Page 27 of Fire and Bones

Hickey gave another of his trademark shrugs. The guy could have taught a master’s class on the nuances of the gesture.

I turned and shone my headlamp through the opening in the east wall.

“Looks like there are rooms beyond this one. Shall we search the rest of this level?”

“Hell, yeah. Let’s search the bejeezus out of her.”

I led. Hickey covered my six, as he put it.

The place was a labyrinth of tunnels and crannies and chambers, often with one room dead-ending into another. Reminded me of a scene in a Stephen King novel.

As did the fact that I had absolutely no phone signal that deep underground.

There were a few overhead bulbs along the way. Unlike the one by the stairs, none worked.

Not surprising. Still. No light. No means of communication. Not good.

Maybe it was my imagination gone haywire, but the passageway seemed to grow darker and danker the farther we went. Hickey didn’t always keep up but lingered now and then to toe or poke at something of interest.

We traversed nine rooms in all. Some showed blackening due to smoke infiltration from above. Three were empty. Four held barrels. Two were furnished with cots, chairs, small tables, and lantern-style oil lamps. The meager furnishings suggested use as a short-term hideaway or safe house.

Beyond the ninth room, the narrow passageway split. By then I was certain we’d completed a bejeezus-grade search. I was cold and hungry, and my headlamp was showing signs of betrayal. Still, I refused to be the one to pull the plug.

I took the left branch, Hickey went right.

Ten reluctant steps. Then my wavering beam fell on an unopened door.

I glanced over my shoulder to call out to Hickey. He was nowhere to be seen.

I strode forward and turned the knob.

The door swung in with an overly theatrical B-grade horror movie squeak.

The darkness beyond was tomb-like, barely penetrated by the faltering beam from my headlamp. My eyes detected no shadowy shape. No silhouette denser than the surrounding blackness. Nothing.

I took a cautious step forward.

The air smelled different from that in the corridor. Mothy, like old wool. Organic, like seaweed baked on a beach. Dry and papery like mummified flesh at the morgue.

Sweetly fetid.

Like putrefying flesh at the morgue.

Swiveling my head slowly, I swept my headlamp around the small space. Saw nothing along the right-hand wall. Nothing in the right back corner. Nothing along the opposite wall.

In the left back corner, the lower edge of my beam reshaped in the shadows where the wall met the floor. I dipped my chin to angle the light downward.

It took a moment for my brain to process the message my eyes were sending its way.

A large burlap sack lay on the flagstones, the kind that might have held potatoes or grain. A rope secured one end, triple looped and loosely tied.

A bulge inside the sack suggested a body. A slender braid snaking from a gap in the coiled rope suggested that body was human. Both the sack and the hair were caked with a mildewy crust darkened by soot.

Had I found a fifth fire victim? A survivor who’d fled to this level to escape the flames?

Seriously, Brennan? And crawled into a bag and tied off the opening?

My headlamp was now cutting on and off and flickering badly. I couldn’t tell if the person in the bag was breathing.