Chapter 23 Above
Above
What the hell is this doing here?” Dev asks.
I barely hear him. I shove Barry aside, scraping the leaf litter from the door. It’s a metal door set on sturdy hinges, locked with a chain and a padlock, both rusted but functional.
“Do you think it’s a bomb shelter or something?” Dev asks. “Root cellar?”
“I don’t know.”
“Audrey, we should really head back now.” He’s more than unsettled. He’s scared. I drop my pack and unzip it, clawing through. “What are you doing?”
“A couple years back, we had to haul an injured climber out of an area that was blocked off by a locked gate. Too high to hoist her over easily so we had to wait for bolt cutters,” I say.
“Can’t exactly haul bolt cutters everywhere, but I learned a trick in case it ever happens again. ” I pull out two small wrenches.
“I think I’ve seen this on YouTube,” Dev says, crouching down next to me. “But, Audrey, we are way beyond wandering off-trail here. How are we going to explain this?”
“If she’s down there, it doesn’t matter,” I tell him.
I set the wrenches inside the loop of the padlock.
Positioned properly, they provide enough leverage to slowly break the lock.
It takes muscle and three goes, but it springs open.
I jerk it free of the chain and toss it aside, and then pull the chain rattling free from the handle.
Dev looks pale in the glow of the flashlights, but I feel calmer than I have this whole time. Clarity has settled over me. There is a feeling like weightlessness in my chest, and a cold fire burning between my shoulder blades.
“Last chance,” I say. Last chance to turn back and not be part of this.
“Open it.”
I haul on the door, standing up. The hinges shriek, echoing in the hollow space beyond, and the sound is somehow familiar. The space beyond drops sharply down, a pit of black interrupted by the pale teeth of stairs. The flashlight beam seems reluctant to pierce that dark.
“Hello?” I call. My voice leaps back at me, garbled. “Meghan?” I think I hear a noise, an exhalation with all the substance of a bruised petal. I surge forward. Dev grabs for me with a sound of alarm, but I’m half falling, half running down the stairs.