Crude Sunlight 1 Read Free Page B

head of the stairs and flashed their lights down into the depths, examining the dim corridor visible far below.
    "Eric, what do you think?" asked Henry.
    A young man with curly hair the color of beaten bronze turned to look at the camera. "We go down. That's where the steam tunnels are; they lead out under the other wings."
    "Well, all right then. Saddle up, guys." Eric nodded and turned to stare down the stairwell. He seemed about to say something further when a loud shuddering sound echoed up from below, like a heavy object being jerked across the floor, something ponderous like a wardrobe or desk. They froze, looked at each other.
    "What the hell was that?" Julia, tense, but not frightened.
    "A bear?" The third guy, face as-yet unseen. The camera suddenly yawned, whipped around, and the guy let out a yelp of protest as Henry did something to him, the others laughing uneasily, tension broken. The camera swung up to show Eric moving slowly down the stairs, straining to see what might be moving below.
    "Hold on guys," said Henry. "I'm going to put in a new tape." Eric looked up, face serious, pensive, and then the film crackled and cut to the blue screen of the video channel.
    Thomas blinked and rose to his feet. His heart was beating strongly and without thinking he raised the remote and pressed Rewind. For a second nothing, and then, as if in protest, the whirring sound of the tape rewinding, picking up speed. Thomas waited for five seconds and then pressed Play. A clunk from the VCR, and the image kicked back in. They emerged once more into the shoebox-shaped hall, panned around, focused on the steps. Dialogue, and then as they prepared to go down, that sound.
    Thomas paused the tape, causing the image to freeze, two bands of white crinkly chaos appearing across the screen, frozen in overlay. He rewound, pressed play, listened to it again. What was that? Had there been somebody else down there? Henry must have made it back out if the tape were here in the VCR. What had they found below? Had they made it into the other wings? Thomas suddenly wished Michelle were there with him, wondered what she would have made of the tape. Standing, Thomas rounded the low table and crouched before the VCR. There were a number of blank tapes in a shoebox to one side of the TV, each of them numbered in red pen. Ejecting the tape, Thomas saw that it was number 7. A quick rummage of the tapes in the box showed that there was no number 8.
    Rising to his feet, Thomas walked into the bedroom and looked down at the photographs. Rustling through them, he picked up the one taken in the tunnel and flipped it over. Steam tunnels under State Hospital. He turned it again and stared at the figure in the distance that was running away into the darkness. Was that Eric? Julia? Somebody else they had found down there? He set the photograph aside, and sat on the edge of the bed, pushing photographs back as they began to slide down the indentation his weight had made in the mattress, and picked one up at random.
    A view of a mist-wreathed garden through a broken window. A quick flip showed that it wasn't the Hospital. A second: an ornate staircase curving around a hallway, filled with weeds and plants that had grown up the steps and the floor of the hall to the height of a man's chest. Checked, Thomas stared. An interior garden? Then he saw the broken windows. No, a ruin. Another: A dark hallway, a wheelchair sitting by itself against a background of splotchy, scabrous wallpaper. Thomas flipped it: Nov. 17, 2:52am, Ground floor of State Hospital.
    Frowning, Thomas compared the times of that and the tunnel shot. The photograph of the figure fleeing had been taken nearly fifty minutes after. It had taken the crew about five minutes after the wheelchairs to reach the stairwell and go down. That meant they were in the tunnels or wherever they led for over an hour. Thomas made a face and sat back. An hour down there. He shook his head slowly in amazement.
    More