Episodul 211 · A Hall of Your Own

Tesa turned from the round floor.

Something struck inside the wall. Krista felt the blow through the sole of her boot. She shifted her weight to the higher step.

The chip held. The dark edge behind it twisted farther. Dust fell from the joint where the stair met the landing.

Tesa came toward her.

— Back. On the flat floor, Krista said.

A crack ran across the higher tread.

She stepped off toward Tesa. The stone tipped beneath her trailing foot, and then there was nothing under either foot at all.

She did not fall far. Her coat jerked tight under her arms and stopped her, and she hung with her boots over the dark and the collar cutting into her throat. Above her, Tesa lay flat on the round floor with one arm over the edge and her right fist knotted in the front of the coat. Krista’s phone struck the floor beside Tesa and skidded away, still lit.

Below, the steps went on folding into the dark, stone striking stone, farther and farther down.

— Don’t kick, Tesa said through her teeth. Don’t grab me. Grab the edge.

Krista grabbed the edge. It came away in her hand.

Same stone as the steps. It won’t hold. She’s holding all of it.

She could feel the coat going, a seam at the shoulder starting to give, a small, steady tearing she could count. One stitch. Another. She stopped counting.

Tesa’s left hand swept the floor beside her, flat, searching. Smooth stone, worn round, nothing to hold. In the light from the phone her face had no fear in it at all, only the look she wore before a bell.

She lifted the hand a few centimeters off the floor and brought it down, short, almost no swing.

The stone cracked under it like ice. A split ran out from her knuckles, a finger wide. Tesa made a small, furious sound, and the hand curled against her chest for one breath. Then she drove her fingers into the crack and hooked them there.

— Now, she said. Up. Use me.

Krista climbed her. Tesa’s arm, Tesa’s shoulder, the hooked hand in the crack holding both of them, and then a knee was on the floor and Tesa was rolling backward, dragging her by the coat away from the lip.

The fall took the air out of her. They lay in a heap on the round floor. She heard a last, heavier crash far below. Dust drifted through the beam of the fallen phone.

For several breaths neither woman moved.

— You all right? Krista asked.

— Get off my knee and I’ll let you know.

Krista rolled aside and retrieved her phone, aiming the light at the stairs. Tesa sat up beside her.

The three steps were gone. Their short landing remained against the closed slab, above the broken edges of the round floor. Between it and the floor where they knelt, darkness ran from wall to wall.

A last piece fell from the lip near Krista’s knee. She pulled her weight back.

Beyond the gap, something small and pale bounced against the landing and dropped out of sight.

The blow inside the wall came again. This time it continued into a long scraping movement, circling behind the signs. On the opposite side of the room, a line opened in what had looked like solid stone.

Tesa turned toward it.

— Tell me that goes outside.

Krista got to her feet. Her legs were still answering a moment later than she expected. She put the light back on the broken edge first.

— Sit there. Away from it.

Tesa stayed standing.

Krista crouched and shone the light across the gap. The landing sat higher than their floor and was too narrow to land on at a run. Tesa tested the lip on their side with her boot, heard it ring hollow, and drew back. Below, the light found no bottom.

Tesa followed the light.

— If I could get a hand on the edge—

— And then? There’s nowhere to put your feet.

Tesa looked at the crumbling lip on their side, then across at the narrow landing.

— Something across it, then.

They searched the room. Nothing in it was long enough to bridge the gap.

Krista tried her phone. No signal.

Behind them the scraping stopped.

The opening opposite the entrance stood clear. In it was a smooth, dark surface reflecting the light. A thin line of brightness ran up its middle, like the edge of a door left ajar.

— Was that here before? Tesa asked.

Krista moved closer. Through the bright seam she could see a narrow passage, pale walls and a dark opening on the left.

— Looks low, Tesa said.

Krista could see clear space above her head.

— Where is it low?

Tesa stepped through. Krista caught at her sleeve and closed her fingers on air.

— Tesa?

— Here.

The voice was close, but the pale passage stood empty.

— Come back.

