The Wanderer Read Online Free Page A

antic, disquieting; some bones had fallen from the shelf and lay heaped on the floor – their confusion did not perturb half so much as the harmonious disposition of those in the nook.
    And there was no sign of the woman. I was perplexed. I could almost believe she’d lain down to rest on the jumbled bones piled on the floor, and, undergoing the processes of putrefaction and decay in an instant, been reduced to a tawny skeleton and lost among the other relics.
    In all likelihood, I would have quit that place and returned home, had a rat not drawn my attention to a place of concealment so obtrusive, and so macabre, I’d not considered it. The rodent emerged, squealing, from a small crevice at the base of the sarcophagus. Upon closer inspection, I found a slight draught to emanate from the fissure and decided to try opening the stone coffin’s lid. I tried it, but it was too heavy to lift by hand. Realizing a tool of some kind was needed, I cast about and discovered, in a gloomy niche I’d previously overlooked, a crowbar. I supposed the elderly woman had moved the lid aside just enough to allow her to climb inside, chucked the crowbar into the nook, and, once lying prone, slid the lid back into place; a feat, though one she’d shown she’d the strength for, vaulting the churchyard gate.
    Taking up the crowbar, I set to prising up the lid. Misjudging its weight, I was too forceful, and the slab overtipped, fell to the ground. There was a violent report, and the clay floor tiles crazed where it hit.
    The sight confronting me when I leant over to look into the box confounded: a flight of stone stairs descended into abysmaldarkness. At the centre of each step a shallow trough had been worn by the passage of many feet; they looked hands cupped to catch alms.
    I can’t explain what I did next, save to say, intrigued, nerve bolstered by the drink still roiling my blood, I found it easy to deny my misgivings a voice; there was fanned within me a blaze of awe and curiosity that left fear and reason in ashes. Clambering over the side of the casket, I began to descend the staircase.
    Once I’d left the light of the taper behind me, it was black as pitch, and I was forced to grope my way. Then, after a while, I saw a glimmer beneath me. The steps came to an end, and I found myself in a tunnel lit by guttering cressets. It sloped sharply downwards ahead. The floor was packed earth, but the walls and ceiling were regular stone blocks. I went on. The masonry soon yielded to stark rock, and several times I was forced to scramble over piles of rubble where the roof had caved in. Soon the last vestiges, bar the torches, of man’s attempt to tame this dread olden place were far behind me. A slick of filth coated everything. I felt I’d wandered into the burrow of some predacious beast. The tunnel forked a number of times, but I was guided on by the trail of burning grease, like someone following will-o’-the-wisps into the heart of a mire.
    After passing through a stretch so strait, so low, I had to squirm in the muck on my belly, I felt a faint breeze. Carried on it was a droning; pausing a moment, hand cupped to my ear, I made out what it was: the hushed voices of a large crowd. Reaching the top of a steep incline, I began, cautiously, to edge forwards. A few steps further on, the rock beneath my feet gave way to scree and my legs went from under me. After sliding a short way, flailing, I managed to seize hold of an outcrop, check my descent. By a faint, flickering light, I saw I’d entered a vast cavern. The atmosphere was dank, the dark granite walls, piebald with pallid fungi. Something cold and glairy drippedinto my hair from the roof far above, ran down my nape. Stinking water pooled in hollows underfoot.
    A large number of people were gathered on the far side of the cave, but I’d not attracted their notice; they were quite a way off, I was shrouded in shadow, and the pattering cascade of grit I’d started went unheard.