The Real Thing by Brian Falkner

and waited. Fizzer’s breathing began to slow. It was a kind of self-hypnosis. His back began to stiffen against Tupai’s. An aura of calmness settled around him. Fizzer was becoming a wall.
    Finally, Fizzer said quietly, ‘Try now.’
    Tupai braced his back against Fizzer’s, and it was just like bracing against a concrete block wall. Fizzer’s breathing continued, slow and measured, as it did when he was meditating.
    Tupai’s legs flexed and rippled and the post began to move. The ‘wall’ behind him was as solid as rock. He closed his eyes and clenched his fists and the post moved further, and further, until there was a crack and the half cut joint gave way completely, the weight of the post pulling it out of the ceiling mount. It would have crashed down on top of them, if Tupai hadn’t deflected it with a powerful sweep of his arms.
    It smashed into the side of the wall with a loud thud. Tupai helped Fizzer to his feet and they scanned the ceiling hopefully.
    ‘How’d I do?’ Fizzer asked.
    ‘Solid, mate,’ Tupai replied with affection. ‘Solid as a rock.’
    Unfortunately so was the ceiling. Apart from a slight sag in the long beams and a small fall of earth from between some of the cracks, the ceiling looked as solid as before.
    ‘Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time,’ Fizzer began.
    Tupai was looking at the fallen post. It was a solid square-cut piece of timber, hewn from a single log. Knotholes showed here and there down its length.
    ‘Do you remember what I said we’d need to open those doors?’ he asked slowly.
    Fizzer nodded. ‘A battering ram.’ His eyes landed on the post.
    It took just six blows to smash the timber beam that braced the doors from the outside, then Tupai shouldered one of them open and they emerged blinking into a blue dome world.
    ‘One more day living underground and I think I’d have gone mad,’ Tupai said.
    Tupai had no intuitive ability at all, as far as he knew, but it turned out to be a strangely prophetic statement for all that, and one that he would live to regret. But that didn’t happen till much, much later.

THE UGLY BROTHERS
    In the distance, beyond a fence and a grove of trees, they saw a mud track, probably the horse-training track they had heard being used on a number of occasions during their stay in the cellar. It was deserted now.
    Tupai started to walk in that direction but Fizzer grabbed his arm and pointed to an axe, embedded in a stump, outside a nearby barn. A half-pitched haystack sat next to a long wooden-railed fence.
    It took a single blow from Tupai to sever the short chain between Fizzer’s handcuffs, and just four from Fizzer to sever Tupai’s. Then, apart from a pair of iron bracelets each, they were free.
    ‘Now what?’ Tupai asked, but that question was answered for them as two young men, brothers by the look of them, came around the corner of the barn. The front one, the youngest, looked about eighteen. He carried a pitchfork and was obviously in the middle of doing something with the stack of hay.
    They were about the same height, tall, with a lanky stride, and a flat-top, US Marines style haircut. Both wore the armless overalls Americans call dungarees. Neither would have carved out a successful career as a male model. Not by a long shot.
    ‘Uh oh,’ said the younger one, in a coarse southern accent that was chalk and cheese to the relaxed Atlanta drawl of the city dwellers. ‘Lookee like the rats is got outta the trap. Better sort that out afore Bobby gits ornery.’
    His brother agreed. ‘It ain’t a good thang when Bobby gits ornery.’
    Ugly Brother the Younger thrust the sharp end of the pitchfork at them as if fending off a wild animal. ‘Back in yer hole, rats, back in yer hole.’
    The older one laughed and the younger one grinned stupidly at them until Tupai took the pitchfork off him and broke it over his knee.
    Just for clarification, he didn’t just hand over the pitchfork with a nod and a smile,