Chapter 2 #2
‘We shouldn’t.’ David spoke from between his hands. He was either very depressed or that table was utterly fascinating. ‘We agreed not to go out there more than we have to. Something might happen. We need to sit tight and wait to go back.’
‘That’s right,’ agreed Mal. ‘Mind you, I am getting a bit tired of sitting in here. I don’t suppose we could wait for return outside in the daylight, could we? I’ve got my vitamin D levels to consider here.’
‘We’ll think about that in a bit,’ Lachlan said reasonably, and then to me, ‘Mal is studying early Scottish history. He doesn’t get out much.’
‘You’re the one who said we should stay here,’ Mal muttered, mutinous.
‘I want to get out. I promise not to murder your grandfather.’ Everyone stared at him.
‘Well, not your grandfather, but somebody’s.
If you tread on a butterfly you could end up not existing, or did you not read any speculative fiction while you were studying that PhD, Lachlan? ’
‘Yes, well.’ I’d finished the last of the sweet and the burning power of menthol was stinging the backs of my eyes.
Practical, I thought as the fumes numbed my nose.
I need to be practical. ‘I need to get out of here, so if you could show me the way out, I’d be grateful.
Oh, and if you’re the missing archaeologists then you ought to let people know you’re here.
The police think you went off the cliff in a storm and your families will be grieving. ’
A look went around the table and Kaylinn burst into tears again. ‘Now look what you’ve done.’ David raised his head and eyeballed me. ‘You’ve upset her.’ His voice didn’t sound altogether steady either.
‘She’s upset!’ I burst out. ‘I’m in a cellar with a bunch of archaeologists playing hide-and-seek!’ I took a deep breath and tried to be rational. ‘I need to get out of here.’
‘You have to show her, Lachlan.’ Kaylinn sniffed, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cry. It’s just… Mom and Dad will be thinking I’m…’ and she started crying again.
Lachlan, who seemed somehow to be in charge, although his air of leadership was rather spoiled by his equal air of muddy despondency, shrugged.
‘I suppose,’ he said. ‘Come on, then.’ He began walking across what I was going to have to term a room, although it was definitely a cellar with pretensions, stopping when I didn’t follow him. ‘Well?’
‘No, look, hang on…’ I didn’t want to be alone with a madman.
‘They’re right,’ Lachlan said and, despite the fact that I couldn’t see his face clearly in this guttering candlelight, I knew he was looking grim. ‘You have to see.’ There was a portentous hollow sound to his words, almost as though he was trying to talk sense into himself rather than me.
‘It’s okay.’ Kaylinn gave me a little push off the stool. ‘It takes time to believe it, y’know?’
‘I don’t want to believe anything that he might be about to show me,’ I said, desperately. ‘I only want to be allowed to go back to Lennox.’
‘Your brother?’ Lachlan’s voice was gruff. He’d got all the way across the room now and was almost invisible in the shadows.
‘Yes.’ I had a sudden thought and dipped into my pocket. ‘But I can ring him!’ My fingers closed around my phone. ‘Let him know I’m… well, that I’m down here.’ I nearly added ‘with a bunch of weirdos’ but stopped myself just in time.
‘Aye, well, you can try.’ Lachlan’s despondency seemed to be falling out through his boots now. ‘We all did, after all.’
There was a series of sad nods.
I’d supposed that they meant that there was no signal down here, but my phone wouldn’t even turn on.
I pressed as many buttons as I dared, but the screen stayed black and reflected my confused expression back at me.
Nothing. Not even the hopeful little apple floating in the middle.
‘Bugger. I must have clouted it when I fell.’
‘It was the same for all of us,’ Lachlan said. Again there was that note in his voice, a tiny vibrato that sounded a little like fear. ‘Anyway, we have bigger problems than that. Come on.’
There was a creaking sound as he opened another door. As it too opened on darkness, I was neither reassured nor enlightened.
‘Just go,’ Mal said. ‘We’ll come when we hear the hysterics.’
‘We have to stay here,’ David said to the tabletop. ‘We agreed. So we don’t influence anything.’
‘We have to go up for supplies,’ Lachlan said from the doorway.
‘We’ve managed not to obliterate ourselves so far.
’ Then, with an attempt at an encouraging tone that was so huge it was probably visible from space, ‘We’ve got a unique opportunity for research, actual research, and we’re hiding in a basement – where’s your sense of adventure, man? ’
‘In the twenty-first century,’ Mal said. ‘With my job, my money, my thesis and my cat.’
Lachlan paused as though he was trying to think of a witty comeback, but couldn’t, so he beckoned to me instead. ‘Let’s show you the worst,’ he said. ‘Then we can talk.’
I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I followed him through the creaky, half-open door and into the darkness beyond.
The darkness turned out to be strewn with barrels and wooden crates. ‘Storeroom,’ Lachlan said. ‘This way.’
Now I could see a dim glimmer of light coming from above and illuminating a rickety set of wooden stairs, which seemed to be standing only because they were leaning against a wall. ‘Hang on, I’m not going up there.’
Somewhere in the back of my mind a tiny voice was shrieking like a car alarm. A second set of stairs. Wooden stairs. Which Lenny had said had once been here. I bit my lip and concentrated on not tripping over the rough floor.
Lachlan took me by the shoulder, not unkindly, and steered me to the bottom of the steps, which shook slightly as we approached, as though our presence terrified them.
‘It’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘We use these stairs because they come up outside. The others come out in the hall and if the door’s locked we’re stuck.
’ He pushed lightly at the wobbly staircase.
‘Besides, I don’t think we can die here. ’
I wasn’t sure what part of that sentence was the most terrifying and had to gulp to force air into my lungs.
It did, however, seem as though the stairs were my only way up and out and as soon as we were in the open air I was going to break the sound barrier getting away from this strange, crumpled figure in the muddy coat.
‘All right,’ I said, trying hard not to fill my voice with the gentle ‘talking to mad people’ tone that it wanted to assume, and I followed Lachlan up the staircase, keeping one hand on the wall in case of another traumatising stair failure.