A Fine Cast of Characters - J. Dane Tyler [3]
“But you didn’t ... didn’t notice anything ... you know, weird?”
“Uh … I don’t think I get it. What do you mean, ‘weird’?”
“Well, I can’t ... my flashlight doesn’t reach the bottom. It’s like it can’t shine far enough. Did you notice anything like that?”
Butch didn’t say anything for a moment. Rose knew she didn’t lose the connection because she heard the road noise and wind roaring.
“Butch?”
“Yeah ... yeah, I’m here. No, I didn’t really go down in there or anything. I didn’t chase a flashlight down in there either. After my guys found it they let me know and I had them move away, then I called the inspector’s office, then I called you, and then I got the guys cleaning up. I really didn’t check it out or anything.”
“Huh,” Rose said.
“Maybe you need new batteries, or a better flashlight.”
A click-click on the line interrupted.
“Hey, Rose, I gotta take this other call. I’ll get back to you when I hear from the inspector, all right? And try to stay out of that shaft, it could be dangerous.”
“Okay, thanks, I—”
The phone went dead in her hand.
She drew a long breath, still staring down the stairwell. She moved the light around the cramped shaft but couldn’t recapture the metallic splash she saw before.
She tucked the cell phone into her hip pocket and closed her eyes.
“They’re just stairs, like any other stairs. There’s nothing weird about them.”
She opened her eyes again, and a scream ripped past her lips.
She stood immersed in the dark, deep in the shaft.
She backpedaled up the stairs, but her feet skidded on the loose debris and gray-black sandy grit. She slammed on her backside and yelped as the air squeezed from her lungs.
She gasped and gulped air, and held the flashlight up to ward off the dark.
And that flash, that brief glint of metal, nipped the dark.
She tried to steady the light, panting. Her hand shook, bounced the light in the shaft, but she managed to hold the reflection this time.
Rose stared, sat forward, squinted through clouds of billowy dust wafting from her sudden frantic outburst.
A door. A metal door, aged to a mosaic, blotched pattern of rust, verdigris and brown. Huge, patina-clad bolts fixed the seams. A massive lock squatted above a curved handle, carved with intricate designs of sinister gargoyles and smiling demonic countenances.
She followed the beam up the door, to a sign. It froze her. A homemade sign, not manufactured but painted, and affixed to the grimy metal surface by newer, shinier bolts, similar to those pinning the rails and stiles of the door.
She sat in dumbfounded silence as the sign screamed at her. The lettering dripped runners, down the sign, down the door, swallowed at the base of the entryway in thick dusty piles of crumbling shaft.
Three words scrawled across the sign, and Rose couldn’t tear her eyes from them.
It read, DO NOT ENTER.
* * * * *
Rose scrabbled up the stone steps on her hands and knees. She tore her weight forward, ripped skin and broke fingernails to the quick. Her rasping breath dragged gulps of dust, dirt, grime. She felt tiny stones stab the soft flesh of her knees and palms. The top of the dark stairwell seemed so far away and her frantic efforts didn’t seem to close the distance.
She exploded through the opening and pulled herself away from it across the splintery subfloor. Daggers of ancient wood sank deep in her hands. She flipped onto her back and skittered away until she slipped and crashed down on the back of her head in the middle of the room.
A new wave of dust puffed motes drifted and glinted in the white, soft daylight. She heaved and panted, stared.
The hole sat innocent, innocuous. A hole in the floor; nothing more.
She inspected her hands. Tiny scrapes and nicks pooled with tiny drops of blood. The scabbing process had already started. Her pants had a threadbare patch over the knees, a small frayed hole opened in one. She trembled like an October leaf on an autumn wind.