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Gina remained silent for a few seconds, bracing herself to share the recurring nightmare that had begun right here. “The ground gave way, and the dirt just kept pouring in, the walls collapsing.” She swallowed, remembering how the dust had filled her throat, forced her to close her eyes.
“How did you survive?”
“Must have been an air pocket.”
“Unusual.”
“I don’t have any other explanation.” She didn’t have an explanation for a lot of things.
“The air wouldn’t last forever.”
“No.” Gina remembered the panic, the darkness, that sense that something “other” was there and that it was so very, very glad they’d come. “But every time one of us moved, the dirt would shift, and we were afraid we were only making it worse. We tried to talk, but that uses oxygen.” And caused dirt to cascade into their mouths.
“What did you do?”
Held hands and waited to die.
“The horses ran home,” she blurted.
“Awful long way.”
“We’d already been missed. My parents were almost here when they blew past.”
Teo sucked in a loud, sharp breath. He knew what she was going to say. She said it anyway.
“They tried to come in from the side so they wouldn’t dislodge more earth. Instead—” The words stuck in her throat just like all that dirt had.
“The earth dislodged on them,” Teo finished.
“It was like…” She paused, uncertain how to say it and not sound crazy. So she said the first part and kept the second to herself: “In pouring onto them, it poured off of us.”
As if the earth, or something else, had chosen who would live and who would die.
Duck. Duck.
Goose.
“I guess that could happen.” Teo sounded skeptical.
“It did,” Gina said flatly. “We dug, but couldn’t find them. By the time Isaac arrived, it was too late.”
“What do you mean, you couldn’t find them?”
“Dug here, dug there, no bodies.”
“That’s…” His voice faded. Obviously it wasn’t impossible or there’d be bodies. “Weird,” he continued. “Didn’t you bring in earthmoving equipment? Professionals?”
“Things just kept collapsing. Some geologist figured there were underground catacombs. Every shift of the soil only caused the bodies to break through another layer, falling deeper and deeper. Therefore, the more we dug, the farther away they fell.”
She’d had nightmares for years about reaching for her mother, only to have the earth give way beneath Betsy’s feet an instant before Gina touched her, the echo of her scream fading as she fell and fell and fell.
“Not long after they got us out Isaac had the hole filled in.”
“But if there are catacombs,” Teo said, “it would eventually cave in again.”
“Really?” Gina muttered. “Ya think?”
Silence descended. The sky had cleared, the moon just visible over the lip of the hole.
