“DAVID!”
I was fading into consciousness. My eyelids fluttered.
“David! Are you all right?”
It took a few seconds for Ariana’s face to come into focus. She was leaning over me, still in a down coat. Her face was streaked with tears. Behind her the bookcase was ajar, and I could see into the scenery shop.
“Yeah,” I groaned. “I — I just tripped, I guess. How did you find me?”
“Mr. Sarro told me you were in the office, but it was empty when we checked. Then he said he heard voices in the auditorium. I saw the gate open and the light on in the scenery shop, so — ”
“Why did you come? I thought you went home.”
“I was going to, but — but — ”
Ariana’s face crumpled. Tears began streaming down her cheeks.
I sat up and let her bury her head in my shoulders. “What? What happened?”
Her answer was a fit of moaning, keening cries. She couldn’t speak. I gently helped her up, trying to keep weight off my bum ankle. As she sat on a sofa in the scenery shop, I swung the bookcase inward.
I took one last look into the basement cavern and saw the graffiti on the walls. I remembered reading some of it, but that was all. The rest was a blank.
But I did recall turning the lights on. And now they were off.
The bookcase slid into place, and I sank into the sofa. “Ariana,” I asked, putting my arm around her, “did you shut the li — ”
She clutched me so hard, it took away my breath. “Oh, David, it was horrible! Now I know how you felt. I — I — I don’t know what — I — should we call the police? I want to move — I don’t want to live here anymore — ”
“You kids all right down there?” Mr. Sarro’s voice boomed from above. “I mean, I don’t want to interrupt, but I can’t let you stay down there unsupervised, you know. Not that I don’t trust you, but my job — ”
I looked at Ariana. She wiped her eyes and nodded.
“No sweat, Mr. Sarro!” I said. “We’re coming right up!”
I helped Ariana to her feet. As she climbed the spiral stairs, I pulled the light switch, then followed her up.
We went to the yearbook office, where I grabbed my coat. When we were finally outside, Ariana hugged me with both arms and began crying again.
Whoa.
If I could bottle how that felt, I’d keep it with me and take a sip every day for the rest of my life.
Had she found out about Smut and Monique? Was that what this was about? “What’s wrong, Ariana?” I asked.
She swallowed hard. “Come with me.”
As we walked arm in arm toward her house, my ankle began feeling stronger. Ariana was trembling, and I held her tightly.
We turned onto Cass. At the intersection with Eliot Place, we saw the construction site that Chief Pudgy had almost run into. Ariana stopped. Her face was practically white.
“L-l-look in there,” she said. “I can’t.”
I left her on the corner and walked closer. Wooden sawhorses surrounded a gaping, rectangular hole in the road. Inside the hole was a corroded metal pipe that looked as if the Pilgrims had put it in themselves. The center had rotted away, and debris had collected inside it — newspapers, bottles, wrappers, a shoe.…
My eyes widened. I went to the edge and looked over.
The shoe had a foot in it, And it was attached to a leg.
“Oh my God,” I said.
“What do we do?” Ariana asked.
“Is it real?”
“I don’t know!”
As if in answer, the foot twitched.
Then, slowly, it slid into the pipe.