She took a chance and followed the turn. It tended downward, sometimes as a slope and sometimes with stone stairs embedded. After a dozen meters, it split again. The path to the right led her to an empty chamber: one of the original cellars. Stains and indents worn into the stone flooring showed where barrels had been stored, though they had long since been moved out.

The cellar had a second passageway leading out of it. The Hulls would most likely want an exit close by for easy access, Margot reasoned. She followed the path. It only lasted for a few feet before tree roots, growing densely through the walls and ceiling, blocked her path. She tried to push through, but too many of them had embedded themselves into the floor. She turned back, retracing her steps out of the chamber.

Kant and Andrew said many of the tunnels had collapsed. She forced herself to breathe through the squeezing stress as she reached her light ahead to find the crossroads. What’s the danger of them collapsing further while I’m inside?

The panic was getting its hold on her, digging claws into her back and squeezing. Her footsteps, originally careful and measured, had become harried. Only her semi-blindness held her back from breaking into an outright sprint.

Stop. Get it under control.

She staggered, one shoulder pressed into a fractured wooden support buried into the wall, and closed her eyes as she tried to reel herself back in.

The tunnels might be a maze, but they couldn’t last forever.

Distantly, she wondered if this was what her parents’ tape had been intended to warn her about. A child could see and avoid the markers over the tunnels during the day, but at night, they must have been all but invisible. It would be easy to fall in, just like she had. In the tape, the girl had been dragged into the earth, never to be seen again.

But then…why add that part about the other family? Why include biting and scratching? To increase fear and make the warning have more weight? If I was too young for a direct discussion about the tunnels, I think I would have been too young for that.

Her legs felt like they didn’t fully belong to her. Heavy and slow and as unsteady as stilts, they moved reluctantly as she pushed forward.

The tunnels became more chaotic. Narrower. Her outstretched light flitted over tangled roots and spiderwebs tacky with dust. The dirt walls seemed to bulge, heavily laden, like a dam near bursting.

Margot’s vision narrowed to a tight point. Everything outside became blurred, and she kept her eyes focused on the area a few paces ahead of her feet. She didn’t dare blink. When she blinked, she felt like the walls were collapsing in on her.