Dust

by Angela Nock

  I ran the light of the torch back over the space.

  No. I hadn't imagined it; a skeletal hand, rested upon the floor, reaching out from a decaying black uniform.

  I felt sick. But forced myself to look.

  'You don't look so good,' he said, 'you okay?

  'Yes,' I snapped, 'I mean...no...I don't know.'

  'Stay there.' he climbed inside.

  I took a deep breath and followed him. I'd come this far, hadn't I? The wagon groaned and rocked dangerously. What if it crumbled beneath us?

  I didn't want to look at the skeleton, but I couldn't help it. I looked at it, my eyes fixated on it with the deep human desire to view the macabre. I hated horror and death but was drawn to it too.

  The soldier was slumped against a wooden crate, his skeleton hidden beneath his dusty, rat eaten, uniform. His grinning skull was precariously balanced upon his bony neck, wispy bits of blonde hair sticking out from the sides of his helmet. His other hand rested across his lap, still clutching a pistol.

  The skeleton moved, its skull slipped, and the helmet crashed to the floor.

  My heart stopped.

  A rat scuttled out from behind the soldier.

  'Shit!' I said, holding my chest. I could feel my heart racing beneath my skin as it banged against my ribcage.

  I bent over and gasped at the dusty air.

  'Hey,' said Josh, 'you okay?'

  I wished he'd stopped asking me if I was okay.

  'I'm fine,' I snapped, 'where do we start?' Bile burned at the back of my throat. I didn't want to be here, rifling through boxes in the dark with a Nazi skeleton grinning at me, watching my every move.

  He crouched down in front of the soldier, blocking the grisly skull from view. He reached out and placed his hand upon his chest.

  'Shit!' said Josh, recoiling. He shook his hand out as if he'd received an electric shock.

  'What's wrong?'

  'Shit!' he said, kicking at a box. I panicked, hoping it wasn't full of rats, or worse; explosives.

  He slumped down onto the floor, his hands resting on his knees. He slammed his head back on the side of the carriage. 'Shit! Shit! Shit!' With each word, there was another bang of the head on the side of the carriage.

  'Josh? Stop. You're scaring me.'

  He rested his head on the side of the carriage and looked up at me. 'It's gone,' he said, but it sounded more like a sigh.

  'What? What's gone?'

  'Our friend here,' said Josh pointing at the skeleton, 'is...was, Rudolf Lueken. Hass murdered him here in March 1945 in order to keep this location hidden. With Lueken dead, only Hass knew about this place.'

  'How? How could you know that?'

  'Even though Lueken has been dead for a while, his story still lingers. When I touched him, he told me everything. Sometimes, when people die, they are so consumed with ideas of hate, or revenge, that part of them is left behind. A part of their soul is literally ripped away and that remains on earth, near to the body or place that holds them here. It's that part of Rudolf's soul that's speaking to me.'

  'He hates Hass so much he's helping us from his grave?'

  'Yes, but only because I can read him because of my Pathos. I would say Hass came back here some years ago, took the spear, and some other artefacts, with the intention of selling them. That's how he makes his money.'

  'I bet he's got loads of locations out there stuffed full of stolen paintings. Did you see the Van Gogh he covered up when we saw him in his apartment?'

  'I didn't know it was a Van Gogh.'

  'But, if the Spear isn't here why did Hass lead us to this place? And where is the spear now?'

  Josh closed his eyes and shrugged. 'I don't know.' He pounded the floor with his fist, making me jump and scattering rats from the darkness. 'We're back to square one.'

  'Sophia is going to be so pissed. Coming all this way. Unless…' I paused.

  He opened his eyes. 'Unless what?'

  'What if...What if Hass told her something else? What if...' I didn't want to think about it.

  'What if she's lead us here knowing it's not here? But why?

  'I don't know.'

  'I guess we'd better go and find out.' He stood up. 'Come on,' he said jumping out of the carriage. He turned and held out his hand to me. I took it and jumped down from the wagon, relieved to be leaving.

  We walked back down the tunnel in silence. Where did we go from here? It felt like we were taking two steps forward and ten steps back. And what exactly was Sophia's role in all this?

