I tilted my head at him, feeling a bit guilty when he put it that way. Although, “poor woman” hardly applied to Vi. I shrugged and nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “We really do need to walk the dogs.”
26
The walk didn’t last long due to the weather, which had turned nasty again. The earlier sense that maybe we had seen the worst of it faded and I moved on to that sense of stoic tolerance that was necessary to get through a Michigan winter. Tuffy had been carried most of the way home. Even when Seth shoveled an area for him to walk in, he didn’t like the snow or the cold feel of ice on his feet. He walked along shaking each foot as if he could brush off the cold and finally started limping on all four feet. Not easy to do. Even Baxter seemed to roll his eyes at the dramatic display.
The wind had picked up again and the temperature had dropped. I couldn’t believe we would get even more snow. We brought the dogs back to the cottage and brushed as much of the cold stuff as possible off of them before letting them inside. I grabbed the door as it flew inward with a gust of frosty air. We hurried inside and unclipped the leashes.
Tuffy sat and shivered, glowering at both of us from under his fringe. He tended to blame me for almost everything, but this time he included Seth in his disgruntlement.
A walk in the winter weather, on the other hand, had rejuvenated Baxter. He raced through the cottage on a continuous loop while Seth chased behind him with a towel. Baxter sideswiped me a couple of times, which was his way of inviting me to chase him.
Tuffy sighed, lay down on the front door carpet, and watched. Baxter calmed down a bit and then took up sentinel duty at the door to Seth’s room and barked. When we ignored him, he barked again, a bit more sharply. Baxter usually left the barking to Tuffy, so I approached him to see what was bothering him. He backed away from me, moving farther into the room, threw himself on the floor, and moaned.
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked Seth.
“I’m not sure.” Seth knelt next to Baxter and rubbed his ears. “He’s not really giving me much to go on. He just feels uncomfortable.” Seth felt along Baxter’s legs to see if he had hurt himself during his mad dash through the cottage.
Seth stood up quickly and backed away.
“What is it?”
Seth shook his head and crossed his arms.
“He thinks there’s something under the floor.”
“What?” I moved toward Baxter and sat next to him. “What does that mean?”
Baxter dropped his heavy head onto my legs and crawled forward as if he thought he would fit in my lap.
“I don’t know. Like I said before, he acted funny in here last night. He kept skirting around that area, but now he’s planted himself right on it.”
The cottage had wood floors with large throw rugs in each room. I managed to stand up again even with Baxter pressing his chin into my knees and he quickly jumped up as well and stood looking at me with a big doggy smile.
I knelt back down and felt the floor where Baxter had been sitting. I hadn’t been trying to sense anything but an image of a dim tunnel popped into my mind. I saw a wooden door at the end and pulled my hands away before I saw any more. I felt slightly nauseated.
Seth knelt next to me.
“Are you okay?”
Baxter pushed his forehead into my shoulder.
“Just dizzy for a second,” I said. “I think Baxter might be onto something.”
I pushed myself up to stand and patted Baxter’s head. “Let’s pull this carpet back and see what’s bothering him,” I said, fearful of what we might find.
Seth and I shifted the bed to the far edge of the room and rolled the carpet toward the bed.
The floor underneath the rug was slightly darker, and less scratched, but otherwise looked the same. I didn’t understand—the tunnel had seemed so clear. I still had a lot of work to do before I could rely on any other senses. I started to push the roll of carpet away from the bed and back toward the wall, when Seth stuck his foot out to block it.
“What’s that?” He pointed to a spot on the floor that seemed to coincide with where Baxter had been sitting when the rug was flat.
I pushed the bed a little more and we both rolled the thick carpet farther.
We revealed a square cutout with a recessed ring in the middle. It was perfectly flat. Seth pushed on a tab near the ring and it raised just enough to be able to grip it and pull it out.
“Wicked,” Seth breathed. “I think this is a trapdoor.”
We wrestled the carpet all the way off the door and stood looking down at a metal ring that was right in the middle of a square cut in the floor.
Baxter barked and wagged his tail. Tuffy came in cautiously and lurked in the doorway, whining.
Before I could stop him, Seth grabbed the ring and pulled. Nothing happened.