Ship of Souls

and trickle down her cheek. Keem reaches her before I do. Without a word he slips his arm around her shoulder and helps her to keep moving forward.
    Billy frowns and looks at me. “Do you feel it, too?”
    I nod and look around the still, silent tunnel. “It’s like wading through a sea of grief.”
    “What could have caused so much suffering?” asks Billy.
    “We’re not far from Ground Zero,” Keem says quietly.
    Nyla clears her throat and wipes her eyes. “Can you help these souls, D? They deserve to be at peace, too.”
    “I don’t know,” I answer truthfully. “I hope so.” I glance back and see that Keem has removed his arm from Nyla’s shoulder. They’re holding hands instead.
    We walk in silence for a long time. The sad feeling in the tunnel doesn’t disappear, but the hope in our hearts gives us the strength to go on. Then Billy points at something up ahead. “Look—we’ve reached the end.”
    A brick wall chokes off the tunnel and stops us in our tracks. I shine Nuru’s light over the wall and notice that the rails don’t end—they seem to run right under the wall.
    “They must have sealed off this old tunnel back when the trains went electric,” says Keem. “There’s no third rail down here.”
    “These bricks do look old,” adds Nyla, running her fingers over the wall’s façade.
    Nuru , I say in my mind. What do we do now?
    But all Nuru says is, Proceed.
    “We have to find a way to break through,” I tell my companions. “Any ideas?”
    “Anybody got a sledgehammer?” asks Keem sarcastically.
    “We might not need one,” says Nyla. “The mortar around these bricks is crumbling—some of them are already loose.”
    We all join Nyla and run our hands over the bricks, looking for signs of decay. I’m the shortest, so I try the ones closest to the ground. I find one brick that already has a chipped corner. I pull my keys from my pocket and dig at the surrounding mortar until I can grab hold of the brick with my fingers. “I’ve got one!” I cry.
    Since I’ve only got one free hand, I step back and hold the light up high while the others finish the job. Nyla uses her fingernails to get a grip on the loose brick and then jiggles it back and forth until it starts to slide out of place. “You’re going to owe me a manicure, D,” she says with a smile. “There—I did it!”
    Nyla pulls the brick out of the wall and holds it up to show the rest of us. Billy takes it from her, and Keem kneels down beside her to see if he can loosen the surrounding bricks. Before long they’ve managed to pull out a dozen more, leaving a hole in the wall that’s big enough to crawl through.
    “After you,” says Keem with a dramatic sweep of his arm.
    I get down on my knees and stick my hand through first so I can see what lies ahead. Nuru’s light doesn’t reveal much, though, and the only thing I notice is the silky softness of the dirt on the ground. I crawl through the opening we made in the brick wall and find that the train tracks don’t extend beyond the barrier. I hold my hand high above my head but can’t find any walls other than the one at my back. Nuru says nothing but I’m pretty sure we’ve reached the Chamber of Souls.
    Billy crawls through the opening next, followed by Nyla and Keem. I don’t have to tell them that we’ve entered another world—the world of the dead. Before we can take one step forward, a wave of sound rolls toward us, building in volume and intensity. With nowhere to run, we let the wave press us back against the brick wall. It’s the scariest sound I’ve ever heard—hundreds of souls groaning in agony!
    Nyla grabs hold of my arm. “Is that…the dead?”
    “I guess so,” I say, hoping I don’t look as scared as I feel.
    “They don’t sound too happy to see you,” Keem says nervously.
    I try to keep the fear out of my voice. “It’s Nuru they’ve been waiting for all this time, not me.”
    “They’re just restless,” says Billy, giving my shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “They know the end is near.”
    When the wave of sound ebbs into the darkness, I push myself away from the wall and plunge forward with my hand held high. Nyla, Keem, and Billy follow my lead. Our feet make no sound on the feathery dust. We stay close together and try not to lose our bearings in the vast open space. Nuru’s light burns bright in my raised hand, but so far there is nothing to see. Then another sound sails toward us on soft currents of black