Down, across, and down again: 400 feet; 30 feet; 885 feet; 1,285 feet total. That’s all he knew—that’s how Watkins had taught it. He would keep going deeper until he found water, or couldn’t go any farther.
The burning blowtorches hung still now, and provided a steady, if limited light for Itch to descend by. He moved slowly to start with, his body taut, his grip frantically tight. His burned right hand was badly blistered, but the pain had eased. The expectation that every rung was about to give way made progress slow, but as they proved solid, Itch picked up his pace. He also noted that the bricks were still dry. He couldn’t see, hear, or smell water. Wherever the water level was, it hadn’t been up here for a very long time.
He developed a rhythm as he climbed down—left foot, right foot, left hand, right hand, test ladder. Whoever had had the task of constructing the ladder and then attaching it to the wall appeared to have done a good job, and he was grateful.
After he had been climbing down for a few minutes, he came to a recessed ledge cut into the side. Just a step in space away from the ladder, it was big enough for a boy and a backpack to rest up if necessary. Itch wondered if this would be the place for the small gas canister to do its work. He had thought of using it at the bottom, but maybe it could be just as useful here. He looked up and then down again. No, he hadn’t come far enough. He’d taken a few chances already; he’d risk another.
As he descended deeper, the rungs of the ladder became increasingly damp and the surrounding bricks were taking on a green hue. Pausing briefly, he ran his finger down the wall; it was wet with moisture and slimy with algae. Hands tight on the ladder, he looked around. The dark green moss was everywhere, the bricks now lost behind it. While it made for a more dangerous descent—his feet were slipping on the wet rungs now—at least he knew water was near.
He came to another ledge cut into the wall. These mini-platforms were presumably where the winchmen had operated from, pulling the endless buckets of soil up to the surface, then guiding them down again. Itch wondered if this was the ledge the winchman had fallen from. The hole below him was black and looked endless. The lights from the top were dwindling. He needed more.
Itch stepped off the ladder and onto a ledge. The alcove was just deep enough for him to turn around with his backpack on, and he stood barely an inch from the drop as he took out the small gas canister, tubing, and blowtorch. He turned the nozzle and the gas hissed. The lighter did its work, and Itch positioned the canister so that the tube and torch hung free, its light spraying out and down. He put on his backpack again and climbed back onto the ladder.
Each step needed extra care now, and his rate of descent slowed. After fifteen minutes that felt like days, he spotted the top of one of the pieces of wood he had thrown down. Excited that he had reached the bottom, he picked up speed, his legs and arms working faster again. But he was now skipping the “test ladder” part of his routine, and suddenly he felt the left side pull away from the wall slightly. Itch froze. He stared at the rivets that held the ladder in place; one of them sagged slightly in the mossy brick. Unsure how long it would hold, he hurried on.
In the near darkness, the ends of the planks came into view. Itch was trying to judge how far he still had to go when the rung he was standing on snapped.
His right foot had only just touched it when it gave way, shattering clean down the middle.
The impact on the next rung as his foot jerked downward caused that one to snap, too.
The third, fourth, and fifth ones gave way; the cracking and splitting iron sounding like rapid-fire gunshots.
Itch fell nearly ten feet in one second.
Terrified, he grabbed onto the side of the ladder to slow himself down, the rust and screws tearing into his fingers. In desperation he cried out, his voice echoing and rebounding up the well.
By leaning into the ladder and pressing with his arms into the metal he slowed his fall, but his feet were flailing, groping, trying to find the rungs again. I’m not going to make it! he thought, as an image of his body falling into the depths flashed through his mind. He continued to slide, his hands squeaking like brakes on the ladder before his feet finally found a rung that held, and he came to a halt.
The skin on his arms burned and bled but he didn’t look at them. His hands were lacerated, but his mind shut out the pain. He looked down. He was up to his thighs in water.
The planks of wood had embedded themselves at the bottom—in mud, presumably—and only the tops were above water level. This meant that the bottom was only a little way below them. Instinctively Itch looked up. He could see the small canister’s orange flame burning steadily, but the ones at the top were tiny, like three stars in the sky. The gas would soon burn up, and Itch had little enough time anyway.
