Swallowing hard, Perry dropped his cigarette butt to the ground and stepped on it, grinding it into the dirt with his heel. Then he walked up the porch steps and approached the front door. The old boards creaked and popped, bending under his weight. He stopped a few paces from the door and turned around. The boys remained where they were, watching him.
“Ain’t y’all coming?”
“You go ahead,” Jamal whispered. “We got your back.”
“From down there?”
They shuffled their feet and stared at the ground, except Leo, who took one faltering step. He perched on the bottom stair, hitching his pants up with one hand and leaning against the railing, which wobbled at his touch.
Shaking his head, Perry turned around and tiptoed the rest of the way across the porch, cringing each time a board creaked. He stopped in front of the door and took a deep breath. There was an empty hole on the right where a doorbell had once been and worn, faded screw holes indicating that there had been a knocker on the door at one time—probably stolen. There was a tiny peephole in the center of the door, but when he leaned forward and tried to get a glimpse through it, all he saw was darkness. Perry was suddenly overcome with the uncanny impression that there was someone on the other side of the door, staring back at him. His arms prickled with gooseflesh, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up.
“Well,” Dookie whispered, “what you waiting for, Mr. Watkins?”
Gritting his teeth, Perry raised one fist and knocked on the door. The wood thrummed beneath his knuckles, but nothing happened. The door remained closed, and there was no noise from inside. Perry knocked again, louder this time, but got the same result. He rapped a third time, more insistent, then stepped back and waited. After a moment, he glanced back over his shoulder.
“You boys run around the sides and check the windows. Don’t let anybody see you. But peek inside and see if there are any lights on or anything.”
They hesitated, obviously afraid to split up. They looked at one another and then up at him, their expressions unsure.
“Go on,” he urged.
“You heard the man,” Leo said. “Do it.”
Jamal and Chris went to the right of the house, while Markus and Dookie took the left. Perry and Leo watched them disappear around the sides. To their eyes, it looked as though the shadows simply swallowed the four boys whole. Perry still couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched. He decided not to mention it to Leo. The teens were already spooked. There was no sense in making them any more uneasy.
“What do you think we’ll find in there, Mr. Watkins?”
Perry studied Leo for a moment before responding. A bright, inquisitive intelligence burned in the boy’s eyes. Perry had never noticed it until now. He suddenly felt guilty. His ears burned with shame. Many times over the years, he’d thought the worst of Leo and his friends, and why? Sure, they got up to no good once in a while, but what boy didn’t at some point in his life? No, the truth, Perry realized, was that he’d had no good reason to be suspicious and derisive of the kids all these years. They meant well, Leo especially. They were the future, and maybe the future wasn’t as bleak as Perry had always assumed it would be. Maybe they’d make a difference in the world—provided they made it out of this neighborhood alive.
“I don’t know, Leo. I don’t know what we’ll find in there. But I want you to promise me something.”
“What’s that?”
“I want you to promise me that you’ll stay behind me, and that if something happens, you’ll run, and let me handle it.”
“Shit. I ain’t no punk. I can take care of myself, Mr. Watkins.”
“I know you can. And that’s why it’s important to me that you do as I say. So promise me, okay?”
Leo shrugged. “Sure, whatever.”
Perry smiled, looking at the teen with a sudden, immense swell of admiration. The sensation of being watched had passed. Leo shifted his feet, clearly uncomfortable with the scrutiny.
“Um, no offense, Mr. Watkins? But I think I liked it better when you were grumpy and shit. I ain’t much for this touchy-feely Oprah shit, you know?”
Perry snorted, trying to stifle his laughter. Leo chuckled along with him. They were still smiling when Chris, Jamal, Markus, and Dookie returned. All four were solemn.
“What’d y’all see?” Leo asked.
“Nothing,” Chris said. “The whole damn place is locked down tight. The windows are boarded over or bricked up. No back door, at least, not that we saw. Whoever is in there, they don’t want folks getting in.”
“But people
do
get inside,” Perry reminded them. “If people couldn’t get inside, we wouldn’t be here right now. So, why would someone secure the whole house but not board over the front door, too?”
“Dealers,” Markus said. “It’s gotta be. And we’re standing on the porch of their whole operation. We should jet before somebody sees us.”
“It can’t be dealers,” Perry replied. “Normally, I’d agree with you. Ain’t no shortage of crack houses and meth labs in this city. But if this was a regular operation, we’d see people coming and going all the time. Fact is, we don’t. Usually this place is quiet. Even when somebody goes missing, there’s no disturbance or anything. No gunshots or screams.”
He turned back to the door, studying it carefully. Then he motioned at the boys to follow him. They stepped back up onto the porch.
“Stay behind me,” Perry told them. “I mean it. I don’t want any of you playing badass when we go in there.”
The boys nodded in silence.
Perry reached out and grasped the doorknob. It was cold and damp against his palm, despite the dry air. He turned it.
“Shit.”
“What’s wrong?” Dookie whispered.
“The goddamned thing is locked.”
Leo sighed. “So what do we do now?”
Scowling, Perry shook another cigarette out of his pack.
“Mr. Watkins? What do we do now?”
“Hold up,” Perry said, fumbling for his lighter. “I’m thinking.”
“You’d best think faster.”
