Episode 248 · The Visit

The following afternoon, Varren took Zora, Halloran and Noct down to the lower landing in Vatra.

Zora carried her thermometer and the notebook nobody at the regional office seemed willing to read. Halloran had brought a spare flashlight from the bakery. Noct, a little younger than Varren and unshaven, stopped on the last step and looked at the water washing across the landing.

— How far under does it go?

— One flight down, Varren said. Then a chamber.

— That’s a description of every cellar I’ve regretted entering.

Zora went past him to examine the clean seam around the slab. Each of them had come for something. Zora wanted more than figures to put in a report. Halloran, who had told enough people that Zora could read a thermometer, wanted to see the place that kept making her instruments look faulty. Noct had asked whether the room might have something to do with the man in his head, and Varren had said it might.

— What happened when you went in? Zora asked.

— I found the blade.

— To you.

He could still feel the old voice recoiling from the stone table.

— I was frightened, he said. I came out all right.

She watched him for a moment, then tucked the notebook under her arm.

Varren opened the slab and stayed beside it while they passed. They followed the stair down to the chamber. Halloran stopped at its foot, shining his flashlight along the carved roots. Noct stayed near him. Zora went to the stone table, where Varren put down the wrapped blade.

— Don’t handle that yet, he said.

She nodded and put her notebook beside it.

The river sounded overhead. Varren remembered the room as smaller. With people in it, he could judge the height of the ceiling and the distance between the pillars. Zora looked very slight beside the table.

She took readings along the wall, waited, and repeated them. Halloran held the light wherever she asked.

— Here, she said at last.

The base of a pillar was warmer than the stone around it. Varren crouched beside her. Just above the floor, the edge of his flashlight beam seemed to bend around something too thin to see directly.

He shifted the flashlight. The distortion stayed where it was.

Zora put down the thermometer.

— Do you know what that is?

— I think I can show you.

She picked up her pencil. Varren put his palm against the pillar and braced himself. He knew what power had done to weakened places before. Here the resistance felt close enough to reach.

He let the strength come through his legs and shoulder into the stone.

A thin line appeared in the air beside his wrist. Warmth pressed across his face. Behind him, Halloran drew breath, and Zora’s pencil stopped moving.

Varren eased off. The line narrowed.

He could stop there. They had all seen it. But it was barely wide enough for Zora to describe, and he could already imagine a clerk asking whether her flashlight had been faulty too.

— Stand back a little, he said.

He pushed again, harder. The line opened downward, past his hand, and a deep sound filled the chamber. The pillar stayed whole beneath his palm.

Away.

The warning came with the same sickening force as yesterday. Varren held on long enough to see the opening keep its shape.

Then Halloran dropped the flashlight.

It struck the floor and lit the baker’s face from below. His mouth was open. He was rubbing his fingers together, staring at them as though he had found something on the skin.

— Stop, Zora said.

Varren took his hand away. The opening remained. Heat came through it in slow, uneven waves.

Noct had backed against the stairs. He pressed the heel of his hand to his ear, then pulled it away angrily.

— He’s right here.

— Who? Halloran asked.

— Same one. Come away from there.

The baker turned toward the wall instead. Varren caught his shoulder and guided him to the stair. Halloran went with him, stumbling on the first step.

Zora had backed to the table with one hand closed. Her thermometer lay beside the pillar, where she had put it down.

— Zora.

She looked up. For a moment she seemed to be looking beyond him.

— There’s rope, she said. Through my hand.

He looked at her palm. The skin was unbroken, not even reddened.

She opened her fingers and stared at them. Then she picked up the notebook with her other hand. Varren wanted her to describe what she had felt. If he knew how it had started, he might be able to stop it. She looked past him at the baker on the stairs.

— Get them out.

Varren put the wrapped blade into his bag and collected the fallen flashlight and her thermometer. Noct helped Halloran up the stairs. Zora followed; Varren came last, listening to the sound behind them. He had stopped using his strength. The thing he had opened kept making its own noise.

Outside, Halloran sat on the steps. Noct stood below him, keeping a hand close to the baker’s elbow without touching it. Zora pressed her palm against the cold railing and kept it there.

— Still there? Varren asked.

She nodded. He offered to carry the notebook. She held on to it with both hands.

Halloran looked up at them.

— There was a room. A desk. I knew which drawer to open.

— Down there? Noct asked.

— No. Somewhere else.

Varren sat beside him. He wanted to say it would settle, that they would sleep and wake with the voices further away. He had given people comfort before without knowing what morning would bring.

Zora stood in front of him.

— Did you know it could do that?

— Not that.

— What did you know?

He looked at her closed hand.

— That using my strength could open it. That places like this can change people.

Halloran stopped rubbing his fingers.

— You should have said, Zora told Varren.

— Yes.

She stayed beside the railing. He waited without reaching for her.

When Halloran was ready, she helped him stand. They went back toward the bakery together. Varren walked a little behind until she slowed and let him come alongside.

Her fingers were still moving against her coat, trying to let go of something he could not see.