Chapter 9
Mark didn't hesitate. He heaved the heavy T-shaped iron key off the stone pedestal, its immense weight nearly pulling him off balance. Cradling the cold metal against his green wool sweater, he scrambled back toward the base of the ladder, his eyes fixed on the vibrating bulkhead door across the chamber.
The swirling shadow inside the glass port pressed harder against the reinforced glass, forming faint, fleeting shapes of human faces that vanished as quickly as they appeared. The ambient humming in the room spiked into a shrill, metallic shriek that set his teeth on edge. The entire foundation was shifting, groaning under the strain of a half-century of suppressed history trying to claw its way back to the surface.
Mark grabbed the rungs of the iron ladder and hauled himself upward, using upper body strength to compensate for the dead weight of the iron key tucked under his arm. Every muscle in his arms burned, but adrenaline propelled him upward through the vertical shaft.
"Give me your hand!" Martha’s voice cut through the rising roar of the chamber below.
As Mark reached the top of the shaft, Martha’s strong, weathered hands gripped his jacket collar, helping haul him over the lip of the concrete rim. They collapsed together onto the damp grass beneath the moss-covered granite boulder, gasping for breath as the autumn wind whipped around them.
Behind them, the stone access hatch shuddered, a plume of cold, damp air hissing out from the gap around the edges before the heavy granite slab slammed shut under its own mechanical weight, locking itself from the inside.
Mark lay on his back for a moment, staring up at the bare branches of the oak tree against the grey sky, his chest heaving. The heavy iron key lay in the grass beside him, its cold metal surface glistening with condensation.
"We got it," Mark breathed, sitting up slowly and wiping mud from his jeans.
Martha pushed herself up, her grey cardigan stained with grass and dirt, her face lined with profound relief. "The house is reacting to the key's removal," she warned, pointing toward the back door of the house.
Through the kitchen window, they could see Lily standing near the stainless steel refrigerator. The door was wide open, billowing dense white fog into the bright modern kitchen, but Lily wasn't looking into the dark wooden corridor. She was holding a small, glowing glass sphere that had somehow rolled out from the bottom shelf onto the hardwood floor.
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Mark scrambled to his feet, panic flaring anew. "Lily!" he shouted, breaking into a sprint across the lawn.
He burst through the back door into the kitchen just as Lily reached down to touch the strange, luminous orb. The air in the room was freezing, frost rapidly forming intricate patterns across the glass of the kitchen windows.
