Sparky went next. In his enthusiasm he banged his head on the concrete, cursing and touching his scalp to check for blood. Lucy-Anne giggled, but only briefly, because no one accompanied her.
Fair enough, she thought. Yeah, we all know how serious this is. Rosemary can stop the bleeding, but we're out of the world we know, now. We're facing danger and challenging it to bite back.
Jenna went after Sparky, then Emily, pushing the camera bag before her.
“You okay?” Jack asked. They were alone here now, with only the muffled sound of their friends chatting with Rosemary. Lucy-Anne could not quite tell in what way their voices had changed.
“I'm fine. Just…you know.”
“Bit scary, yeah?”
“I guess.”
They stared at each other, knowing that perhaps now there should be a kiss or a hug, or at least something more than this.
“You next,” she said, to break the silence more than anything. Jack smiled and nodded, reaching out towards her and barely managing to touch her hand with his.
She watched him crawl into the hole and, alone at last, she closed her eyes and gave way to a sob that had been building in her throat.
She could remember a dream she'd had weeks ago, when dogs were attacking her in the dark, biting her, eating her, even as she tried to fight them off. The body they'd seen…that had been like a trigger, throwing the dream back at her. She knew it was stupid. She knew they'd say she was a fool. But for a while back there, she'd been terrified.
At least now they were moving on.
She turned around slowly and shone the torch back the way they had come. Its beam did not reach very far. Such old, thick darkness, she thought, not sure where the idea came from. She suddenly felt like an invader down here.
The gap was much narrower than she'd expected, so much so that she could not even raise her head without bashing it as Sparky had done. So she stared at the gravelly ground beneath her, pushing with her feet and crawling through on her elbows. It was only as light fell upon her that she realised she was through.
Sparky helped her to stand, playfully brushing dust and dirt from her clothes. “Welcome to the Mines of Moria!” he said, in the gruffest voice he could manage.
Lucy-Anne looked around. “Bloody hell!”
“I think it's an old church basement,” Rosemary said.
The room was twenty steps across and thirty long, supported at regular intervals by thick stone columns. There seemed to be nothing stored down here, and it had the feel of being long-abandoned; dust had drifted against the base of walls, and in one corner an impressive array of spider webs formed grubby curtains. They shone their torches around, searching but not finding a way up into whatever building had once stood, or still stood above them.
“Maybe over there,” Jenna said. She walked toward one corner, kicking through the layered dust at her feet. She looked up at the ceiling, then back at the group, nodding. “Must have been closed in ages ago.”
Lucy-Anne saw the discoloured ceiling above where Jenna stood. The evidence of a blocked in staircase, perhaps, or the remains of where a hatch had once led down to this place.
“Why'd you think it's a church?” Jack asked.
“Over there,” Rosemary said. “In the end wall. That's the way we have to go. You'll see.”
We'll see what? Lucy-Anne thought. She was about to ask when she heard the growl.
Her heart stuttered, missing a beat and taking her breath away when it restarted. Her arms and chest went cold. A sound returned from her dream, as fresh and alive as if she were dreaming it again now: another growl, and a low, throaty bark.
They were all frozen. The sudden stillness would have been comical, were it not for the other growls now answering the first.
“Oh, no,” Rosemary groaned. And she sounded her age for the first time since Lucy-Anne had met her.
Emily dashed over to her brother's side. He glanced at Lucy-Anne, but she could not even blink.