The tunnel was impossibly small. I was trying to descend into the Underworld and it didn’t seem to want me yet. I was able to kick the kits down the tunnel and wished I could slide through as easily as they did. I had to dig my heels into the mud and rocks to pull me along while I pushed with my hands. I felt like I scraped myself on everything along the way. I should probably have gone slower but I needed to find out what happened to my little sister. She was small enough to zip through it and I hoped she was way ahead of me. I couldn’t hear her at all—no crying or calling out—and it made me worry that something had happened to her. It had to be a big something to keep a little chatterbox like Jesse quiet.
I could hear KC close behind me huffing and puffing and muttering something foul under her breath. She’s smaller than me, but she’d been wearing her best “come hither” outfit and I don’t think it was doing her any favors. I heard a sharp crack from her direction and held my breath, afraid I just heard her break a bone on something. But KC would have been screaming the tunnel blue if she did, so I figured she’d just broken one of her heels. I feared the mood she was in but glad she followed me. And no matter what happened at the bottom at least we’d be together. I couldn’t live with myself if my sisters died. I was already having trouble leaving my parents for dead.
No! I couldn’t think about that! I had to live in the moment. I had to reach Jesse and keep her away from the soldiers. I doubled my efforts to get to her and before I knew it, my legs were swinging free in the darkness. I was about to call out to Jesse, but something grabbed my leg and made my heart skip a beat.
“Houston?” It was Jesse. I couldn’t be far off the ground if she could reach my leg. I pushed the rest of my muddy self out of the tunnel and found myself in one of Jesse’s clingy hugs. She was shaking. I couldn’t blame her. It was pitch black and much colder down here. I hugged her back, hoping I could take away some of the cold and fear. I was so relieved to have found her, I forget I was in the bowels of the earth and I couldn’t see a thing. It felt good to be out of sight of the soldiers, but the good feelings stopped when I got kicked in the head by one of KC’s heels. It was just my luck it was the unbroken one.
“What the hell?” I shouted. My angry voice echoed off the unseen walls. We must have crawled into an underground cavern. I could feel a trickle of blood run down my face from where her heel caught my eyebrow. Just a couple of inches over and I would have had a stiletto in my eye.
“Sorry!” KC shouted back. “I can’t see you! I…I can’t see anything…” She plopped down on the ground next to us and reached out until she found Jesse and I. We stood there, panting and shivering, not saying a word, just grateful to be alive and together. But that peaceful moment ended when Jesse whispered, “There’s something down here with us.”
My heart stopped again. So did my breathing. KC and Jesse held their breath too. And in the silence we heard another’s. There was this sense that people surrounded us but only one of them was breathing. I got this feeling that if I let go of my sisters and reached out in the darkness in any direction I would touch something fleshy and cold.
“Who are you?” I call out into the darkness.
I got a click for an answer as a flashlight lit up the place. I was temporarily blinded by it so it took a few moments for me to register what I was looking at.
It was a little girl in a peach dress. Correction, it was a little dead girl in a peach dress. And standing next to her was a real, live Ghost.