Katherine and the Truth About Jack

Chapter 11: Pitch's Tunnel

"Is that another Weeper?"

She nodded her scarf billowing around her as she ran. She jumped over a log and swerved around a tree until they came to a small clearing. Katherine skirted to a stop, her boots carving tracks with the heals.

In the middle of it was a bed, New and made of hardwood. He remembered placing it there after the old one was destroyed. It was a sort of marker for Pitches den, serving as a warning. "We shouldn't be here."

Ignoring the warning, Katherine pushed against the hardwood bed. She struggled with it, and Jack didn't dare help. It cut into the mud, dragging across until uncovering the old, almost entirely filled hole.

He remembered the way Pitch had clawed and screamed as he was dragged down by his own creations, and shivered. "Seriously, this is a bad idea."

Katherine kicked down the packed up dirt and it crumbled under her into the hole. A coldness rose from the hole, not like a breeze, but like that shivering, you feel up your spine from an especially eerie feeling. Despite the wave of timidness, she peered down the hole and into the darkness. "Amazing. Burgess just gets stranger and stranger."

"It's been here forever Kat," He leaned over with her, in spite of himself. "There's nothing so strange about it."

She looked to him, "I was looking through the library archives and I found something about this town!" Her voice rose excitedly as she reached into her bag and pulled out two maps. "I took these from the library display cases—"

"Is that legal?"

"And look!" She spread out the papers next to the dark hole. Jack peered over shoulder at both of the maps. One showed the town and another only a few years different showed the pond and the rocks all very clearly.

"Wait...what?"

"Think of it Jack, Pitch's lair is situated next to a pond that is unnaturally deep and it appeared out of nowhere, around the same time as..."She cut off then turned to it, "Add to the fact that you also came from that same pond, this entire town is built on top of it, etc. It's almost like, it's all connected. I'm just missing something...a piece to that keeps going missing just as I'm about to reach it."

There was a moment of silence as Jack let her words sink in.

"I have to go down there."

"Then you're not going down without me," Jack said, a new tone in his voice.

Katherine turned to him, looking him straight in the eye. She gave him a long contemplative look then nodded. She began to crawl into the hole, but he stopped her.

"Me first, I've been there before." He pushes her aside, and steps in , holding out his hand to help her as they began to trek through the dark, abandoned tunnel.

***

Jack tried to make his staff glow in the sewers, but the blue light was too dim. He growled in frustration but decided against trying to power it up anymore remembering the last time he tried.

"Hold on," Katherine said, pushing Jacks hand down. She then pressed her hand to the center of her chest. He was shocked to see a golden handprint began to emanate around her palm. When she pulled it away a small, yellow, glowing teardrop was floating above her hand. Jack stared at her jaw-dropping. But she continued down through the cave without a thought.

When the fact that she was walking without him sunk in he jumped to catch up. He ran up to her as she walked on along the side of the dirty wall. "Can we all do that?"

"Do what?"

"That," He pointed to the glowing teardrop.

She looked down at it, "Of course."