the cave.”
Her eyes fall, and she shoves her hands in the pockets of her overalls as she shuffles her feet. A few moments pass before she finally speaks, the usual brightness in her eyes replaced with something dull and heavy. “I don’t know, Leo. You’re right; this is exactly the type of place my sister would’ve loved …”
She bites her quivering lip like she’s trying to keep her emotions trapped inside. It kills me to see her in so much pain, but there’s nothing I can do. As much as I wish it were possible, I can’t take it away from her. All I can do is support her and hold her hand, show her I’m here for her.
I brush a stray hair from her face, my palm moving to cradle the back of her neck as I meet her gaze, our eyes saying everything our words can’t. “You don’t have to do this right now. If you’re not ready, then we’ll wait until you are. Okay? This place isn’t going anywhere.”
She looks around and huffs a laugh. “As if I’d ever ask you to come back here after everything you told me tonight. Trust me, Leo, I’m not that delusional to expect you to overcome your biggest fear a second time just to impress me.”
She nudges me with her elbow, and I playfully rub my rib cage like she wounded me.
“You know, I think you’d be surprised … I know I am …” I say more to myself than to her.
“Now, for the love of God, can we please get out of here?”
She shivers, and I wrap an arm around her.
“I thought you’d never ask.”