Twisted Fate by Traci Hunter Abramson & Gregg Luke & Stephanie Black

Author:Traci Hunter Abramson & Gregg Luke & Stephanie Black
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Suspense, LDS, Mystery, Thriller, Woods, Cabin, Forest, Survival, Escape, Mansion, Murder, Horror, Engagement, Stalker, Pranks, framed, Abuse, Haunted
Publisher: Covenant Communications, Inc.
Published: 2014-05-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

Fastening Velcro LED lamps to our foreheads, we made our way down an elegant staircase to the main foyer. Ostentatious didn’t come close to describing the place. Hardwood and marble abounded—as did dust and cobwebs.

We didn’t waste time searching through each room. We knew our destination lay beneath the mansion. Finding a stairway in a back room, we descended on treads that complained with each step. The stairs seemed to go on forever, angling back and forth, and before long, I was certain we’d dipped well below ground level. At the base of the stairs was a stone room about twenty feet square.

“The pit?” Eve proposed.

“Maybe,” I replied.

Shelves lined rough-hewn, sandstone walls. On the shelves lay an assortment of archaic mining tools, including some hard hats with candlelit headlamps. In the center of one wall, a wooden door hung skewed on one rusty hinge.

“Are we going in?” I asked.

“Do you want to solve this mystery?”

As I pulled the old handle, it crumbled in my hand. Rocking back, I lunged at the door with my shoulder. Much to my delight, it gave way with a loud crack. The sound of the thick door hitting the ground echoed into the blackness of a narrow passageway beyond. A strong waft of sulfuric air assaulted our noses.

We looked at each other, unable to hide expressions of worry. The stench was horrible.

“The giant’s breath?” Eve whispered. I could have done without the correlation, but she was probably right.

I rummaged through my backpack and pulled out two state-of-the-art, collapsible gas masks. When Eve flashed a questioning look, I said, “No respectable doomsday prepper leaves home without one.”

The masks featured a plastic face shield connected to a class-one HEPA respirator that strapped at the back of the head. You could talk while wearing the mask, but it made your voice sound like Darth Vader.

The long passageway was roughly five feet wide and was littered with debris, crumbled stone, and decades of dust. A large room at the end of the passageway joined with three tunnels of similar dimensions. The tunnels were chiseled from solid sandstone; the pickaxe marks were plainly evident, gouging down each wall in uniform striations.

“Which way?” Eve asked, indicating the three tunnels intersecting at the chamber.

I held up a cigarette lighter and flicked it to life. Moving to the mouth of each tunnel, I held the lighter steady. Only one of the paths bent the flame.

“This one,” I said, pulling a chemical glow stick from my pack, snapping it to life, and setting it at the tunnel entrance to mark our direction of travel. The fluorescent glow illuminated the chamber in a sickly, bile-yellow hue.

As I took a step, Eve asked a question that stopped me cold. “Adam, what exactly are we looking for?”

I wasn’t sure. Would there be evidence in these catacombs that proved the Collier legend a hoax? Would we find something that made sense out of all the mystery? Or would we run into a real giant—finding something that put our lives in jeopardy, perhaps even killing us?

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.