Land of the Yellow Sea

Chapter 2. MIRROR, MIRROR THROUGH THE WALL...

"Oh yeah. The chimney column sticks out into the pavement. Silly me, Mum."

"Well, where is the sound coming from—that's what I'd like to know?" questioned Rose's mother.

"Me too, Mum."

"Hmmm, it must be a top quality tape recorder, but I'll be damned if I can answer the question as to how someone must have got behind the fireplace to put it there, and how it could suddenly switch itself on?"

"Maybe the storm shook it on, Mum. The whole house is rumbling and grumbling, pretty much."

"Okay, Rose, this is a sick joke. I'm angry, but I'm on your side, dear, and I will leave no stone unturned until we solve this mystery."

Rose liked the sound of that comment, and it was obvious where she inherited some of her mental characteristics from.

"And neither will I," Rose added, determinedly.

Rose's mother proved herself to be surprisingly resourceful. She quickly ran into the kitchen and returned with some bread knives and set to work at loosening the boarding.

She pulled it back...

The piano music could be heard a lot more clearly now, and the storm could not disguise it no matter how violent it was.

"There's nothing there, Rose," said her mother. "A lightning strike has knocked out all the bulbs in the chandelier except for one. I can't see anything but black."

But Rose's mother's eyesight was not as keen as her offspring's.

"Nope," said Rose, slowly shaking her head. "It goes back."

"Back? What are you talking about? There's nowhere for it to go back to."

"Watch, Mum!"

Rose dug into her pockets and pulled out a ten pence coin. She threw it into the open fireplace...

It chinked on the floor as if it had landed five or six feet into the fireplace...which seemed an impossibility.

Just then a lightning bolt lit up the living room and Rose and her mother could see quite clearly that there was a low-ceiling tunnel running down at a slight decline. They would have to go on hands and knees to explore it.

"Just hold on here a minute while I get a torch," said Rose's mother. "There's quite a powerful one up in my bedroom."

Rose's mother quickly rushed out of the living room and returned within a minute with the torch.

"Well, it doesn't make sense," said Rose's mother, shining a powerful beam of torchlight into the fireplace, confirming that the slightly declining tunnel was still there. "That tunnel just can't be right. The gentle downward slope of the tunnel isn't enough for us not to be seeing the street outside. We'll get to the bottom of this. So, come on then, let's go. Let's follow the piano playing."

And so they got on their hands and knees with Rose's mother leading the way with her powerful beam of torchlight, and Rose following close behind, looking a little like an inquisitive cheetah cub in her white large black polka-dotted T-shirt.

The tunnel slowly arced to the left and kept arcing.

"We're moving in a circle, Mum."

"I think so too."

"And the tunnel's sloping upwards now. Won't we end up back in our house?"

"Perhaps we will. But unless a new hole has been made in our house's wall, I don't see how we can get back into it. One thing's for sure, we can't exit this tunnel through the fireplace, as that's the place we entered it, and we've been walking on our hands and knees away from it ever since."