Second Night by Gabriel J Klein Page B

sealant and paint. Alan put down his tools and opened the window. Someone had written lift-off in the dust on the ledge. The doors had been partially stripped of layers of their old chipped paint and the walls were a mass of sanded, white filler tracks. The telephone stood on a chair by the door under a plastic bag.
    He hung the spotlight on the hook in the ceiling directly above the trap door that John had discovered and set about lifting out the screws. The heads were pitted and scratched but the heavy trap lifted easily when all the holes were clear, opening out on well-greased hinges to lay flat on the floor behind it. Alan dangled the spotlight into the dark opening. A flight of stone steps led down into what looked like another wine cellar. He lowered the light on its long cable until it touched the floor at the bottom, selected a long-handled hammer and a pickaxe from the pile of tools and went down the stairs.
    As usual in the manor wine cellars, the walls were divided into sections by heavy wooden beams in-filled with patterned brick, leaving a narrow space between the big, custom-built racks arranged opposite each other in each section. These racks were empty and covered in a layer of fine white dust that looked and tasted like cement, and there was a big open space at the far end of the cellar where the stone floor showed signs of having been hastily swept before the trapdoor was sealed.
    Alan paced the cellar from end to end and side to side, comparing its size and location with the rest of the house. Where the empty space appeared to extend beyond the foundations, the bricks in the two sections facing each other appeared to have been more recently built than the others. There had been no attempt to follow the usual pattern, and the mortar was weak and crumbling in places. He paced the floor once more to be sure of his calculations.
    This end must sit outside the level of the old garden wall under the path, he thought, but the supporting beams are still sound. I don’t believe the bricks were put there just to fill in a hole. So let’s see what they really do .
    He swung the pickaxe at the wall on the north side. The first blow sent a cloud of mortar dust billowing out into the cellar. When he hit the wall a second time, long cracks appeared between the bricks and the beams. The wall shuddered and wavered under the third blow, and the top half fell in with the fourth. When the dust had cleared, he saw another open space dimly lit by daylight that was filtering down what looked like a wide passageway opening out on the opposite wall. He smashed down what was left of the brick infill and climbed over the rubble.
    The underground room he had uncovered was twice the width he had anticipated, a good eight strides wide and fifteen strides in length. The walls had been rendered. Only one corner on the wall above the passage opening was mouldered green with damp. There were tethering rings let into the cement at intervals down both sides and a long harness hook hanging from the ceiling. He turned a tap at the end of a long pipe disappearing into the wall and a gush of water ran out over the floor. With growing excitement, he walked up the sloping passage that he guessed must follow the line of the garden wall. The light was coming in though the knotholes in a line of planks that had been nailed to the back of the old shed in the garden on the other side.
    He returned to the cellar and began smashing the pickaxe into the bricks on the wall on the south side, until the layers of stones and earth behind them gave way and collapsed. The air in the dark space beyond was wholesome, as he knew it would be. At last he knew why the full extent of that hidden underground earthwork had been built so high and so wide. It wasn’t just put there for people to make use of. Horses were meant to go that way too.

CHAPTER 15
    At twenty-six minutes to three that same afternoon, Caz put his empty flask on the counter in the coffee