Tunnels 06 - Terminal

oldies, but why’s that frame been left out there?’ Will wondered And as he examined the back of the building in more detail, he could see that there were several more of these walking frames on the terrace and the lawn, but they had been knocked over. And some of the large panes of glass in the conservatory had been shattered.
    ‘I wonder where they went? The old people?’ he muttered to himself, because Elliott was up ahead and out of earshot as they kept moving, repeating the process of climbing over the fences and crossing through garden after garden.
    They’d just landed in yet another when Will stopped all of a sudden. ‘Wow!’ he exhaled, adjusting the lens over his eye as the moon broke through the clouds to wash the scene with an ethereal light. ‘W–o–w,’ he said again, at the topiary animals dotted around the garden; a cockerel and an eagle faced each other, but it was impossible to see what the other creatures were supposed to be because the bushes hadn’t been trimmed for a while. As Will and Elliott walked between them, they were conscious of the dark windows of the house; it felt like they were being watched.
    Will began to take an interest in the house. ‘The garden’s pretty cool, but get a load of that,’ he exhaled. The roof rose to an acute point, with ornate eaves carved in a dark wood. And the windows were all very narrow and stylised.
    ‘It’s just a house,’ Elliott replied.
    ‘Yeah, but it’s like something from a story. Dad would have given anything to live somewhere like this,’ Will said. ‘A fine example of Gothic architecture,’ he added, sounding a lot like Dr Burrows.
    As with all the other houses, it appeared to be unoccupied, but it was impossible to tell for certain. Elliott turned towards the building and looked at it carefully before striding towards it. Will hurried to catch up, taking hold of her arm.
    ‘Um, I don’t mean that we should go inside,’ he said, ‘if that’s what you’re thinking.’
    Elliott indicated the house with a sweep of her hand. ‘Why not? We heard what David said, but don’t you think we should find out what’s been happening for ourselves? After all we’ve got a long way to go yet, and we need to know what we’re likely to come up against.’
    ‘Have we? Do we?’ Will tried to say as Elliott suddenly put on a turn of speed towards the house. With a grunt of exasperation, he sprinted after her.
    They found the front door wide open. For a moment Elliott seemed to hesitate as she stared up at the first floor, and Will thought she’d had a change of heart. But then she clicked the safety off her rifle and made her way inside.
    They entered together, their weapons at the ready. There was no entrance hall as such, but a large room that seemed to extend across most of the ground floor. Will saw a magnificent grand piano with many shelves of books behind it, thenhis gaze came to rest on the far wall.
    ‘Looky here,’ he said. Glass-fronted cabinets stretched the length of the wall. For the moment, Will forgot where he was, unable to resist a closer examination of the archaeological artefacts they housed. Fragments of glazed pots, tools and jewellery were all on display. ‘Roman,’ he said, peering at the first cabinet, before heading to the second. ‘Greek, I think … yeah … and these vases might be Etruscan. Amazing,’ he muttered over and over.
    ‘Yes, amazing,’ Elliott said, although with little enthusiasm. It was clear that someone passionate about history had lived here, but this was hardly the time to dwell on it.
    Particularly so because while Will walked from cabinet to cabinet, eagerly taking in the different items, Elliott had found something disquieting. She hadn’t noticed before but several articles of furniture had been knocked over further inside the room, and her finely honed sense of danger went into overdrive when she spotted a dark trail on the polished wooden flooring. Examining it more closely she found that the trail was streaks of dirt and possibly blood, which traced a route from the front door to the staircase.
    ‘I’m going up to check upstairs,’ she informed Will, pointing to the floor above.
    ‘Be with you in a minute,’ he said.
    She climbed the stairs, on the way up finding a discarded shoe and a set of false teeth. At the top of the stairs there was a wide landing that led to an equally wide corridor. Moonlight flooded in through large picture windows at each end, allowing