  'We've been walking for a long time,' I said after a while. I couldn't tell exactly how long we'd been moving. Time was strange down in the dark tunnels. It was obviously ticking by but it seemed as though we hadn't moved at all. A very bad feeling was crawling up my spine.

  'Yeah,' he said, 'I was just thinking the same thing.'

  I stopped and swept the torch across the ceiling, then across the floor. 'No. No. No.' The bad feeling was now running loose through me, making my body tremble inside.

  'What?'

  'We're here,' I said.

  'What?' Josh spun around to look at me.

  'Look, at the rubble at our feet and I remember those boxes, there,' I said, pointing the torchlight at a pile of rubbish, 'and look, you can just make out the shaft we came down, although we should be able to see a bit of light from the outside.' I pointed the light at the ceiling.

  He bent down and picked up a coiled rope from the floor. He held it up to the torch and studied it in the light. 'Yeah, that's the rope we used. Shit!'

  'How are we going to get out?'

  'Sophia!' bellowed Josh.

  There was no reply. I didn't expect one.

  A loud crack cut through the silence. Then a low rumble. Somewhere in the tunnel, from the direction we had just come from, a decaying beam finally gave way. The ceiling creaked, and cracked, and seemed to shift.

  'We need to get out of here.' My voice was calm, and completely at odds with how I felt inside.

  'I know, I know,' he said. There was a slight panic in his voice and that my made my stomach constrict in on itself. 'Sophia, for f...Sophia!'

  'Josh,' I said, as reality crashed down upon me, 'she's not going to help us. Is she?' I didn't trust her, but leaving us here, like this?

  There was a crash of rock, almost like a roll of thunder, from deep in the tunnel depths.

  'You don't think...You don't think Sophia –'

  'Is trying to kill us?' He shrugged.

  But why else would she leave us down here?

  Chapter Eight

  'It looks like the shaft is collapsing. We need to find another way out,' he said, grabbing the torch and shining it in each direction. He grabbed my hand. 'We'll go this way, come on.'

  We followed the tracks into the dark gaping mouth of the unknown. The torchlight barely penetrated the darkness looming in front of us.

  The tracks suddenly stopped. The tunnel walls became rougher. Logs were stacked up at the side, ready to be shaped into support posts or beams or sleepers. Tools were scattered in the mud, and a rusty old winch still hung precariously over a large hole in the ground, just as if the workers had gone outside for a cigarette or a lunch break.

  Josh was hunching over like an old man. He seemed to be shrinking into the shadows, his golden aura diminishing with every step we took. Walking in the dark with old ghosts seemed to be taking its toll on him.

  Water began to ooze through the walls like blood from an open wound. Further on, it started to cascade from the ceiling, covering the floor in a brown, foul-smelling liquid that covered our ankles. We sloshed through it, cold and shaking and unsure if we'd ever reach the end.

  I felt sick with anxiety. The content of my stomach was sloshing around, and the panicky butterflies were taking flight in my chest.

  I squeezed Josh's hand, aware that he was slowing down, that he was becoming weaker.

  I had to stop my fear, my thoughts from consuming me; I had to get us out be
cause Josh could not.

  The water was now over our knees and getting deeper, but the darkness was receding as the tunnel became wider. Finally, it opened up into a wide cavern with a huge arched ceiling and a vast brown lake. Light, from an opening at the far end of the cavern, bounced off the still water illuminating the scum and the weeds that lurked in its depths.

  What monsters lurked beneath? I didn't want to find out.

  'I'll have to fly us out,' said Josh, 'hang on'.

  'No,' I said, knowing the pain he would be in if broke his wings out.

  He slumped into the water with a gentle splash. I reached out to stop him but he was already submerged up to his waist. His body began to spasm, he gave a loud hiss, his body stretched tautly, and his muscles tensed before his wings burst from his back, black and strong. The cavern looked smaller as Josh's wings bloomed.

  He stood up. His face was pale, his body trembling.

  'Let's get out of here,' he said.

  I slipped my backpack off.

  There was a crashing sound behind us, it rolled through the tunnel. A boom. The water beneath us rippled and bubbled. A loud crack ripped across the ceiling.

