“Elizabeth?”
Oh, no. Michael saw that the steel door in the floor had been pulled back. Are you kidding me? He walked over to it and peered down. It was pitch-black, but he could make out a dark stairway.
“Elizabeth! Are you down there?”
The only response Michael heard were his words echoing below.
I can’t believe she’s going to make me come after her. He took a few steps down the old, wooden stairs. They creaked a bit under his weight, making him nervous.
“Elizabeth Ellen! Answer me!”
He started counting the steps, and by the time he came to the ninth one, he stopped. “Elizabeth Ellen Stewart. Come up here right now or I’ll really be a fun killer!”
Michael had thought that should sufficiently scare her to return, but there was still no answer. With the complete absence of light, the darkness below felt sinister.
He took a few more steps. Nah, she’s always been afraid of the dark. Why would she go down here? Michael climbed back up the stairway, convinced that she must be somewhere upstairs.
Michael ran back into the main part of the church. He spotted Father Dennis chatting with some parishioners. “Hey, Father, did Elizabeth come up here? Have you seen her?”
Father Dennis turned around and shook his head. “I haven’t seen her up here.” He noticed the book sticking out of Michael’s pocket. “What’s that?”
“What, Father?”
The priest pointed. “That book in your back pocket. Let me see it.”
Michael pulled it out and handed it to him. Father Dennis started paging through it.
Michael grew impatient. “I’ve got to go find Elizabeth.”
The priest looked concerned as he scanned through an entry before placing the book in his back pocket. “Michael, I’m going to hold on to this. I’ve never seen it before and yet there are reflections from many of the previous pastors of this old church.”
“That’s nice, Father . . . but about my daughter: do you know where she is?”
“Maybe she went outside with her friends?”
“I don’t think so.” Quickly he ran to the open front door and looked up and down the street. There was no sign of her.
Michael ran back to the basement stairs. He reached the trapdoor and called again. “Elizabeth? Are you down there?”
He started descending the stairs now at a rapid clip. He could feel panic beginning to set in. What if she’s fallen and hurt herself? He was so far down into the subbasement that he wasn’t sure anyone would be able to hear him from above if he needed to call for help.
Suddenly, his feet hit solid ground. He stretched out his right arm and felt a concrete wall. Leaning slightly to the left, he reached out and touched another wall. They were about six feet apart, creating a tunnel, although he could only see complete blackness ahead.
“Elizabeth!”
Still no answer.
Michael shuffled slowly forward. As he took each step, he kept the fingertips of his right hand against one wall while his left balanced him upright on the other. Every five steps or so, he took a deep breath. The air felt cold and damp in his lungs.
“Elizabeth, I’m really getting worried now,” Michael said, trying to sound calm and rational. “Come back and we’ll talk. I’m sorry if I upset you upstairs.”
Michael tentatively took more steps, trying not to think about the assortment of rodents that must live down here. After traveling about thirty more feet, he stopped when he felt the floor underneath him shake slightly. “What was that? Did you feel that?” he called out, trying to remain calm and hoping that Elizabeth would respond.
The ground underneath his feet felt different. Has the floor changed to sand under me, or is that my imagination?
“Elizabeth, you are going to be grounded! Yeah, I know you’re fourteen, but I can still ground you! You can even kiss your iPhone good-bye for at least a month!”
He paused. “She won’t care. She’s a teenager. Yeah, I’ll chill out. Hear that, Liz ? I said I’m going to chill out !”
While he was wondering why he kept expecting Elizabeth to respond to the word chill, he felt the floor shake again; this time it had a more defined feel, more intense.
“Great! Thank you, Elizabeth. Thank you for making this lovely experience at the church even longer, and much more fun.”
He stopped walking when a gust of warm air hit him. “Oh, God, please let her be okay.”
The shaking under his feet became more frequent. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and in the distance he could now see what looked like the beam from a miniature flashlight. The light remained steady, like a beacon drawing him near.
“Elizabeth!” Michael shouted, stumbling toward the light. “Is that you up there?”
Suddenly his head struck the ceiling. He winced and ducked, realizing the tunnel was narrowing. He heard a muffled sound in the distance, then felt the floor shake more violently.
“What is that?”
“Dad!” cried a voice faintly.
Michael’s heart raced. “Elizabeth?”
There was no answer.
Michael moved more quickly now, hands skimming over the walls, stumbling a few times as he tried to reach the light. “Elizabeth, can you hear me?”
The ground shook again and the muffled sounds became more discernible.
“Dad?”
Even though he could hear her, Michael still couldn’t see her. “Where are you?”
“Over here, Dad!”
The ground shook again and Michael could make out a small figure in front of him. She was partially blocking the light coming from above, and seeing her silhouette was a relief.
“Elizabeth!”
“Dad!”
“What were you thinking?”
“Shh!” she whispered. “Shh!” She reached out and grabbed his back. “Dad! Oh, Dad!”
“Why did you come down here? I said not to. You could’ve been hurt, you could’ve—”
“Look!” Elizabeth pointed, cutting him off. “Look! Look at this!”
Michael shielded his eyes and gazed through what appeared to be a sewer grate at the end of the tunnel. Beyond it, he could see dirt bouncing up from the churning wheels of carts and the sandaled feet of men running past them.
“Where are we?”
2
MEETING A MURDERER
Michael and Elizabeth stared up through the grate, startled by what they saw. Just above them soldiers wearing metal helmets and chest plates were mounted on horses. They jogged by in two-by-two formation, carrying long, narrow spears in their hands.
They could see other soldiers lining the street, pushing back a large crowd that had gathered. The men and women were strangely dressed in floor-length tunics and veils, some wearing tattered sandals. Michael couldn’t help but notice that their hair looked unwashed.
“Elizabeth, did you hear anything in school about an Easter play going on in town?” Michael whispered.
“No, Dad. I wonder if we’re in East Northport or maybe even Kings Park?”
Michael thought he had walked for a considerable distance inside the dark tunnel before finding Elizabeth. Maybe they were in one of the neighboring towns. But then again, maybe it had just felt that long. He tried to calculate the distance and the direction in his head.
Could we have gone farther than I thought?
“I’m not sure where we are, but we could be in Huntington,” Michael whispered back, trying to think of anything that could help him rationalize what he was seeing. “But I don’t know what’s going on there. That town always has something going on.”
The uncertainty of everything made him grow angry again at Elizabeth. Turning to her, he whispered, “Why didn’t you listen to me? Why did you go in this forsaken tunnel and scare me? Do you know what my life would be like without you? Do you?”
“I’m sorry!” she exclaimed. “I wanted to see what was down here. There were all sorts of great drawings all along the tunnel.” To make her point, she shone the light on the side of the wall, illuminating pictures of men being pulled in chariots.