Carly tightened her fingers around a metal ring and pulled as hard as she could. It didn’t move. A chink of light caught her eye. She looked up. Someone had cracked open the hatch.
‘No,’ she moaned as she rattled the handle again.
‘Three blind mice, three blind mice,’ Moustache sang softly. Slowly. She couldn’t hear Doc and she knew he’d be trying to find another way to reach them.
Despite the freezing temperature, she was boiling. She wiped her face with her sleeve.
‘Grab hold of me and pull as hard as you can.’ Carly grasped the ring, tighter now, with both hands, her sisters’ arms wrapped around her waist.
They pulled and pulled until pain seared in Carly’s shoulder joints. She felt her body might tear in two as the combined weight of the twins dragged her backwards.
Carly clenched her fingers harder. She wouldn’t let go.
Suddenly the trapdoor swung open, sending the sisters tumbling like dominoes.
Sobbing, Carly felt around until she found one of the girls and without hesitation she dragged her over to the hole and shoved her down into the blackness. Whatever was down there couldn’t be any worse than being trapped in this tiny space with Moustache still singing above them. It made Carly’s stomach contract to realize that he was relishing the chase. Wanting it almost.
‘See how they run. See how they run.’
‘Carly, I…’
‘Move,’ she snapped, cutting off Leah’s protests that it was too dark, she was too scared. She propelled her into the unknown, after Marie, then she scrambled after them both.
The tunnel was low. Damp. The stench was cloying. Their progress was slow at first. Carly felt around with her hands as they moved, terrified there’d be more to the tunnel than they knew. Different routes. The danger they might spend eternity lost in an underground maze was terrifying and something she didn’t want to be responsible for. Something else she didn’t want to be responsible for. Intermittently there were larger openings shooting off the main strip, which didn’t seem to lead anywhere, almost as though they were passing places but Carly didn’t understand why.
‘I think this is the right way. If we keep going straight, we have to come out somewhere, eventually.’ She crossed her fingers as she spoke. ‘As fast as you can.’
Carly could hear Leah softly crying, the shuffle of the twins as they crawled, and something else.
Rats?
It seemed to take forever, palms pressed into dampness, knees sinking, but in reality it couldn’t have been more than five minutes before the tunnel grew wider, and then she saw it.
Pale light.
The moon. Carly nodded her head furiously, affirming to herself that yes, they were nearly outside.
A sharp blow to the nose, sprang tears to Carly’s eyes.
‘Why have you stopped?’ she whispered crossly to Leah, trying to shove her forwards again.
‘Marie can see Doc’s boots. He’s out there.’
Carly felt angry. Helpless. Scared.
‘Back up,’ she hissed. She retreated, patting the walls, desperately trying to locate one of the pockets they could hide in. Her heart hammered in her chest. She knew if Doc crouched down and shone his torch in the tunnel it was all over.
At last found what she was looking for. She shuffled back even further, ushering the twins inside the cramped space, before she curled herself around them. A comma once more.
They waited.
From outside a shout.
‘I’ve found something! An opening.’
A light sweeping left to right in the tunnel. Carly screwed her eyes tightly closed.
Please don’t spot us. Please don’t spot us.
And then darkness.
Silence.
‘Has he gone?’ whispered Marie.
Carly wanted to scream, ‘I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers.’ She knew that was unfair, but still. She didn’t know what to do.
‘I think so but let’s wait a while.’
She pressed her fingertips over the walls, over the low ceiling. She found something smooth and hard, a large stone. They weren’t too far from the outside. Could they burrow out a different way? Potentially Doc and Moustache were waiting at the exit, ready to grab them when they emerged. If they could slip out somewhere else they’d have a chance to reach the road.
Was it silly to try to dig? Could she somehow cause the tunnel to collapse? But knowing that freedom was so tantalizingly close drove Carly to prise her nails under the stone and drag it out of the damp earth.
Suddenly they were all screaming as a deluge of insects poured down on them. Tiny, sharp feet scuttling over their skin. One fell in Carly’s open mouth. She gagged as she flicked it