It's history I'm cutting down here, thought Don. It's a place with a life of its own. I'm a builder, not a destroyer. And yet right now it's destruction that we need.
He didn't want to cut too far. When the tunnel collapsed, he didn't want it to make a sink across the lawn. He only needed to break down enough of it to stop Lissy from coming in. It wouldn't take more than a few yards of blockage to stop her completely. In the dark, she wasn't going to want to dig. She no doubt would be armed—but not with a pick and shovel.
He picked up his sledgehammer and began the arduous work of breaking up the wood overhead. He held the sledgehammer out in front of him, then launched it upward, his arms extended. His muscles weren't shaped to deliver much strength in that direction. Fortunately, the wood was as rotten as he had hoped, and most of the time the sledgehammer sank into wood and when it came away, half the railroad tie crumbled down with it. Dirt began to fall like rain. Now it was time for the crowbar. Don rammed it into the packed earth over the rotten fragments of railroad tie and pried it, tore it loose. More and more of it fell. He backed up and hammered out more wood, pried down more earth. Finally some kind of critical mass was achieved and with a whoosh and a great cloud of moist earth, the roof at the tunnel mouth collapsed completely.
The force of it made him lose his balance. He fell. He tried to scramble out of the way. More of the ceiling was collapsing. His legs were covered with dirt. For a moment he couldn't move them. Then he pulled hard with his arms and his legs came free. Another section of roof sagged, right where he had cut it. Wish I hadn't cut so far, he thought. He scrambled up the tunnel, reaching for his tools, trying to gather them up. The sledgehammer he got; the crowbar was buried and he didn't have time to get it out. He had left his worklantern on the shelf of stone just a little ways down the tunnel. He could still get it by clambering over the fallen earth just a little ways. But he decided against it. Good thing. Another two yards of roof gave way right then, and the light was gone.
He could hardly breathe in the thick wet dust. He still had the sledgehammer. And the skillsaw had to be around here, lying on the floor.
He felt the cord under his foot, followed it back. It disappeared into a pile of earth. Had he really left the saw so far down the tunnel? Forget it, leave it. It wasn't that expensive to buy another.
No, don't be stupid, he told himself. The part of the ceiling you cut has all collapsed. The saw must be just a few feet under the shallowest part of this earthfall.
He probed with the handle of the sledgehammer. Right. The saw was right there. He reached in, felt through the dirt till he got it by the handle and pulled it out.
Only now he was turned around. He swung with the sledgehammer until it rang against stone. Here's the wall. The left wall, as he headed up the tunnel. He didn't want to stay on the right side, where his feet would stumble across the mattress, across Sylvie's ruined body. He could hear snapping and creaking overhead. Was more of the tunnel going to collapse? Even where he hadn't cut the wood? This was going a little better than planned.
He finally saw the light at the top of the tunnel, just as he heard the rotten wood snapping and tearing like velcro as tons of earth collapsed into the tunnel, zipping toward him. He ran, faster, scrambling. He thought of dropping the tools, but couldn't get his fingers to let go of them, he was holding so tightly. A huge cloud of choking dust blew past him. He couldn't breathe. He staggered, fell. The crackling sound was coming toward him. He couldn't see at all now. He got partway up, crawled, stumbled, until he ran into something hard, right in his path. What could he possibly have run into?
The coal furnace. He was out of the tunnel. But he still couldn't see. The fine moist dust that had blown upward through the tunnel was hanging thick in the air in the basement. He blinked; dirt was in his eyes. They teared up, he couldn't see. Still pulling the skillsaw with him, he picked his way around the furnace, out into the open. Except the skillsaw suddenly snagged. Of course. The cord had been buried. Don grabbed the cord and pulled hard. It came free. But it was only the short cord of the saw itself that he had. The long extension cord was trapped down the tunnel.
"Don!" She was calling his name. She sounded so far away.
"I can't see," he said. "I've got dirt in my eyes."
"I'll lead you." He felt her gentle touch, tugging at his arm. She kept letting go. No. Not letting go. Her hand was sliding free. She was getting less substantial all the time. Less real.
He couldn't think of it that way. She wasn't getting less real, she was getting more free. She would let go of this house that had trapped her for so long. That was a good thing for her. It's not as if he was losing her, because he never really had her. Just the dream of her, the idea of her. It felt so real to hold her in his arms, but in the end she was always a ghost. And here, now, with his eyes closed, surrounded by darkness, he could believe that. This was reality, this choking blindness. What Sylvie was, what she meant to him, was a moment of clarity in the dark. She would be his memory of light. He could live with that.
Barely.
At last they were up the basement stairs. She led him into the bathroom. "I can't turn on the faucets anymore," she said.
"Can't you get the house to do it for you?" he said.
"Oh," she said. Then laughed. "I was getting used to being real."
He was still fumbling with the faucet when he felt it move on its own, and the water gushed out. He filled his hands again and again, splashing it on his face. Finally he could blink his eyes open without pain. His hands were filthy. He soaped them up to his elbows, then washed his face with soap. After he rinsed, as he toweled himself dry, he looked in the bathroom mirror. His hair was caked with mud. His clothing was completely covered.
"I thought you were dead down there," she said. "What was exploding?"
"No explosion," he said. "That tunnel was ready to collapse. I got it started and it didn't know when to stop."
"Well," she said. "I guess I finally got a decent burial."
He shuddered. He thought of her body lying on that mattress, now covered with broken, rotted timbers and tons of earth. Buried was buried, with or without a box. With or without a marker.
"What I need," he said, "is a shower." But when he left the bathroom, he didn't go out to the ballroom to head up the stairs to the shower. Instead he went down the basement stairs. The dirt had settled on everything. A thin skiff of it covering the whole basement, even clinging to the beams overhead. The light was dim because of moist earth spotting the bulb. He walked over to the coal furnace. Dirt spilled out from both sides like the fan at the mouth of a canyon. Behind the furnace, it was piled up as tall as he was. And daylight was visible above. The tunnel had broken down along its entire length, and what he feared had happened—there had to be a sag in the back yard right behind the house, marking where the tunnel was. If Lissy wanted to, she could sneak into the house through this gap in the foundation. But he didn't think she would. The gap wasn't all that high. She wouldn't know to look for it. If she couldn't get into the far end of the tunnel, she'd assume she had to come through the door.