Four hundred feet down, Itch looked around and saw only shadows and faint shades of gray and brown. He climbed back up three rungs of the ladder so that he was out of the water—dark black and rippling out from where his legs had just been. He watched as the ripples passed around the submerged planks and disappeared. Visibility just over three feet.
Itch knew that there was a tunnel that led off from where he was standing, but the water was too deep to tell where it was. He saw again the lightning-bolt shape he had drawn; this horizontal tunnel would run for about thirty feet before the well dropped again into the bowels of the Earth. He guessed it wouldn’t be on the ladder side, but that was the easiest to check. He removed the towel from inside his shirt, laying it over a rung. He noticed how bloody it was—his hands were furrowed with deep cuts and the skin on all his fingers and both palms was split. He mopped up what he could.
Next he slipped off the backpack and, holding it in one hand, removed his shirt with the other. He looped the sleeves through the backpack’s straps and then knotted them tightly onto the ladder. He took off his sneakers and socks and chucked them at the far wall, where they bounced and fell into the water, the ripples folding back to the ladder.
Itch stepped back down the three rungs into the water and reached for the nearest plank. It was a roughly cut piece of pine and he tugged it free of whatever sludge it was stuck in. Holding the ladder with his left hand and the wood in his right, he stepped down another rung. Filling his lungs with air, he descended the next two. When he reached the third, he was completely submerged, and holding the end of the plank, he started poking and prodding. He quickly realized that—as he had suspected—there was nothing but brick on the ladder side of the well. The tunnel to the final drop led off from elsewhere.
He climbed out of the water again, and got his first hint that the sickness wasn’t far away. His stomach tightening, he grabbed as many of the planks as he could reach and bundled them together, laying them flat on the water. He launched himself on top of his makeshift surfboard. With a plank in his hand, he started stabbing clockwise around the well, the wood darting backward and forward under the water.
He had turned through 90 degrees and found only brick; another 90 degrees took him back to the ladder, and he started to get worried. If the well ended here, just four hundred feet below the ground, he had wasted his time. Increasingly frantic, he paddled past the rungs and spun around 270 degrees. His father had been right—paddling was a useful skill, after all.
Last chance. He closed his eyes. There was no mistaking what was coming. The sweats and shaking were beginning again as he pushed the wood under the water. He felt it glance off what could be a corner piece, and then it shot forward, disappearing out of his hand. Grabbing another plank, he tried again a little farther around and, sure enough, the wood met with no resistance. This was the tunnel that led to the final drop, thirty feet away.
As Itch got onto the ladder and climbed back up a few rungs, his whole body shook. He hoped he still had the strength for what he had to do. He knew he couldn’t swim underwater along thirty feet of tunnel, drop the rocks down the remaining 885 feet and make his way back to safety. He couldn’t have done that even if he’d been in amazing physical condition; with a heavy dose of radiation coursing through him, he knew it wasn’t even worth trying.
If he couldn’t push the rocks over the edge, though, he knew something that could. He reached for the front pocket of his backpack and removed the silver foil from the tubes of WHO ME and SBM, the stink agents. Unfolded and stretched out, the foil was about the size of a large piece of paper. Finding the glass jar of sodium, he removed the stopper and threw it in the water. He laid the foil out on his left hand, and clumsily, his shaking hands slowing him down, poured the soft chunks of metal onto the foil, the oil leaking away over his fingers.
Even in the shadowy darkness four hundred feet down, Itch could see the reaction begin. The silvery sheen was turning pinkish-white as he folded the foil over to make a parcel. He sealed the edges by pinching them together. The packet already felt hot on his hand, his open wounds making him gasp. Crimping the seals as tightly as he could, he held the package in his teeth and released the backpack from the shirt’s knots. Tying the sleeves into a cradle, he gently laid the sodium parcel in its folds. With enormous effort, he hoisted the backpack onto his bare shoulders and stepped back into the water.
Using his last reserves of strength, he treaded water in front of where he knew the mouth of the tunnel to be. Holding onto the planks of wood to balance the pull of the backpack, he dived. He only needed to go down a few inches to reach the tunnel, and he half swam, half pulled himself along the ceiling, holding his breath. He wanted to go as far in as possible. The closer he could get to the final drop, the better the chance of sending the rocks over the edge to the bottom. But in the underwater darkness, he lost all sense of how far he had gone. As his body weakened, the backpack pulled him deeper into the tunnel until he felt sure he must have reached the end of it.
