“Well, that’s comforting,” Archie said.

Gretchen shifted the light to a blocky wooden handle and then bent over and pulled the tunnel door open with a rusty creak. The door slammed onto the ground, filling the air with dust and dirt. They both stood looking at the inky well at their feet. The light of the penlight was swallowed by the darkness. Archie could barely see where solid ground gave way to air, but he thought he saw a ladder descending into the pit.

“After you,” Gretchen said.

Archie had the brief sensation that he was standing next to his own open grave, and then he thought of Susan, shook it off, and felt his way into the hole.

The wooden ladder went straight down. It was ancient and soft with dry rot and splintered under Archie’s hands. He counted the rungs as he descended, each foothold giving slightly under his weight. After twenty, he hit solid ground. He stepped back into the blackness and brushed the splinters from his hands. Gretchen stepped off the ladder next to him. She had the penlight in her mouth and she dropped it into her hand and shone it around the dirt floor until she zeroed in on something and went to it. The space filled with white fluorescent light. Archie blinked for a moment, seeing spots. Then his eyes adjusted. Gretchen was standing in her blood-spattered nurse’s costume holding the handle of a Coleman battery-powered camp lantern. The walls of the pit were rough-hewn rock and dirt, reinforced with decaying timber beams. The air was earthy and dank. A jagged tunnel headed horizontally into blackness.

Something dropped onto Archie’s head and started crawling across his forehead. He flicked it away, without seeing what it was. “Happy Halloween,” he said dryly.

“This way,” Gretchen said, pointing the light to indicate that he should follow her.

The tunnel was just big enough that they could walk side by side, Archie occasionally ducking as his head brushed rotting timber beams. The walls were carved out of rock. The dirt floor was uneven and seemed to slope slightly downward, though Archie couldn’t be sure. The sensation wasn’t Oxycodone related. The temperature dropped the farther they went, until it felt a good fifteen degrees cooler down here than it had been up on the surface. Gretchen’s white stockings and shoes gleamed. Rats scampered at the periphery of the lantern light. Archie could hear them squealing.

“You got to Susan between my house and her mother’s,” Archie said. He was hunched over, hands in his pockets, trying to stay in the light.

“I was watching you,” Gretchen said. “I knew where she’d go once I put that question on her screen, and she showed right up, predictable little thing.”