  Josh opened his wings and stretched them out. He seemed to wobble and stumbled sideways. He threw his hand up to his forehead. His legs buckled underneath him and he fell into the water. He'd passed out, and he was floating headfirst in the water.

  Oh my God. Oh my God! I started flapping my hands in front of me, frantic. What was I supposed to do now? I wasn't strong enough to save us!

  I could see the exit in front of us. A cool breeze was blowing in from it.

  I dropped my bag. My euros, my phone, my clothes, disappeared into the water. I didn't have time to think about it. I plunged into the water and, fighting against his huge wings, I managed to turn him over.

  He was still breathing; I could see his chest rising and falling, but his body was grey, ice cold and trembling.

  A large fissure began to open across the ceiling and the whole of the cavern began to shake. There was another loud boom. The air turned dusty and smelled of ammonia and wet earth.

  I couldn't think about it, because, if I did, I knew my legs would give way and we would both die.

  I waded deeper into the water. The cold hit me and stung my lungs. Josh was floating on top of the water, his large wings outstretched so that he looked like a cross. I threw my arms around his neck, leaned back and kicked off.

  I hadn't been swimming since primary school. I didn't know if I still could swim, but something inside clicked, a deep need to survive flared inside me and, with an energy that I shouldn't have had, I began to swim and pull Josh with me.

  I swam backwards, pushing my legs as hard as I could to propel us across the lake. I tried not to look at the ceiling of the cavern as it cracked and crumbled above me. I kept kicking, ignoring the pain in my legs, the heaviness of my arms and the burning in my lungs.

  I was slow. It didn't seem like I was going anywhere despite my frantic kicking. Weeds and other unseen things clutched at my legs. Something long and slimy hooked itself around my neck and seemed to tighten every time I moved.

  I was gasping for air as I kept thrusting backwards. I didn't know if I could do it. I didn't know if I had the energy. Panic was starting to claw its way into my chest.

  Slowly I was being pulled down further into the brown water as the weeds strangled my movement and Josh's wings became saturated with water.

  I kicked and kicked again, trying to push Josh up and out of the water as I swam backwards. My legs burned, my lungs were on fire. I held Josh up and kicked, and kicked and pushed him up and kicked. My vision was blurring, the inside of my chest felt like it was going to burst. I needed to breathe. The water was clawing its way into my lungs. I was sinking. Lights flashed before my eyes. My brain felt like it was about to explode. Something had to give.

  Finally, I could feel solid ground beneath my feet. I let Josh go and dragged myself out of the water by holding onto to the rocky embankment, then, grabbing Josh's wings, I hauled him out.

  I wanted to lie down. I wanted to ease the burning in my lungs and breathe in the cold, clean air, outside, in the safety of the forest.

  There was a low rumble and the ground began to shake. The way out was slowly being closed over with debris as the cavern began to swallow up the ground above.

  I tried to lift Josh up. He was too heavy. I grabbed his wings and began to drag him towards the small, ever decreasing exit. I pulled him across the uneven ground, aware his head was bouncing across the dirt. My muscles were burning and my body was giving up. I didn't think I could get us both out.

  And then we were emerging out of the hole. I pulled him out with the last of my energy and dropped him gently onto the muddy earth. He looked so peaceful, so beautiful, despite his body being smeared with mud, and slimy green scum.

  I fell back to the ground exhausted. I looked up at the dark, cloudy sky. It had stopped raining but the earth was saturated, the air cold. I realised I was shivering. The air was stinging my skin. I should have changed, dried off, but the only clothes I had were now at the bottom of the lake. I was so tired, my muscles weak. I wasn't sure I had the strength for anything, let alone what lay ahead. I couldn't do it. I couldn't.

  I closed my eyes and let the tiredness take me into its loving arms.

  Was that a shout? A shriek?

  I gasped for air, my heart pounding against my ribcage. I flung my eyes open as fear ripped through my body.

  'Hey you,' said Josh. His face slowly came into view.

  I sat up, unsure where I was. My body ached all over and I felt like I could've slept for ten years. And then I remembered.

