Last Rites (29 page)

Mason hesitated a moment, aware of a powerful smell that was rising from the freshly opened hole. Finally he nodded.

‘After you,’ Coulson said, cryptically.

He watched as Mason edged his way through the hole, stepping carefully on the stone stairs beneath, careful to avoid the slippery parts of the stonework.

‘What about the other guy?’ Coulson said, looking towards the chapel door.

‘He said he’d follow us,’ Mason reminded his companion.

Coulson merely nodded and followed Mason down into the enveloping gloom, switching on his torch as he went. The twin beams cut through the darkness.

‘Jesus,’ Coulson coughed.‘It smells like something died down here.’

Mason said nothing but merely continued his descent towards the bottom of the stone steps. He reached the final one and waited for Coulson to join him.

Both men found themselves in a narrow tunnel, the floor of which was wet and, Mason noticed, in places was merely wet earth.The tunnel stretched away in front of them, so long that their torch beams couldn’t pick out the end of it.They both looked briefly at each other then Mason strode off, leading the way. Exactly what he was leading the way to he had no idea.

76

The two men guessed that they must have walked at least two hundred yards along the stone corridor before they came to the end.

It opened out into a T shape with identical walkways leading to both the left and the right. Mason paused, unsure of which direction to take.

The smell that had assailed their nostrils from the time they entered the underground tunnels was stronger now and Coulson coughed. The sound reverberated through the subterranean passages.

‘Which way?’ he urged.

Mason swallowed hard.

‘This way,’ he indicated, taking the left-hand path.

‘How can you be sure?’

‘I can’t. What do you want to do, split up? Take the chance we don’t find each other again down here? We don’t know how far these tunnels go.’

Coulson considered the options then nodded, following the teacher as he stepped to the left and began walking once more, the torchlight cutting through the gloom ahead of them.

‘What is that smell?’ Coulson remarked, again wincing at the intensity of the odour.

‘We’re twenty or thirty feet underground,’ Mason reminded him. ‘It could be anything. Rotting vegetation. Dead animals. How the hell do I know?’

‘Whatever it is it’s getting worse.’

Mason aimed his torch at the wall of the tunnel nearest to him and noticed that there was something dark stuck to it. He reached out and pulled gently at the matter, rolling it between his fingers.

‘Silk,’ he said, quietly. ‘From a jacket or sweater. Someone has been down here.’

‘How can you be sure?’ Coulson snapped.

‘I can’t but what’s your explanation?’ Mason challenged.

Coulson also inspected the material, dropping it to the floor of the tunnel. He stepped ahead of Mason, playing his own torch over the ground they walked on.

There were several shallow puddles ahead and, somewhere beyond the reach of the torch beam, he could hear something dripping.A steady rhythmic plop of liquid into liquid. He increased his pace slightly and Mason had to hurry to keep up with him.

The tunnel turned slightly to the right and they followed it. There were several large metal grilles in the walls and ceiling and Mason wondered if they were part of some kind of ventilation system. He tried to work out which part of the school they were now beneath. The kitchens possibly? However, in such impenetrable gloom, he wasn’t sure of his bearings. He wasn’t even certain that they were still beneath the school by now.

The two men moved on, treading through deep puddles as they did so, both of them cursing under their breath as freezing water lapped against their ankles. And still, the fetid stench filled their nostrils and throats.

‘Stop,’ Mason said, suddenly freezing where he stood.

Coulson looked quizzically at him and was about to say something when he too heard it.

A low moan echoed through the tunnels. It was unmistakably human in origin.

Mason swallowed hard.

‘Come on,’ he said, quietly.

The moan was followed, seconds later, by another sound. A guttural, mucoid rasping that filled the tunnels and bounced off the dripping stonework like a warning.

‘What the fuck was that?’ Coulson said, breathlessly.

Mason could only shake his head.

Coulson stopped dead, shining his torch back in the direction from which they’d come.

There was only silence now.

Mason walked ahead, moving his torch slowly from side to side, the beam now picking out another junction ahead.

‘Which way?’ he murmured aloud.

