"Come on, this way," said Ada.
She was leading Godric by the hand into statue gallery passage entrance.
"But wait," said Godric with a crooked, confused smile. "Isn't the passage in here?" he was looking at the broken in door covered by plywood.
"This leads to the same place," she said.
"But..."
"I don't like that room," she shot. "I was trapped there once... I don't want to go back in. This one reminds me of freedom, because I escaped through it." She hauled open the door, and stepped in.
Godric didn't follow, and she stuck her head out.
"Come on!"
Durst tore his eyes from the plywood, "Okay, fine."
"What?"
"Thought I turned the light off in that other room... That's all." A streak of yellow spilled out around the plywood.
"You must be mistaken," she murmured.
Already Godric's large face was becoming red, glistening with sweat along his hairline. She frowned, and then made for the empty pedestal where she'd knocked a statue during her flight a week earlier. An occasional pebble of it still lay here and there. Practiced hands hit the switch, and a black crack appeared in the wall with a breath of cold air.
"Is it..." began Godric. He paused before trying again. "Is it as tight as the one from the records room?"
Ada could practically see the fear shining in his eyes. His face was tense, his mouth stiff.
"It doesn't matter. Your eyes will be closed the whole time."
"What?"
"I said I'm going to help you through. Your going to close your eyes and keep them shut until I tell you to open them. You are also going to stand the way I say and walk like that too."
"Okay," he nodded after releasing a terrible, halting breath. "Just please tell me you thought this through?"
"Yes—and you're the one asking! Now move this pedestal," she said, and Godric cautiously stepped over and shoved it aside while she readier herself. A square of dust remained.
"Turn around and close your eyes."
He did it, and Ada opened passage fully. The draft grew stronger, and Durst flinched when this ran through his hair.
"It's only air!" she hissed, before reminding herself to be patient.
"Thought it might've been demonic breath," said Godric with a snide smile.
"Walk to me backwards."
He did, until felt his hard shoulders press into her palms. She leaned right in close to his ear and whispered. "Your going to shut those eyes now and they won't open again until I say? Okay?"
Godric nodded.
"Will we need a blind fold?"
"No.
"You sure?"
"Yes!"
"Okay, okay. Now turn yourself sideways," whispered Ada. "You'll have to walk like this, sidestepping the whole way, but I'll be towing you along."
His eyes clamped shut, and his face tight as a lock he did it. Ada pressed her palm into his shoulder again, adjusting for a more perfect trajectory.
"Are you ready?"
"Stop treating me like a child," his lips moved stiffly. "Let's fucking do it! I want this over."
"Are you sure it's really necessary?" Her voice was serious, and he did not reply for several minutes until;
"I'd like an excuse... But if things are as I think? I must."
"Right," she said, and started backwards, towing Godric along. For her it was easy being so narrow and slender but even then her shoulder brushed the wall on occasion. But Durst was burly and wide and there was hardly an inch before and after him.
"Keep you back straight! Chin up!"
Durst said nothing, but did it. Would he freak if he brushed the wall? She began to chew on her cheek.
Despite those fears the first twenty meters were fine. Ada could've laughed with relief for the fact she flinched more than Durst did on the multiple occasions when his elbow or the back of his head or a foot brushed the brick wall. The pulse she could feel in his wrist told her it was still no joke, however. She kept thinking thought his eyes couldn't be more tightly closed if they'd been sutured shut.
The real test came when they reached the place where the shaft makes a sharp turn towards the spiral stair. Ada tried to guide him through as she had before, but his back collided hard against the sharp corner and he'd cursed,
"Fuck!"
The main entrance was only a handful of meters away—and might've served as an emergency escape—but instead Ada herself panicked and the first thing she could think to was to distract him. Started babbling and kept pulling him towards the stairs.
"Did I ever tell you about the time I got sucker punched!" she blurted, and Durst's reddened and now sweaty face contorted to an almost wry smile as he stepped past the corner.
"What!?" as he spoke Ada realized she was sweaty now too.
His eyes were fidgeting, "Keep those eyes shut!"
"Okay!" he panted. His breathing sped up, but he wasn't hyperventilating. She could feel his pulse ever-racing through his hand, and she began to spit the story out.
"I was fourteen. In boarding school. It was my first year there."
"Where?" hissed Durst.
"Turin!" she said. "I became a moody sort of girl. I wasn't making friends there—mostly because I was weird and kind of disrespectful to people. But back then I thought it was everyone else who was wrong. And though I wasn't paranoid exactly, I was prone to think of things as though they were a plot to the novels I always had my stupid little nose in. If only I hadn't read ones with so many schemes and poison's and knives beneath cloaks in darkened alleys! But you see I tried to break into a popular clique about halfway through the year—delusions of grandeur really. And when I failed, I thought it was the result of a plot against me of course! So I made a counter plot! Humiliate me will you Letizia? I pay it back!
