The Dark at the End

3

Eddie rammed his shovel into the hard-packed dirt. “How long do we keep this up?”

“Digging?” Jack said, doing the same.

“Yeah. When do we reach the point where we say two shovels aren’t cutting it and go hire some help?”

Jack stopped and stared at the wall of hard-packed earth before them.

Good question.

And one Eddie would ask before either Jack or Weezy. Eddie had never seen the altered sigil. He’d only heard talk about it, so it wasn’t as real to him as to them. Jack could picture it right about here, leaning against the right-hand wall. But even if it hadn’t washed away, it might have fallen to the floor.

Eddie would also ask because he still looked shaken by last night’s events. Jack wasn’t untouched-he realized the danger they’d been in-and he was sure Weezy wasn’t either, but they’d learned to expect the unexpected and inexplicable. Eddie was still a long way from that.

Even though sunrise had brought everything back to normal, just as Weezy had predicted, Jack could tell Eddie wanted out of here. Because even though the hallway and beyond had been restored at first light, the two chairs they’d tossed through the door were nowhere in sight. They’d gone Somewhere Else.

Jack wondered if that might be the same Somewhere Else his brother Tom had been taken. In truth, he didn’t even know if his brother was alive. But if he was, and in the same Somewhere Else, at least now he had someplace to park his doughy butt.

But no matter what they found down here today, if they needed to stay over another night, they’d do it at the Lonely Pine Motel.

“Jack?” Eddie said. “The end point?”

“What?” He yanked himself back to the here and now. “Oh, sorry.” He shook his head. “I’m not sure.”

“Well, pick something. I need a target.”

“Why?”

“I’m goal directed. It’s the way my mind works. It needs an end point. Give me one.”

Jack thought a moment, then shrugged. “Two more feet.”

Didn’t sound like much, but with a passage ten feet wide and eight feet high, that was 160 cubic feet of dirt. Eddie’s daunted look said he realized that.

“And then what?”

“Then we call Tommy.”

“Do we know his number?”

Jack smiled. Eddie was already preparing for defeat. Jack wasn’t ready to concede yet.

“It was on the side of his truck.”

He squinted at Jack. “You remember it?”

“No, but I’ll bet your sister does.”

“Sister does what?” Weezy said from behind them as she descended the ladder.

“Remember Tommy the excavator’s phone number.”

“Sure.” She rattled it off as she slipped on her work gloves. “You giving up?”

“After two more feet,” Eddie said.

Weezy took the shovel from her brother and gave Jack a semi-stern look.

“Is we gonna stand here jawboning or is we gonna move some dirt?”

Before Jack could answer, she drove her shovel into the wall of dirt And hit something that went clink!

They all froze.

Jack said, “Do that again.”

She did, with the same result. Jack attacked the dirt in the area and within minutes a four-inch-wide expanse of gleaming black appeared.

“That look familiar?” he said.

“Does it ever.” Weezy’s smile was beatific as she turned to Eddie. “See? Same material as our little pyramid.”

“So we’ve found it?”

“We have.”

But they had a lot of digging left to do to free it from the earth.