Chapter 12 - Beneath the Property Line
The vibration beneath the ground intensified until loose gravel danced across the driveway.
Rick barked once and bolted toward the rusted hatch.
The elderly woman dropped her watering can.
"Get away from the fence!" she shouted.
A deep metallic rumble echoed beneath both properties.
It sounded like enormous gears waking after decades of silence.
The hatch suddenly lifted half an inch by itself.
Cold air escaped from the darkness below.
The old woman hurried inside her house and returned carrying an iron key attached to a faded leather strap.
"I hoped I'd never need this again."
"You knew about the tunnels all this time?"
"I lived with them."
She knelt beside the hatch and inserted the key.
The ancient lock clicked immediately.
She didn't open it.
Instead, she looked directly at me.
"If you go down there, you'll stop asking who built this place."
"What will I start asking?"
She hesitated.
"Why they built it."
The hatch creaked open.
A circular staircase spiraled downward much deeper than the basement beneath my kitchen.
Unlike the concrete tunnels I had already explored, these walls were lined with polished steel panels.
Tiny red lights glowed every few feet.
Some still worked.
Others blinked weakly after decades underground.
Rick refused to wait.
He disappeared down the staircase.
I followed with the flashlight while the realtor and the elderly woman came behind me.
At the bottom stood a massive corridor.
Every twenty feet another steel door stretched into the darkness.
Each door carried a number.
B-14.
B-15.
B-16.
Then...
B-17.
The elderly woman froze.
"No..."
"What is it?"
She slowly raised her trembling hand.
"When I lived here..."
She pointed farther down the hallway.
"My room was B-17."
The realtor frowned.
"What do you mean your room?"
The old woman closed her eyes.
"I never lived in the house."
"I lived underneath it."
At the end of the corridor, one of the steel doors slowly opened on its own.
A child's laughter drifted through the darkness.
Rick growled.
May you like
The laughter stopped instantly.
---
