Tunnels 03, Freefall

guiding him on. "And now, if you don't mind, please can we wind up the sightseeing tour for today, gentlemen."
    They moved at a fast pace, finding the passage was beginning to rise. Then it split and they took the left fork, but after several hundred meters they appeared to have hit a dead end. Drake went to the front and, handing Will his torch, felt around until he located two blocks of stone that were slightly recessed.
    "Bet you there's a hidden catch or something for another secret door," Will whispered excitedly to his father.
    But to Will's surprise, Drake braced himself and then aimed an almighty kick at the recessed stones.
    "Hidden catch, huh?" Dr. Burrows whispered back, as Drake took several more kicks, driving the heel of his boot into the stones with all his strength.
    A whole section of the wall crumbled away with a crash. Drake retrieved his torch from Will and played it through the opening. As the dust settled, the first thing Will and Dr. Burrows laid eyes on was a skull. Then they saw a jumble of decayed bones on the ground, where the old lead coffin Drake had dislodged had fallen and broken up.
    "Where are we?" Will asked in a hushed voice as he climbed out behind Drake.
    "It's all right, you're not going to wake 'em up," Drake told him, making no effort to keep his voice low.
    As they moved further into this new area, something crunched under their feet.
    "Ye Gods!" Dr. Burrows gasped, examining the mass of human remains scattered across the floor. Then he raised his light and spotted other intact coffins on stone ledges around the walls. He and Will saw they were in a space some ten meters square, but the ceiling was far above them as if they were in some sort of well. "We're in a burial chamber!" Dr. Bellows realized.
    "You got it, Doc. After Martineau decided he didn't need his personal subway, he gave it over to an industrialist friend to use as his family mausoleum. Looks like they're all in here." Drake crossed to the opposite wall and began to climb up the ledges until he reached the uppermost one. "Give me some light," he said as he edged along what Will thought was a stretch of stone wall. He located a short bar of rusted iron attached to it, which he then pivoted to the vertical.
    "Is that a door?" Will asked, shining his lantern up.
    "Sure is. Luckily for us, it can be opened from the inside," Drake said. "I suppose it was in case any of these guys wanted out!"
    Putting his shoulder against the heavy stone door, Drake applied his weight to it. With a low grinding sound, it slowly swung away from him. "Well, what are you two waiting for?" he said to Will and Dr. Burrows, as he slipped through the open door. Will was a little uneasy about where he was putting his hands as he clambered up the ledges. Quite a few of the caskets seemed to have fallen apart and their contents spilled out, and he didn't fancy touching the slime-covered bones.
    Reaching the top, Will stepped outside the mausoleum. He breathed in the night air as he took stock of where he was. Before him he saw row upon row of headstones, dimly lit by the streetlight seeping over the cemetery wall. A building loomed before him. "HighfieldChurch," he muttered under his breath.
    "This way," Drake said. They wove their way through the thickets of small trees and knee-high tangles of horsetail to another part of the churchyard. "Make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen -- we're stopping here for a second," he told them. Perching on a slab of moss-covered stone, Will and Dr. Burrows were grateful for the opportunity to rest -- they were feeling particularly weary now they were experiencing Earth's normal gravitational pull.
    "Did you know that's actually the Martineau family grave?" Dr. Burrows informed Will, pointing at a tomb with small stone statuettes of a pair of men holding a pickaxe and shovel at its apex. Will had explored the graveyard before, but never after nightfall. But now as he looked where his father was indicating and felt the damp, cold stone under his palms, there was something strangely familiar about the spot. Stirring deep within him was a memory, so distant that as he tried to remember more he might as well have been attempting to catch a wisp of smoke in his hands. Shrugging to himself, he began to hum as he scratched at the moss with a fingernail.

    * * * * *

    "So what did you make of the journal?" Mrs. Burrows asked Ben Wilbrahams as he shifted two piles of books from the armchair and onto the table so he