Close to You, page 26
Later, she would realize that she had been there for only moments, but then it seemed an eternity, the terrified thoughts spinning through her mind. She should go get help. She should summon people from the big house. But she couldn’t. She wasn’t supposed to have been here at all, and she was mortified at the thought of having to explain her forbidden tryst.
And, even worse, what if they blamed her? What if they thought she had committed murder? She was rocking on her haunches, trying to soothe herself, when she heard the grating sound. The door was sliding open overhead.
She clamped her eyes tight, sure that this was the end. The murderer was coming to get her, too.
Instead, something fluttered from above, hitting her head, grazing her face. A piece of paper? A card?
She listened, shaking but undetected, as the door slid closed again.
Fourteen Tears Later
The mining lamps that dotted the tunnel were powered by a generator, but that was one of the few nods to technology. The work was being done painstakingly, by hand. Just as the tunnel had been dug more than a century and a half before, human beings, not machines, scraped the clay and mortared the old red bricks now. Special care was being taken, inch by inch, foot by foot, to make sure that the walls were sturdy and firm. When the job was completed, thousands of tourists and historians and students would have the opportunity for the first time to walk the path American slaves had trod on their desperate flight to freedom. This tunnel had to be safe.
“We’ve got a soft spot here,” called an expert mason, his words echoing against the walls of the underground passage.
The trowel tapped against the soft, red clay. Clumps of earth fell to the tunnel floor. The indentation in the wall grew larger.
The burrowing continued, revealing folds of material embedded in the clay, discolored and shredded by dirt and time. Still, some metallic threads managed to glitter in the light of the mining lamps. Gently, the mason brushed away the clay, following the trail of golden fabric.
The other workers in the tunnel gathered to watch the digging, and when they saw it they were grateful that they were all together. No one would have wanted to find such a thing alone.
A human skull and bones, swaddled in yards of gold lamé.
Mary Jane Clark, Close to You
