Elena looked at it, and then at Bonnie's ghostly face. Every hair on her arms and the back of her neck was standing up. "Oh, no..." she whispered. "Not that."
"Elena, what are you talking about?" Meredith said.
Dizzy, Elena looked down at the marble countenances of Thomas and Honoria Fell, lying on the stone lid of their tomb. "This thing opens," she whispered.
"You think we're supposed to-look inside?" Matt said.
"I don't know," Elena said miserably. She didn't want to see what was inside that tomb now any more than she had when Tyler had suggested opening it to vandalize it. "Maybe we won't be able to get it open," she added. "Tyler and Dick couldn't. It started to slide only when I leaned on it."
"Lean on it now; maybe there's some sort of hidden spring mechanism," Alaric suggested, and when Elena did, with no results, he said, "All right, let's all get a grip, and brace ourselves-like this. Come on, now-"
From his crouch, he looked up at Damon, who was standing motionless next to the tomb, looking faintly amused. "Excuse me," Damon said, and Alaric stepped back, frowning. Damon and Stefan each gripped an end of the stone lid and lifted.
The lid came away, making a grinding sound as Damon and Stefan slid it to the ground on one side of the tomb.
Elena couldn't bring herself to move closer.
Instead, fighting nausea, she concentrated on Stefan's expression. It would tell her what was to be found in there. Pictures crashed through her mind, of parchment-colored mummified bodies, of rotting corpses, of grinning skulls. If Stefan looked horrified or sickened, disgusted...
But as Stefan looked into the open tomb, his face registered only disconcerted surprise.
Elena couldn't stand it any longer. "What is it?"
He gave her a crooked smile and said with a glance at Bonnie, "Come and see."
Elena inched up to the tomb and looked down. Then her head flew up, and she regarded Stefan in astonishment.
"What is it?"
"I don't know," he replied. He turned to Meredith and Alaric. "Does either of you have a flashlight? Or some rope?"
After a look inside the stone box, they both headed for their cars. Elena remained where she was, staring down, straining her night vision. She still couldn't believe it.
The tomb was not a tomb, but a doorway.
Now she understood why she had felt a cold wind blow from it when it had shifted beneath her hand that night. She was looking down into a kind of vault or cellar in the ground. She could see only one wall, the one that dropped straight down below her, and that one had iron rungs driven into the stone, like a ladder.
"Here you go," Meredith said to Stefan, returning. "Alaric's got a flashlight, and here's mine. And here's the rope Elena put in my car when we went looking for you."
The narrow beam of Meredith's flashlight swept the dark room below. "I can't see very far inside, but it looks empty," Stefan said. "I'll go down first."
Bonnie hadn't moved. She was still standing there with that utterly abstracted expression on her face, as if she saw nothing around her. Without a word, she swung a leg over the edge of the tomb, twisted, and began to descend.
"Whoa," said Stefan. He tucked the flashlight in his jacket pocket, put a hand on the tomb's foot, and jumped.
Elena had no time to enjoy Alaric's expression; she leaned down and shouted, "Are you okay?"
"Fine." The flashlight winked at her from below. "Bonnie will be all right, too. The rungs go all the way down. Better bring the rope anyway."
Elena looked at Matt, who was closest. His blue eyes met hers with helplessness and a certain resignation, and he nodded. She took a deep breath and put a hand on the foot of the tomb as Stefan had. Another hand suddenly clamped on her wrist.
"I've just thought of something," Meredith said grimly. "What if Bonnie's entity is the Other Power?"
"I thought of that a long time ago," Elena said. She patted Meredith's hand, pried it off, and jumped.
She stood up into Stefan's supporting arm and looked around. "My God..."