  'How long have I been out?' I asked as panic gripped me.

  'Don't worry,' he said, 'you haven't been out long, not really.' He reached out to put a cold hand on my skin. It was then I realised I was warm and dry. As if reading my mind, he said, 'I lay next to you to get your temperature up.'

  I was glad to be warm and dry, even if I looked like I'd been in a natural disaster. My jeans were torn and muddy, my hoodie stank and was covered in dried-on green slime.

  Behind me, the forest looked different. We were sitting on the edge of a small crater, where the forest floor had fallen into the cavern below. Pine trees jutted out from the muddy earth at unnatural angles, lumps of grass and weeds were half submerged as if someone had tossed it all over, and the trunk of a tree had been upturned, its gnarled roots now exposed to the sky as if it were in prayer.

  'We've made a bit of a mess.'

  'We certainly have,' said Josh. 'I know you've only just come to, and I know you're tired, but we really need to get going. The ground is unstable, the earth seems to be collapsing into the tunnels so it won't be long before the emergency services are out.'

  'Where's Sophia? Have you seen her?'

  'I don't think she was here when this happened,' he said, slipping his arm around me, 'I don't know for sure, but I would say she left as soon as I joined you in the tunnel. I think she knew the spear wasn't here all along.'

  'Do you really think she tried to kill us?'

  'I don't know,' he said.

  'Where do you think she is?'

  'I don't know, but we need to find her.'

  'How? We don't know where she's going.'

  'She's a fallen angel with no wings. She won't have got far. We go back to Wroclaw, find her car, then find her.'

  Josh stood up and held out his hand. I took it and he pulled me up from the floor. My skin and clothes were covered in drying mud, I could feel it cracking as I moved. I smelled really bad, like a river bank after flood waters had receded; of saturated earth, decaying vegetation and rotten eggs. I needed to clean up.

  'Thank you,' said Josh.

  'For what?' I asked, looking up from my disgusting trousers.

  'For getting us out.'

  I stood up straight and smiled. 'I do save you a lot, don't I?'

  'You certa
inly do,' he said.

  'Good job I'm here then, really, isn't it?'

  Chapter Nine

  We flew high above the forest, following the train tracks back to Wroclaw, hidden by Death's cloak of invisibility. Night was descending fast, the moon and stars hidden beneath a thick blanket of cloud.

  I knew I didn't trust Sophia but trying to kill us? Was she really capable of that? I didn't know, but what was completely clear was that she'd deceived us. But why?

  It seemed as if coming to Walbrzych was a diversion. But from what exactly?

  We touched down on the tarmac outside Wroclaw station.

  'Where the hell did she leave the car?' Josh snapped.

  'E one, I think. Just over there,' I said, pointing to the right of the carpark.

  My legs were aching. I was so tired. And smelly. I could smell myself and it wasn't good; an aroma of stagnant water and mud.

  We walked over to where I thought Sophia had left her jeep. The space was empty.

  'Are you sure it was here?'

  Was I? Had I got something else wrong?

  'Yes,' I said, but really I was unsure, 'I remember it was here by this lamppost.'

  Josh closed his eyes and exhaled loudly.

  'So we think Sophia knows where the spear is?' I asked.

  'It's looking that way,' he said, opening his eyes.

  'What if it was at Hass' apartment?'

  'What?' he asked.

  'There were weapons there. And I remember her looking over them. And we don't know for sure what Hass actually said to her, do we?

  'No, but -'

  'Where's the best place to hide something?' I asked.

  'In plain sight. Shit! Evie, I'm sorry. I should've seen this coming!'

  'How could you have seen it? You took her at her word. I think she's made a deal with him,' I said, trying to stifle a yawn. 'I think she knew the spear was there, made a deal with Hass when we went outside, did that flashy stuff to put us off the scent, and now she's on her way back to collect it. It's the only thing that makes sense.'

  'We need to go back to Hass' apartment,' he said.

  'I guess so.' But what would we be walking into? Would Sophia still be there? What if she'd already gone and we had to force Hass to tell us the truth? I stepped from one foot to the other. I had more pressing issues first though.