Four hundred feet below the surface of the Earth, in a flooded nineteenth-century well shaft, Itchingham Lofte let go of his backpack.
Corkscrewing around, his chest bursting, he felt his way back to the tunnel entrance. As he broke the surface, he inhaled deeply, his breath rasping and ragged. He knew he had only seconds left to finish the job. Grabbing the sodium from his shirtsleeves and ignoring the heat searing into his damaged hand, he dived down to the tunnel again, this time taking the parcel in as far as he dared. Letting go, he spun around and swam back for the ladder.
How much time Itch had now depended on how tight he had made the seals in the foil. He started up the rungs, his bare feet pushing as fast as they could. He needed the water to be kept away from the sodium for as long as possible, because once the two found each other, all hell would break loose. He reached the rungless section where he had crashed through the rusted iron; but he didn’t slow down. Pulling himself up with his hands, Itch was flying.
Maybe the body finds untapped reserves when it needs to; maybe the fear of dying makes it do extraordinary things. As he climbed, he muttered, “2Na + 2H2O = 2NaOH + H2; 2Na + 2H2O = 2NaOH + H2.” Over and over, like an incantation, he repeated the formula of the reaction he was both escaping from and depending on. Sodium added to water leads to sodium hydroxide and hydrogen gas. Bang.
“2Na + 2H2O = 2NaOH + H2.” Louder now, as if appealing to the chemistry gods that controlled all reactions, Itch screamed it at the top of his lungs, yelling through the well, his voice bouncing, rebounding, magnified:
“2Na + 2H2O = 2NaOH + H2!”
Rung by rung, foot by foot, bloody hand by bloody hand, Itch climbed away from the water. He knew his sodium would blow eventually—the water would find its way through the silver foil and the reaction would be instantaneous. Molten sodium, caustic soda, and flame would explode in all directions. He needed the eruption to be big enough to blow the backpack along to the end of the tunnel, where gravity would take it to the very deepest point—1,285 feet below the Earth’s surface.
But he also wanted to live.
The ladder cut into his bare chest, his feet, and his hands, but his eyes were focused on the small winchman’s platform, which was now only a few steps away. Three rungs. He’d stop there.
Slowing, Itch was shaking with nausea and fear; the sweat was blinding him. He wiped it away with his bloodied hands.
He made the next rung. He was getting closer to the light from the small canister, but it was very dim—its supply was running dangerously low.
Another rung.
The convulsion felt as though it started in his feet and worked its way up through his legs, his hips, and his stomach. Refusing to stop climbing, Itch hauled himself up to the last rung and threw himself off the ladder and onto the ledge as the sickness took him again.
Flat on his back, he saw the little canister flame flicker, fade, and go out. In the darkness, the five stars of the blowtorches at the top still flickered. That wasn’t right, of course—there should only have been three.
Itch had just started to count the flames again when there was a low rumble from deep in the well, followed by the roar of water being thrown out of the tunnel at huge pressure. The ledge shook and some of the bricks crumbled, the pieces scattering over him. Water rushed up the well, pushing mud, rocks, and his planks of wood with it.
It was an underground tsunami. In the tight confines of the tunnel, the explosion threw the water upward with extraordinary force. Itch had no time to brace himself as filthy, foul-smelling water crashed over him. He was lifted, spinning around and upward, like a whirlpool in reverse. Burning, choking water stung his eyes and poured down his throat. Then, as quickly as it had risen, the water level crashed down again, tossing Itch back onto the ledge, where he lay like a broken doll.
With the sound of the sodium explosion still reverberating and the waves slapping the well’s sides a hundred feet below, Itch, choking and gasping, felt his body shutting down. It hurt. It all hurt. He turned to face the wall. He was burning up and shivering at the same time. He wrapped his arms around himself and curled into a ball. He squeezed his eyes shut to keep out the light and heat that were coming from somewhere.
He saw his sister smiling at him and he smiled back.
“Sorry,” he said.
He saw Jack waving and tried to wave back.
“Sorry,” he said.
His parents called to him.
“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry for everything.”