Natalie's Diary

[05] Obligation

OBLIGATION

 The smell hit me harder than anything, each breath heavy with damp dirt. It took a few deep breaths to get over it.  

"No one is making you come down," Rhys said behind me, from the foot of the ladder.

"Will you just tell me what's down there?" Kate replied.

I was still trying to figure that out myself, waving my flashlight app around the room. Only standing two feet away from the foot of the ladder didn't help. All the shapes I could see were hard to discern, dark lumps against the darker walls.

Light from the closet only spilled down into the basement in a square. It was only enough to see the brick walls, old the mortar crumbling off them. No windows.

I swept the room once more, aiming lower. A cluster of candles left wax trails down the sides of their pillars, onto a coffee table.

"You have a lighter?" I turned to Rhys.

"Here, let me," he mumbled, stepping out of the square of light from above. I aimed my phone at the table for him, silently thanking him for taking the first few steps into the room.

The candle flames flickered, light dancing up the brick walls, casting Rhys' shadow long and thin across the room.

"Check it out, we can be a little more civilized." Rhys crouched down, examining something glass and glinting next to a cardboard box. Some kind of antique oil lamp. He pulled the glass chimney off, lighting the wick, and sliding the chimney back into place. It offered more light than the trembling candle flames.

"It even has a finger hook. Look at that." Rhys grinned. "Come on down. There are bean bag chairs. It's really scary."

There were, actually. Bean bag chairs, a few boxes, a low bookshelf, and the table of candles. It wasn't exactly cozy, but it wasn't a small room, either. At least thirty people could fit comfortably.

Kate appeared first down the ladder, wrapping her arms around herself the moment she let go of the rungs. Dean followed.

"It's like you knew it was here." I gave Rhys a hard look.

He shrugged. "You said it. Like for revolutionaries and slaves. You know what this is right? Tell me somebody in this room knows something about history."

We stood silent long enough for Rhys to raise his eyebrows in either disbelief or disapproval. Maybe both.

"It used to be part of the Underground Railroad," Dean said finally.

Oh. That made sense. This space was big enough for a good number of people, but not much else. Everything in there had to come down the narrow hatch.

"Exactly. Cullfield's full of them. I've found maybe half a dozen," Rhys said, his face unsettlingly underlit by the oil lantern in his hand.

"Is that supposed to make me less creeped out? Because it's not working," Kate stuck close to the ladder like she might need to make a quick escape. She was fully prepared to leave the rest of us behind if need be.

"It's fine. It's just a room and the only way in or out is the way we just came in," Dean said.

"Not comforting," Kate insisted.

This time, Dean ignored her nervous arm rubbing and her tone. He was too busy looking at me.

"Oh..." The book. I still had the book. Rhys kindly shifted, casting extra light from the lantern over my shoulder to read by, because there's nothing quite like reading the diary of a dead girl by lantern light in a windowless brick room with only one way in or out.