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want to kiss you and not feel it."

He looked away to hide his face from her. By habit, really, his old habit of hiding his emotions. There was nothing she hadn't seen of his emotions by now. No weakness she didn't already know.

"You need to get some sleep," said Sylvie.

"You think I can sleep?"

"You hardly got any rest last night. This morning. You're still mortal, Don. Don't you think you need to be alert when she gets here?"

"Something I got to do first."

"What?"

"Seal the gully end of that tunnel."

"What does it matter which way she gets into the house?"

"I don't want her messing around with your body." His wrecking bar wouldn't be enough. He got a big old crowbar, almost as heavy as his sledgehammer. Got the sledgehammer, too, and his skillsaw and his two longest extension cords. Sylvie came down into the basement to watch him plug in the saw and string the cords together. But he wouldn't let her come down into the tunnel with him. "The tunnel's outside the house," he said. "I don't want you to disappear on me again."

"So the little woman sits home and waits while her man goes off to war."

"Down into the mine is more like it."

"How green was my valley."

He didn't get it.

"An old movie about Welsh coal miners," she said. "Roddy McDowall was in it, back when he was cute."

"Someday you have to take me to see it," he said. They smiled at each other, even chuckled a little over the bitter impossibility of it. Then he plunged down into the dark tunnel.

The cord was long enough, with plenty to spare. There was no second corpse near the entrance. Whatever she did with Lanny's body, she didn't leave it here. The wooden ceiling came to an end right where the tunnel narrowed down to a twisting passage that showed no daylight. There must be some kind of closure outside, something that kept neighborhood children from discovering and rediscovering this tunnel all the time. Lissy would know how to find it, though, even in the dark, and open it. When she got in here she'd find things changed a little.

Don wore his goggles this time - the debris would be coming from above. He took the safety guard off the skillsaw. Now it was just a naked blade, spinning, deadly. Starting at the board nearest the entrance, he sliced through the rotting old wood pretty easily. Of course, there was no way the blade could get even halfway through the boards, so nothing fell but chunks of sawdust. Exposed to the wet ground for so long, however, there was no chance this ancient wood was dry and termite-free. The miracle was that it had lasted this long. Maybe the tunnel was a structure of its own. Gladys talked about it being a place of freedom. If it was older than the Bellamy house, that could only mean it was used for escaping slaves. Guests coming in and out, leaving happy. A place built by love. It had all the ingredients for strength, didn't it? Maybe that's why it lasted when any other such structure should have rotted away a long time ago.

It's history I'm cutting down here, thought Don. It's a place with a life of its own. I'm a builder, not a destroyer. And yet right now it's destruction that we need.

He didn't want to cut too far. When the tunnel collapsed, he didn't want it to make a sink across the lawn. He only needed to break down enough of it to stop Lissy from coming in. It wouldn't take more than a few yards of blockage to stop her completely. In the dark, she wasn't going to want to dig. She no doubt would be armed - but not with a pick and shovel.

He picked up his sledgehammer and began the arduous work of breaking up the wood overhead. He held the sledgehammer out in front of him, then launched it upward, his arms extended. His muscles weren't shaped to deliver much strength in that direction. Fortunately, the wood was as rotten as he had hoped, and most of the time the sledgehammer sank into wood and when it came away, half the railroad tie crumbled down with it. Dirt began to fall like rain. Now it was time for the crowbar. Don rammed it into the packed earth over the rotten fragments of railroad tie and pried it, tore it loose. More and more of it fell.