‘Right,’ Coulson offered.‘And no, I don’t know if that’s the way we’re supposed to go. I just want to get out of here.’

‘We came down here to find Kate and I’m not leaving until I find her,’ Mason told him.

‘Then we’d better fucking find her and quick.’

77

‘It’s getting narrower,’ Mason exclaimed, aware that the tunnel walls were now much closer together. He reached up with his free hand and found that he could touch the roof of the stone corridor easily too. He pulled at the wet brickwork, slightly alarmed when a large portion of it came free. It fell to the ground with a loud thud.

‘We’ll have to go back,’ Coulson urged, glancing behind him, the light from his torch swallowed up by the subterranean blackness.

They both turned, hurrying their pace as they made their way back the way they’d already come, passing the junction from which they’d emerged.

It was from that tunnel that another sound issued.

A loud, wet noise that Mason thought sounded like soggy bellows being rhythmically pumped. Along with the sound came a blast of noxious air, so vile and powerful that it made both men recoil.

‘Keep moving,’ Mason coughed, pushing Coulson before him.

They moved as quickly as they could, almost managing to jog down the tunnel now, desperate to be as far from the sound and the vile smell as possible.

They splashed through freezing water, Coulson almost stumbling. He shot out a hand to steady himself and hurried on, keeping pace with Mason, almost colliding with him. The shotgun scraped against the stonework and Coulson gripped it tightly to stop himself from dropping it.

‘The tunnel’s sloping downwards,’ Mason exclaimed, almost slipping over on the wet floor.

Coulson seemed less interested in the contours of their underground domain than he was in the increasingly loud noise that was filling the tunnel behind them. He turned and waved his torch behind him but could see nothing.When he looked back in Mason’s direction once more he could see that the teacher was squatting down, examining something on the tunnel floor in front of him.

Coulson joined him and Mason pointed at the object before them.

It was a man’s shoe. There was fresh mud on it.

‘First the silk, now this,’ Mason echoed. ‘Looks like we’re going in the right direction.’

As they walked on they were both aware of the heavy silence that had settled in the tunnel. Only the sounds of their own laboured breathing filled the stone shafts now. The unidentifiable rasping that they had heard all too many times was now absent.

Mason raised a hand to halt his companion.

The tunnel was silent again.

Coulson merely nodded slightly, urging Mason forward with a gentle shove in the back.

‘Let’s keep moving,’ he insisted.

Mason nodded and did as his companion advised.

He recoiled slightly as a large cobweb brushed against his face and he pulled the thick strands from his hair as he walked on, noticing something about twenty yards ahead of them. He held a hand out to halt Coulson, raising his finger to his lips when he noticed that the other man was about to speak.

Mason switched off his torch and pointed towards what he’d seen.

There were two lights flickering in the darkness ahead of them. Both men advanced towards the pinpricks of luminescence and saw them grow slowly from small points into fuller flares.

On either side of the tunnel, placed carefully on fallen brickwork to keep them out of the water on the muddy floor, were lamps. The sickly yellow glow they gave off reminded Mason of dying candles and he moved closer to inspect the sources of light.

Both the lamps were plastic. Very similar to the kind of battery-powered lights used for camping purposes. Mason wondered how long ago they’d been placed there.

He was still wondering when Coulson walked a couple of steps ahead of him, indicating more of the dull points of light.

There were more lamps set up along the rest of the tunnel. Mason counted at least twelve of them.

Coulson switched off his torch and jammed it into his belt, gripping the shotgun with both hands now as he walked forwards. The lamps gave off enough light for both men to move with reasonable sure-footedness.

‘Who put these here?’ Coulson murmured but Mason could only shake his head. He was more concerned with what the lamplight had uncovered.

Propped against the tunnel wall less than ten yards ahead of them was the body of Andrew Latham.

78

Mason advanced slowly towards the corpse, followed now by Coulson.

For a second, Mason wondered if the boy might still be alive but, as he leaned over the figure he knew that was impossible.

