“Yes, you can feel that it’s growing damper.”
“Some experts believe there are even more tunnels underneath the ground than those we know about,” Roger said. “They know of some that were part of a real ‘underground’ railroad during the Civil War—but in those days, they would’ve used anything. I’m thinking those hidden doors, like the one we came through, were put up during the Civil War.”
“It’s certainly a valid theory,” Malachi said.
They moved slowly. The dark was so complete that their lights made the surrounding blackness seem even deeper.
Suddenly, while walking ahead of him, Abby let out a startled shriek, threw up her hands and dropped her flashlight.
“What is it?” Malachi demanded, rushing up behind her. Her arms flapped in the darkness.
“Hey,” he said quietly, holding her. He felt the beat of her heart, felt her frantic breathing.
And her warmth, the way she started and then eased as he held her.
“They were all over me!” she said. “Sorry—ugh. I’ve got to get it off.”
He smoothed her face, removing strands of web. Raising his light, he saw the web in her hair and smoothed it away, too.
“Spiderwebs!” Roger said, and laughed. “Nothing but spiderwebs. I told you, Abby screams like a girl when it comes to spiders and snakes!”
“I’m sorry,” Abby murmured. “I did scream because I walked right into a big web. It was all over my face—my eyes and mouth.”
“It’s a creepy feeling,” Malachi said. “Whether you’re a girl or not,” he teased.
She grinned. “I feel like an idiot.”
“Don’t—I might have screamed like a girl, too.” Malachi spoke reassuringly. “Nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“Seriously?” Roger asked. “Corpses melting into the earth don’t bother you, but a little old spider can drive you nuts?”
“Ah, but spiders are alive and bite. Corpses lay where they’re left,” Malachi said.
“Until the zombie apocalypse.” Abby laughed nervously. “But since I’m not a big believer in zombies, yeah, spiders are scarier. You can get a nasty bite from a brown recluse, you know.”
“Yeah, okay, whatever you say, Abs.” Roger retrieved her fallen flashlight and handed it to her. Abby turned—and crashed into a wall of earth.
“Watch it,” Roger said. “There’s a funny curve here. I think this is where the Saint Sebastian’s catacombs ended. We make a little twist to the right—and I’m pretty sure it’s where, long ago, another church stood. I checked the old records. There was a Lutheran church here from about 1790 to 1830. It burned to the ground and there’s just parkland on top of us now.”
They made the turn. The earth was dug out a little differently—three shelves to a wall instead of four and there were no corpses in them.
Casting the beam of his flashlight around, Malachi said, “These shelves seem to be empty.”
“They were probably dug out, and the dead reinterred, after the church burned down. They might’ve been brought to Bonaventure Cemetery. I do know that the dead from some churches were reinterred, or whatever one calls it.”
“That makes sense,” Malachi agreed.
“They’re...not all empty,” Abby said. She was across from Malachi, inspecting the middle shelf. She brought her light up, illuminating the space, and gasped.
“Abby!” Roger shook his head, laughing. “There are going to be spiders down here!”
She turned. Her eyes, bluer than the sky, were caught in the glow of the light.
“It’s not a spider,” she said. “It’s a corpse.”
“There are corpses all over!” Roger protested.
“Not like this,” Abby said, and her tone was weak.
Malachi moved past her, hunkering down to get a good look at the body on the middle shelf that had been dug into the earth by hands that had lived in a far past day.
There was, indeed, a “fresh” corpse on the shelf.
It was that of a young woman. He had little medical training, but he’d seen his share of corpses.
He estimated that this one had been there about a month. She had bloated and browned, her skin tightening over her frame. She’d worn a baby-doll dress and still had one shoe; the other was missing.
The third finger on her left hand was missing, too.
*
“Well, that’s not going to be much of a secret tunnel anymore,” Roger said, leaning against the trunk of Jackson Crow’s car.