FIFTEEN
Heather had almost resigned herself to never seeing light again when she noticed a glow in the distance. At first, she thought that her eyes were playing tricks on her, but the glow remained in place, slowly getting bigger as she walked toward it. She gasped, then coughed. The air still reeked of mud and filth, and each time she breathed through her nose, she felt like vomiting, so she tried to breathe through her mouth as much as possible. Her bare feet were numb beyond the point of pain. She was cold and wet and dirty and miserable, bleeding from dozens of shallow cuts and scratches, half out of her mind with fear, but all of that seemed to fade as the glow grew brighter. When she realized that she was actually able to see her surroundings now, albeit in shadow, Heather almost cried, overwhelmed with a conflicting mixture of relief and dread.
The details of the walls around her were not overly encouraging. As she continued on and her eyes adjusted even more to the light, she noticed the rough wooden planks and half-rotten plywood sheets that had been used to shore up the sides of the sloping passageway. Black and red-tinted seepage trickled through the gaps between the boards like perspiration. The clay behind the wood was deep red, but she also noticed limestone peeking out between it. She recognized it from the semester they’d studied geology. Apparently this point of the tunnel joined up with a natural limestone cavern.
She wondered whether Javier, Kerri, or Brett were still alive. If so, she hadn’t heard them since getting lost. She hadn’t heard her pursuers, either. The silence was oppressive and added to her misery. Heather focused on the light ahead. It was definitely getting brighter. She knew it for certain when she looked at her hands and saw the light pink color of her nail polish where before there had only been a vague gray hint of fingernails.
The passageway began a sudden downward descent. She had no choice but to follow it. The makeshift walls vanished, replaced by natural stone. The air quality changed. Gone was the damp, bitter smell of mold and mud. As she continued forward, the air became acrid, drier than she would have expected. There were other new scents, as well. She smelled salt, of all things, and something that reminded her of mothballs.
The ceiling grew progressively lower, and Heather was forced to crouch as she walked. Within another twenty feet, she had no choice but to drop to her hands and knees and crawl. Sharp rocks jabbed at her knees and palms, and water dripped from crevices in the stone ceiling above her, splattering onto her head and back. Then the ground leveled out again, and the tunnel rose slightly. The light grew bright enough to make her squint, and finally, Heather saw something other than more tunnel ahead of her.
She crawled forward into a chamber that had been cleared out and shored up with thick columns of wood and metal pipes old and new. A few stalactites hung from the ceiling and stalagmites jutted from the floor, but most of the space was wide open. Heather had never been great at figuring distances, but she guessed the cave was about fifteen feet long and three times as wide as the tunnel had been. There were no other entrances or exits, save a small, irregular hole in the back wall. The crevice looked barely wide enough for a dog, let alone a human being. Satisfied that no one was hiding in the room. Heather clambered to her bare feet, flexing her joints and staring around in disbelief.
There was furniture down here. All of it was old and in a sad state of repair. Four metal cots ran along one wall, end to end, each of them with a scattering of moldering blankets, mildewed clothing, and scraps of newspaper covering them like nests. The fabrics appeared as old as the furniture, and most were nothing more than shreds. A card table sat crookedly against the opposite wall. The table was covered with yellowed papers and a few pieces of lumpy, misshapen pottery that looked crafted by a grade-school student.
Heather moved into the chamber, squinting against the glare, and saw that the light came from an old kerosene lantern hung above the table. The flame was banked low, but even so, thick, oily smoke billowed from it. That explained the smell of salt and odd chemicals she’d noticed before.
Most of the papers on the table were held down by whatever had enough weight to keep them still. Though there was little by way of a breeze, the smoke trail drifted toward the far wall, where it was swallowed up by the crevice.
She didn’t know how long the room would remain deserted or if her pursuers were still on her trail. Heather scanned the papers quickly, just to see if she could find any information that might help her situation. They crinkled when she touched them. Heather frowned. The papers made no sense. Rather than ink, they looked like they’d been written using mud—or blood. The penmanship was crude, illegible. She pushed them out of the way, looking for anything that could be used as a weapon. A scattering of old photographs fell to the ground. She bent over and studied them. They were wrinkled and faded, but she could make out the faces well enough and the houses in the background. Judging by the clothing the people in the photographs were wearing, she guessed they dated back to the thirties. All of the homes looked like the one topside, except that they were new. Indeed, a few of the pictures seemed to feature this very same house.
Heather placed the photographs back on the table. Then she shook her head and pinched her eyes shut for a moment. None of it made any sense. The photographs. The room. The booby-trapped dwelling. The caves. The killers. In the movies, there was always an explanation eventually, but this was real life, and so far, no answers were forthcoming. She’d watched her friends get butchered, and she still didn’t know why—or by whom.
It occurred to Heather that since she was in a cave, maybe she was no longer beneath the house. She didn’t know how far underground she was, but maybe there was a slim chance she could get a cell phone signal. Deciding that it was safe enough to risk the light from her phone again, she pulled it from her jeans and slid it open. The cell phone showed no signal. She tried to dial 911 anyway. The phone beeped once, and the words CALL FAILED scrolled across the screen. Sighing, Heather took pictures of the paperwork, photos and the chamber, remembering that Javier had suggested they document as much as they could so that they could show it to the authorities once they escaped. He’d be proud that she’d remembered, if and when they were reunited. Biting her lip, she finished capturing the images and then put the phone away again. There was no sense in running the battery down while she still had another source of light.