His smile was lightened though his face was still red and sweaty. They were almost at the stairs now too, Ada realized this with a look over her shoulder, and then kept talking.
"I thought I was such a villainess! So very smart! A secret agent even! My master plan was to find another girl with a clique of her own and make her my patsy for spreading rumours about Letizia. I really thought that was a clever thing to do. Figured it'd spread so fast the source would get blurry and distorted before any could be traced back to me and I'd cackle wickedly in my lonely little dorm room!"
"That sounds... Naïve," Durst was smirking as he said it.
"Oh, not to me!" Ada laughed as she said this. "After the few first few rumours, I inflated it all in my mind; cagacazzo Letti—that's what everyone called her—sitting in her dorm room with friends. All frightened and sweaty—awaiting the next terrible assault from some unknown corner. A new poison floating on people's lips. Ah, and the first few I began a fancied were very good."
"Like what?" said Durst. His pulse was slowing.
"That she had plastic surgery at ten to remove a tail!"
"People bought that?"
"Turns out no," said Ada. "It didn't really catch. But I then tried that to start it that her brother—he was quite famous in Turin—had been kicked out of his job for villany."
"Villany? Were you actually that unspecific?"
"Si, I was. That rumour failed to catch too."
"Can't imagine why..." as Durst said it Ada glanced over her shoulder once again. The stairs were only a meter away!
"Then I started one—which was actually true by the way! That Letti and her boyfriends' best friend—Carlo—spent time some quality time alla pecorina followed by bocchino—in that order! In the locker room while he was doing his sports stuff in the gymnasium!"
"What on earth does that mean?" said Durst.
"I'm sorry they never taught me those kinds of words in English," she shot hastily and then stopped. A grin formed on her face—she was standing on the top step where the walls spread out around her. Godric would be able to walk normally.
"What kind of words..." Durst trailed off when her hands moved to his shoulders and pulled him around. Neither of his shoulders struck the wall and he even had several inches to spare on each side.
"You may open your eyes," she breathed. Durst did, and looked around. Almost spun to see the way he'd came. But she caught his cheek with a palm. Tenderly, she said, "You can look when we're out of here. Come on."
She started down the stairs, and Durst followed.
"You never told me about the punch," said Godric.
Instead of answering, she asked him, "Are you okay in here?"
"Nervous," he muttered, "But manageable. It's not quite that tight."
"It's more open at the bottom too," she said. "More of a regular room. So anyway, even though none of my petty little rumours actually caught on—apparently you can't just force these things unless your popular, and Letti got wind of it anyway. Traced them back to my patsy—and my patsy immediately ratted me out cazzo di merda, faccio a culo!"
"What?"
"Anyway, I had no idea none of this had even happened until I was happily walking down the hall during lunch hour spinning a fresh plot. I had no table to sit at, and usually set up house on a windowsill to eat. I was almost at my usual place when a hand tapped my shoulder—"
A finger bounced of Ada's shoulder then, and she skipped a breath, "Like that?" said Durst.
"Uncannily so!" she spat. "And when I turned to see who it was then—I won't turn now incidentally—I saw nothing but a blurry version of Letti sort of dancing at me. That's how it seemed in that instant. But then a fist slammed into my nose. I had never been punched before and the next thing I knew my fourteen-year-old ass was flat on the ground, Letti was sprinting away cackling and my schoolbook was covered with blood! Took me a minute to realize it came from my own nose—it was split open even! Letti—that baldracca! Had been holding a small rock in her fist just to hurt me more with the punch!"
"Oh shit," said Godric.
"Yes..." Ada laughed sadly, "But recounting it all's made me feel kind of raw about it again. I Thought I was such a smarty villain... For all my rumours I was the one who ended up with plastic surgery to fix the damage to my nose. And then suddenly there were plenty of rumours about me. They all caught on too."
She stepped off the final step and pulled out her phone from the dress shirt's breast pocket and switched it on. Godric did the same. The low and mostly dirt floored dungeon of the museums fourth floor stretched out before them.
"Your story kind of reminds of this one time that someone locked me inside a records room..." Ada glared at him, and his face crumpled, "I'm sorry," he muttered. "That was cruel. Did you ever find your own clique in school?
"No," she turned to face the room. "I sort of withdrew from the social scene. Made sort of friends with a couple of the other outcast girls..." She shrugged then.
They both stood in silence for a time, before she sighed and said, "I don't suppose you've any idea where these bones of yours might be?"
"Nope."
"Then...?"
"We'd better start looking around," said Godric. He walked over to the dug-out hole where the stone plate sat on the floor.
"Fine," she murmured this. Even with just a cursory glance about there seemed to be a number of off-shoots. Would they in turn only lead deeper?
"Let's try over here?" said Godric, and she followed him with reluctant steps.
-------------------------
2000 words.
IWJKeller.com