‘I’m going to pull again,’ he said.
He heaved at the ring and this time the slab began to rise, on a hinge. It was a slow process, the stone seemingly glued up with moss and silt and the muck of years, but it gradually unwedged itself and came free at last with a great shower of dirt, to reveal a square of absolute darkness, reaching down who knew how far.
Jason pushed it fully open and peered into Stygian gloom.
‘Reeks down there,’ he said. ‘Damp and … I don’t know.’
‘I’m going to get a torch,’ said Jenna. ‘Hold on. Don’t jump in.’
‘Not fucking likely.’
Shining the torch down, Jenna saw that there was a series of iron rungs set into a narrow cylindrical shaft. At the bottom, she could make out a brick-laid floor.
‘There’s a kind of room down there. It’s definitely a cellar,’ she said. ‘I daren’t think how many spiders are living in it.’
‘Could explain our weird noises,’ said Jason. ‘Rats or owt. Getting in some old pipes or something.’
‘Ugh.’
‘I’m going to take a look.’
‘Jason, don’t.’
But he had grabbed the torch from her and within seconds he was lowering himself down, rung by rung, torch in his teeth.
‘Is anybody there?’ he shouted, and it echoed impressively.
‘You don’t know what’s down there. Come back. I’ll call a professional in.’
‘What, a professional secret-cellarer? Don’t be daft. OK, I’m down. Let’s take a look.’
She watched the top of his head and saw him cast the beam of torchlight in front of him, into the part of the chamber that was invisible to her.
‘Piles of books,’ he shouted up, apparently unimpressed. ‘And old crap. It’s quite big. If I’d known I could’ve hidden out here. Miles better than that attic.’
‘Just books and stuff?’ she called down. ‘We’ll have to bring them up and have a good look at them. They could be valuable.’
‘Yeah, mainly books and some …shit!’
There was a silence.
‘What? Jason?’
More silence.
‘Jason!’
‘It’s OK, it’s probably nothing,’ he said, but his voice suggested otherwise.
‘What is? What have you found?’
‘Wait on. I’m coming back up.’
He climbed the rungs slowly and she could see that his hands slipped on the iron. They were shaking and his face was milky pale as it emerged from the darkness, his eyes like dark bruises in his skin.
‘What is it, Jason? What did you see down there?’
Coal dust and cobwebs clung to his lotion-sticky upper torso. He tried to brush them off, compulsively, as if they were stains on his soul.