— I’m right here. Give me your hand.

A hand appeared in front of Krista’s chest. It ended at the wrist; beyond that there was only the dark surface. The fingers opened impatiently.

Krista took them.

— There’s nothing to it, Tesa said.

She pulled. Krista’s forehead hit the surface with a flat crack.

— Ow! Damn it!

— Bend your knees.

— My knees aren’t what’s stopping me, you idiot!

The hand loosened. From beyond it came a short, startled laugh.

— Did you hit the wall?

— Come out here and I’ll show you.

Tesa stepped back into view, mouth open to say something. She saw Krista’s face and closed it.

Krista pressed her fingertips above one eyebrow. No blood. It hurt enough without any.

— We could try— Tesa began.

— We have tried. I was there for it.

Tesa described a broad passage under a low, curved ceiling, its walls rough stone. Krista’s was straight and narrow, its pale joints as neat as the lines on her notebook. Neither could see what the other described.

Krista touched the surface, trying to reach her own passage this time. Her fingers passed through.

— Stay here, she said. I’ll come back before you go in again.

She put the phone in her coat pocket and stepped through alone.

The pale hall extended straight ahead. Four doorways faced across it, two on the left and two on the right; beyond the second pair, a darker strip crossed the floor. Krista turned before approaching any of them. Through the entrance she could still see Tesa and the round room behind her.

— I’m going to look at the first door, Krista told her. Then I’ll come back.

Tesa raised a hand to show she had heard. Krista walked along the left wall.

A man’s hands moved across a table inside the doorway, gathering cards. The scene changed to a hand holding paper. She remembered what that paper had meant to him: the south, a road he could finally take. Her fingers tightened against her coat. In her garden the man could look back at her. These hands kept moving without noticing her. She stayed a step away, recognizing a life she knew in pieces. What came next vanished before she could see it.

Four signs were cut into the frame. Light filled two all the way to their edges; the other two remained dark. She kept her hands away.

The other three doors were plain stone, their four signs unlit. Her phone’s beam showed shallow cuts and the grain beneath them.

At the second pair she stopped. Beyond the darker join in the floor, the walls divided into smaller angles that divided again. Following one toward the end made her stomach turn. There was room to walk, but she could not keep its shape in her head. Behind her, the entrance remained where she had left it. She went back to it.

Tesa was waiting on the round floor.

— Anything leading out?

— Four doors. One has the card player in it. The others are stone.

Tesa glanced toward the broken stairs.

— So he isn’t going to lend us a ladder.

— I didn’t ask.

— Good. You’d lose your coat before you got to the price.

Then it was Tesa’s turn. She stepped through into her own passage, and Krista waited at the threshold with her hand out.

Tesa came back a few minutes later and took the hand as she crossed.

— Four in mine too, she said. Two each side. The boxer is in the first on the right. Just a piece of him, then something else. I didn’t go through.

— And the others?

— Stone. There’s something wrong farther down. I came back.

She had seen two lit signs on her door as well, though she had been watching the twisted passage beyond it more than their shapes.

With her notebook outside the slab, Krista drew the four signs in a blank note on her phone so Tesa could compare them. She remembered their arrangement. She did not know what made the light in them complete.

One resembled a mark beside the carved tree. Keeping clear of the broken edge, she went to compare them. The strokes joined other shapes in the longer inscription. She had somewhere to start, though she could not yet read a word.

— You could have told me you were coming back here, Tesa said.

Krista lowered the phone. Tesa was looking at her now, rather than at what she had found.

— I thought you’d tell me not to.

— I would have.

Krista looked at Tesa’s left hand, the knuckles split and gray with dust where she had struck the floor.

— Next time I’ll tell you anyway.

Tesa set her bag down well away from the gap.

— Start with telling me before you go into that thing again.

Krista nodded and turned her light back toward the landing. The carved slab was within sight and beyond reach. She knew how to open it now.

— Mine, she said, looking once more at the other entrance. And yours.

Tesa followed her glance, then looked back at the broken stairs.

— All right. We find another way to get to it.