“It’s a gift,” Gretchen said, picking up her pace. “You’ll like it.”

Archie hurried along beside her. “I don’t want any more presents.”

“Guess what it is,” Gretchen said.

Was it an illusion, or was the tunnel getting smaller? “What what is?” he asked.

“The present,” Gretchen said.

There was only black space up ahead, no way to see how far they had to go, if this tunnel ever ended. “I’m not really in the mood for games,” Archie said. He was breathing hard. The tunnel air was light on oxygen.

“What do you like to do best of all?” Gretchen asked. She stopped and lifted the lantern, illuminating both of their faces.

Archie raised a hand to shade his eyes. “I give up,” he said.

“Catch killers,” she said brightly.

Archie dropped his hand and gazed at her in incomprehension. The light carved dark shadows into her face, sharpening each angle. “You’re turning yourself in?” he asked.

“No,” she said. She lowered the lantern. “Don’t be silly, darling.” She turned on her shiny white heel and started moving again, and Archie found himself instantly enveloped by darkness. Rocks crunched under his feet as he struggled to catch up with her.

They continued in silence again, so that the only sounds were the rats, the gravel under their feet, and the distant menacing whisper of the lake moving over their heads.

“There,” Gretchen said finally.

She aimed the light straight ahead, where the tunnel ended at a thick wooden door set in a concrete wall. They had come to the end of the line.

“It sticks,” Gretchen said. “We’ll both have to push.”

Archie didn’t argue. Wherever that door led, he was confident he would like it more than the tunnel he was standing in. He put his shoulder against the warped wood and leaned into it as Gretchen turned the rusty knob. With the only other exit back the way they had come, Archie gave it his all, inhaling a century’s worth of dust and cobwebs in the process. It took three body slams before the door gave way, and he tumbled through the doorway in a cloud of dirt, barely getting his hands out in front of him in time to break his fall as he toppled into darkness. The first thing he noticed was that the floor on the other side was hard. He got to his feet, palms stinging, shoulder aching, coughing up dust, as Gretchen came through the door behind him with the light. They were standing at the intersection of two concrete passageways. Archie shook the cobwebs off his blazer, thumbed the dust from his eyes, and glanced around. This wasn’t like the pseudo-mine-shaft they’d just come through; this was a basement.

They were on the island, or under it.