The Vault

15.

With their arms linked, Caleb and Alice carefully followed Officer Hennings, and they made their way down towards the vault.

The three of them kept silent as they listened out into the emptiness for any sign of company, but it was eerily silent as always.

Using his free hand, Hennings withdrew the oak club from his belt.

"Be careful, he may be dangerous," he whispered back to them as he continued leading the way.

Alice grimaced, thinking that kind of force would not be necessary, but then again, in the state Abraham had been of late, perhaps it was. The one thing for certain was that even against her better judgement, she still had the slightest of hopes that her father was down there.

"Anyone down here?" Hennings shouted once they had come to the clearing at the bottom of the stairs, but no reply came.

Relaxing himself, the officer reattached his club and began exploring the ground level.

"You say this place was boarded up?" He asked.

Alice nodded timidly.

"How strange, I don't think anyone in the village would even be aware of this being here. This house must be more ancient than we thought."

"Please, can we check the vault." Alice said gently, signalling in the direction to the old iron gates before it.

The officer turned his gaze and squinted into the darkness, the faint outline of bars could be made out from the orange glow of his flame.

Walking towards it, Hennings paused for a moment, and turning back curiously, he yelled towards the Doctor, who had been lingering behind.

"Are you coming then boy?" He shouted.

Caleb stood still, staring down at the old organ that was conspicuously placed in the middle of this vast, empty space far beneath the ground.

His head slowly raised up towards them, causing Alice and the officer to look at each other in slight concern.

"Caleb?" Alice called out.

Not answering her, he briskly walked towards the two of them until he was illuminated in the glow of the torch. "I'm here," he answered.

Turning back to the gate with a frown, the Officer ignored the peculiar behaviour of the doctor, and grabbed one of the old iron bars. He instantly noticed the intense cold of the metal as it chilled his coarse hands.

The doorway scraped along the floor causing the noisy echo of metallic screeching to reverberate throughout the deep chasm. The small glow of the three torch-lit people disappeared inside the vault, and shortly after, a lonely breeze of wind rolled downwards before following them.

Paper was scattered everywhere inside the vault which was consumed by the stench of mass human waste that had gathered in one of the corners. Hennings pinched his nose and scoffed as he looked around. "Christ, state of this place," he said aloud.

Ignoring him, Alice sighed from beside the entrance. The small vault was cluttered with mess, but it was empty, and somehow, she knew full well that her father had not been down there since the last time she had found him.

Caleb walked apathetically through the room, kicking away blank pages that littered the floor and scratching the stubble on his chin with a look of deep thought. As he looked down, the pavement beneath his feet rocked from his weight on the cracks.

The further he paced, the more the concrete cracked, until he suddenly found himself in the corner, looking down at an excavated patch of mud.

Kneeling, he touched the damp, cold mud with his fingers, and once again scratched his chin in curiosity.

"Caleb?" Alice said gently, putting her arm on his shoulder and causing him to jump slightly.

"Lost my bearings for a second," he answered.

"Well he didn't get much done considering he was down here for months!" Hennings bellowed from behind them.

The two of them turned to see the officer looking over the various pages on the dirty desk.

"Excuse me that belongs to my father," Alice protested as they quickly joined up with him.

"Relax you. There's nothing here of interest," Hennings replied gruffly.

Looking down at the desk, one small pile of pages lay delicately arranged on the table, yet not a single word had been written. She let out a deep sigh of misery at the pain her father must have been suffering before his demise.

"What's this down here?" Hennings said, changing the focus and walking into the nearest corner by the desk.

Alice followed him, leaving the doctor standing over the desk on his own.

Gently picking up the pages, he saw, clear as day, hundreds of words written in a scruffy, hasty scribble by Abraham, and even as the glow of the torch deserted him, the words had complete clarity.

Suddenly, in a bizarre instance, the words written on the page manifested clearly in his head, as if he was not in the same room as the others, and their voices had been swallowed by the ambience around him. The only noise he could hear was the whistle of the wind hitting the walls that trapped him, despite the fact he was buried so far under the ground.

Amongst the howls of the blustery wind, he recognised a faint, but gruff, voice that rode the waves of the breeze straight into his brain.

"She comes to me, and when she does, the fear that rips through me is so intense that I weep as if I were a small child. Through the howls of screeching wind that deafens me, I scream at her from the very bottom of my soul, asking her who she is and why she will not leave me be. But no answer comes, just the dead look from within her empty eyes, and as her broken body crawls towards my paralysed state, I beg for mercy from whatever god could provide it. Although I know that no such mercy shall ever come because god has forsaken this place for the wicked atrocities that have cursed it. I know not the story of this history... All I know is somehow I am connected to this place in a way indescribable. That no matter how much I know I need to leave, I cannot, because that twisted apparition holds the key to my heart, it knows the story of my lost love, and I will stay here and find out even if it kills me. I no longer eat, drink or sleep, I only wait all day and night for its arrival, never forgetting the sight of the ring on the end of it's pale, dead hand that stretches out to drag me down beneath the ground. The red ruby that glows within the total darkness that consumes me."

Looking down at his hand, the ruby that adorned his ring possessed a sullen glow in the darkness, and gripped by a total sense of terror, Caleb languidly turned his rigid neck to avert his eyes from it.

Crawling out from beneath the cold mud in the corner of the vault, a broken, crackling corpse snapped into place as it emerged. Jolting its neck upright, the empty dead black eyes inside it's skull stared into the very depths of his soul.

It was his wife.

A hand slammed down onto his shoulder, causing him to rear around in fright, shouting at the top of his lungs and throwing his fists violently at the target. In his frenzied and panicked state, he was unable to deal with his inaccurate swings.

The strong arms of Officer Hennings closed around him like a vice grip and hauled him down to the cold muddy floor.

Withdrawing his club as he sat on top of the doctor, Hennings delighted in exacting punishment on the man he had long loathed, swinging the club down heavily on his face, and busting the delicate features of the handsome doctor.

Screaming for him to stop, Alice grabbed the officer from behind, and as quick as the whole event had unravelled, it had stopped, and the three of them sat there panting for breath low beneath the surface of the ground.

"Caleb Kelston, I'm arresting you for assaulting village authority." Hennings voice boomed into the clearing.

"NO! You must not take me from this vault!" A shrill and blood-spluttering different voice echoed back.

A sinister breeze whirled into the empty clearance before vanishing.

W5YӰ 7