Even in the dull light of the lamps, Mason could see that the boy’s flesh was pale, almost white but it was puckered around not just the mouth, eyes and nose but everywhere. Latham’s body looked as if it had been left in warm water for a very long time, the flesh pruned and crinkled. Mason reached out one tentative finger and touched the dead boy’s cheek.

It was as dry as a bone. The corpse looked mummified. Shrunken, as if all the internal organs had been sucked out and discarded but Mason could see no wounds on the corpse. Apart from its dried and shrivelled state it was untouched. There were no cuts, bruises or abrasions anywhere to be seen on it.

‘He looks like he’s been down here for years,’ Coulson murmured, transfixed by the sight of the body.

Mason exhaled and nodded almost imperceptibly.

‘Who could have done that to him?’ Coulson continued.

‘I don’t know,’ Mason breathed, stepping away from the body. ‘Come on, we’ve got to move on. We’ve got to find Kate.’

Coulson shook his head.

‘Whatever killed him is down here with us,’ he snapped. ‘And I don’t want to end up like him.You want to find the girl, you go on.’

‘And what are you going to do?’ Mason rasped, gripping the other man’s arm. ‘Find your way back through these tunnels? Make your way out and go and fetch the police?’ He glared into Coulson’s eyes.‘If we stay together we’ve got a chance. If we separate we might not get out of here alive.’

Coulson met his gaze and held it.

‘What are you going to do?’ Mason went on, his voice now little more than a whisper.

Coulson shook loose of the teacher’s grip and nodded. ‘We go on then,’ he grunted. ‘But if I see a way out of here I’m taking it. You want to stay down here and find your fucking girlfriend that’s your business. I’m getting out as soon as I can.’

‘Understood,’ Mason intoned then pointed in the direction he felt they should go.

There was a large hole in the right-hand wall of the tunnel.The brickwork looked as if it had, over the course of many years, simply disintegrated. There were several large cracks in the ceiling too, some of them leaking mud like blood seeping through tears in overstretched skin. Large lumps of stone were scattered across the tunnel floor and Mason looked warily at the ceiling, shining his torch nervously over the rents.

Mason ran his hand over the wall and another piece of stonework simply fell to the ground.

There was a loud groaning sound and both men froze. Moments later there was a rumble and they both felt the ground shudder slightly beneath their feet.

Coulson steadied himself against the nearest wall and felt vibrations coming through the stonework as if someone on the other side were hammering it.

A lump of stone the size of a fist fell from the tunnel roof, missing Mason by inches.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Coulson gasped. ‘The roof’s falling in.’

They ran as fast as they could, happy to be swallowed by the gloom, wanting only to be away from the lumps of rock and stone that were starting to fall all too numerously. Mason shot a terrified glance behind him and one horrific thought filled his mind and would not budge.

We’re going to be buried alive.

He ran, no longer caring whether or not Coulson was with him. He was unconcerned by the darkness and the stench and the mud that gripped his feet and slowed his pace. He wanted only to be out of this vile subterranean labyrinth. He wanted only to see daylight and to smell fresh air again and not inhale this fetid stink of corruption and decay.

Coulson slipped, fell and dropped the shotgun as another large chunk of the ceiling slammed down, accompanied by some thick clods of mud. He scrambled to his feet, paused a second and almost bent to pick up the weapon but his fear overcame all other instincts and, instead, he hurled himself forwards towards a curve in the tunnel. As he hit the wall his torch went out.

Mason shot his own torch beam behind him, trying to see the extent of the collapse but, as Coulson dived forward he slammed into him, almost knocking him flat and dashing the torch from his grasp.

Blackness enveloped the two men totally.

Mason dropped to his knees, desperate to find the torch again.

The tunnel collapse he had feared had not happened and for that he was grateful but the loss of the light, however meagre, was almost as intolerable. He felt his hands slide through freezing mud that grasped as high as his forearms and he crawled like a blind man, searching for the torch.

Coulson flicked on his own torch again and the beam illuminated Mason’s terrified, mud-spattered face.

The teacher looked up briefly at his companion then felt something familiar beneath his probing fingers and he tugged the torch from the glutinous ooze beneath him, pressing frantically at the on/off switch.