Time stalled as Kolkamitza stared into the shaft. Knees bent like an anchorite, head as empty as the sky, he gazed wordlessly, unsure of how to feel. In one sense, he found the whole ordeal impossible, absurd; a notion that was compounded by the fact that the world around him was pressing on in blissful ignorance of his discovery. Children hollered and cackled in various yards, squirrels chittered and pounced within the overgrown hedges. But despite being surrounded by mundanity, Kolkamitza nonetheless felt himself at the hem of a deeper world.

From one of the neighbouring houses a mother squawked for her son to return home. The sound of this made Kolkamitza feel weirdly vulnerable. He was stricken with a fear of discovery. The muscles in his legs were achingly resistant to his attempt at rising, but once he was upright, Kolkamitza frantically peeled the sweaty shirt from his torso and laid it carefully across the pit, weighting it with little mounds of dirt. The fabric scarcely covered the hole, but it was concealment enough to confuse any spying neighbours.

He went inside the house, which was dim and cool, and thus provided a small measure of comfort. In the kitchen, he drew himself a glass of water and sat down. He badly needed to collect himself.

Was it truly so grand a thing, unearthing a hatch in the yard? Should such a discovery stir up so much anxiety and confusion?

He drained the water tumbler and managed to slow his breathing. He concluded that his discovery was not at all worth fretting over, for the simple reason that he had not truly discovered anything. Not yet. He’d unsealed a gate of some kind. But as to its nature and to where it may lead, these were truths yet to be realized.

And yet there was no denying that he had knocked, and fate had answered. Could this be the crucial third door that Erin had been seeking until the night she died, the one that would complete the cycle?

From the junk drawer Kolkamitza retrieved his flashlight. He was relieved to find that its batteries still had power. He grabbed and donned a fresh shirt from the hamper and marched back to the yard. After ensuring that the neighbouring windows were free of onlookers, he stripped his makeshift cover from the hatch. Part of him was expecting it to have vanished in his absence, but it not only remained, the pit seemed to have grown blacker and, paradoxically, more alluring.

He shone the light down and it immediately illuminated something fine, something intricate. At first Kolkamitza thought it might have been some sort of abstract pattern in the earth, but after scanning the beam about he realized that it was a Persian rug, a rich tapestry of scarlets and whites and complex arabesques. Squatting at the edges of the rug were a battered sofa, a rocking chair, and several wooden stools, poorly stacked.

‘A bomb shelter? A repository?’