But then the curve eased ahead of him and within a couple of minutes he saw what appeared to be the end of the line: a gray obstructing mass rendered obscure by distance. He picked up his pace a little.

The wall, when he reached it, was not a wall but a ruin. It was a tumble of masonry, concrete blocks and dust spilling over the pristine white floor. There seemed to be no way through.

DESTRUCTION, the machine bugs had said.

But not, at least, recent destruction. This collapse had scattered dust in a broad fan across the tunnel floor—Tom’s runners left distinct prints in it—the only prints, he was relieved to note. Nothing had come this way for a long time. Not since the DESTRUCTION.

Experimentally—and still with that prickly sensation of playing at the feet of a sleeping giant—he pulled away a chunk of concrete from the collapse. A haze of dust rose up; new rubble trickled in to fill the vacancy. Some of this was the stuff of which the tunnel itself was made; but some of it appeared to be commonplace concrete block.

And on the other side—what?

Another basement? Somebody else’s basement? He might be as far away as Wyndham Lane or even the shopping center near the bypass. He checked his watch and thought, I could have come that far in forty-five minutes. But he suspected—well, fuck it, he pretty much knew—that this tunnel didn’t lead to the storeroom under the Safeway. You don’t build a tunnel like this unless you have a destination somewhat more exotic than Belltower, Washington.

Gnomeland, maybe. The pits of Moria. Some inner circle of heaven or hell.

Tom pulled away another fragment of brick and listened to the dusty trickle behind it. No way through … although he felt, or imagined he felt, a whisper of cooler and wetter air through the tangle of masonry.

Speculation was beside the point: he knew what he had to do.

He had to leave here, to begin with. He was tired, he was thirsty—he hadn’t had the foresight to bring so much as a can of Coke. He would have to leave, and sleep; and when he was ready he would have to come back. He would have to bring a picnic lunch, which he would pack in a knapsack along with some tools—his trusty crowbar—and maybe one of those paper masks they sell in paint stores, to keep the dust out of his nose.

Then he would pick and pry at this obstruction until he found out what was behind it—and God help him if it was something bad.

Which was possible, because something bad had definitely happened here: some DESTRUCTION. But the matter had passed beyond curiosity. He had clasped both hands around the tiger’s tail and braced himself for the ride.

He came back the next day fully equipped.

Tom decided he must look more than a little strange, hiking down this luminous mineshaft with his prybar and thermos bottle and his sack of ham-and-cheese sandwiches, like one of the dwarfs in Disney’s Snow White. Of course, there was no one to see him. With the front door locked, the house a mile away, and this end of the tunnel securely barricaded, he was about as alone as it was possible to get. He could take off his clothes and sing an aria from Fidelio if the spirit so moved him, and no one would be the wiser.

After three hours of dirty, sweaty work he managed to open a gap between the piled rubble and the abraded ceiling of the tunnel. The space was approximately as large as his fist and when he aimed the flashlight into it the beam disclosed a mass of vacant, cool air. He could see dust motes moving in the light; and farther on he could distinguish what appeared to be a cinderblock wall … but he couldn’t be certain. He forced himself to stop and sit down with a sandwich and a plastic thermos-top of coffee. The coffee was gritty with dust.

He ticked off the discoveries he had made. One, this tunnel had a destination. Two, that destination had been violently closed. Three, there was nothing on the other side waiting to jump him—nothing obvious, anyhow.

All this would have been much more frightening except for his conviction that whatever happened here had happened long ago. How many years since the last tenant had vanished from the house on the Post Road? Almost ten—if what Archer had told him was true. A decade. And that felt about right. Ten years of dust on this floor. Ten quiet years.

He balled up his empty lunch bag and plastic wrap and tucked them into his knapsack.

He worked steadily and without much conscious thought for another three hours, by which time there was enough room for him to wedge his body over the pile of rubble.

It was late afternoon back at the house. But the word was meaningless here.

Tom straddled the rubble and probed the inner darkness with his flashlight. In the dim space beyond:

A room. A small, cold, damp, unpleasant stone room with a door at one end.

Ploughing through this barricade had not required much courage. But at the thought of opening that ugly wooden door just beyond it—that, Tom thought, was an altogether different kettle of fish.

The tunnel itself was antiseptic, very Star Wars; this cinderblock room was much more Dungeons and Dragons.

You could pile all these stones back up, Tom told himself. Pile them up and maybe add a little concrete to buttress everything. Seal the wall at your end. Sell the fucking house.

Never look back.

But he would look back. He’d look back for the rest of his life and wonder about that door. He would look back, he would wonder, and the wonder would be a maddening and unscratchable itch.

Still, he thought, this was serious business. Whatever had destroyed and barricaded this wall could surely destroy him.

THAT POSSIBILITY EXISTS, the TV had said.

Life or death.

But what on God’s green earth did he have to live for, at this moment?

Back at the house—back in the real world—he was a lonesome, ordinary man leading a disfigured and purposeless life. He had lived for his work and for Barbara. But his work was finished and Barbara was living in Seattle with an anarchist named Rafe.

If he opened that door and a dragon swallowed him up— well, it would be an interesting death. The world would not much notice, not much mourn. “What the hell,” Tom said, and scrambled forward.

Beyond the door, stone steps led upward.

Tom followed them. His sneakers squealed against damp concrete.

The flashlight revealed a landing barely wide enough to stand on, and a second door.

This door was padlocked—from the other side.

He remembered his crowbar, reached for it, then cursed: he had left it at the excavation.

He climbed down the stairs, through the first door, out across the rubble; he retrieved the iron bar and his knapsack and turned back. By the time he reached the door at the top of the stairs he was winded, his breath gusting out in pale clouds in the cold wet air.

He wasn’t frightened now, nor even cautious. He simply wanted this job done. He inserted the crowbar between the door and its stone jamb and leaned on it until he heard the gunshot crack of a broken hasp. The door swung inward—

On one more dark stone room.

“Christ!” Tom exclaimed. Maybe it went on forever, room after ugly little chamber. Maybe he was in hell.

But this room wasn’t entirely empty. He swept the flashlight before him and spotted two canisters on the floor, next to a flight of wooden stairs leading (again) upward.

Some clue here, he thought.

The canisters were about a hand high; and one of them had a wire handle attached to it at the rim.

He stood above them and shone the flashlight down.

The label on the can on the left said VARSOL.

The label on the can on the right said EVERTINT PAINT. In smaller print, Eggshell Blue.