He seemed so calm. “Aren’t you frightened?”

“Yeah. Very.” He was feeling the walls, rubbing his fingers over the low ceiling.

“What are we going to do?”

“Get out of here, I hope. “

He strode back to the cabin and began to tear the bed apart. He threw the pillow, mattress, and bedclothes on the floor, then pulled at the iron spring frame. It came free with a screech. He worked at the bolts that held the frame together; amid a constant stream of muttered curses he managed to loosen one of them. After that it took him only a moment to twist one of the L-formed iron sides off the frame.

“What are you going to do with that?”

“Find a way out.”

He jabbed the six-foot iron bar against the cabin ceiling. Paint chips flew in accompaniment to the unmistakable sound of metal against metal. It was the same with the ceiling and the walls in the hall.

The floor, however, was made of heavily varnished two-inch oak boards. He began to work the corner of the bar between two of them.

“We’ll go through the floor,” he said, grunting with the effort.

Kolabati recoiled at the thought.

“The rakoshi are down there!”

“If I don’t meet them now, I’ll have to meet them later. I’d rather meet them on my terms than on Kusum’s.” He looked at her. “You going to stand there or are you going to help?”

Kolabati added her weight to the bar. A board splintered and popped up.

11

Jack tore at the floor boards with grim determination. It wasn’t long before his shirt and his hair were soaked with perspiration. He removed the shirt and kept working. Breaking through the floor seemed a futile, almost suicidal gesture—like a man trying to escape from a burning plane by jumping into an active volcano. But he had to do something. Anything was better than sitting and waiting for Kusum to return.

The rotten odor of rakoshi wafted up from below, engulfing him, making him gag. And the larger the hole in the flooring, the stronger the smell. Finally the opening was big enough to admit his shoulders. He stuck his head through for a look. Kolabati knelt beside him, peering over his shoulder.

It was dark down there. By the light of a solitary ceiling emergency lamp off to his right, he could see a number of large insulated pipes to each side of the hole, running along just under the steel beams that supported the flooring. Directly below was a suspended walkway that led to an iron-runged ladder.

He was ready to cheer until he realized he was looking at the upper end of the ladder. It went down from there. Jack did not want to go down. Anywhere but down.

An idea struck him. He lifted his head and turned to Kolabati.

“Does that necklace really work?”

She started and her expression became guarded. “What do you mean, ’work’?”

“What you told me. Does it really make you invisible to the rakoshi?”