The Tempest by A.J. Scudiere (best books to read in your 20s .txt) 📕

in or a storm had. Since she didn’t hear anything at all from outside, she was guessing it was well into evening and maybe even later.

“Fine,” Jerry huffed, but she listened to his shuffled movement and then threw her hands up to block her eyes as the light filled the room. The phone powered on in a preset pattern at full light.

“Holy crap!” She saw from the corner of her eyes that Toto look startled, where he’d been sleeping on her lap. Reaching down, she put one hand over his little eyes.

The phone beeped and whirred as it ran through its little startup routine. Then, as her eyes started adjusting, she watched as Jerry tapped and frowned at it.

“How do I turn the light down?”

“May I?” She crawled forward, reaching out her hand for the phone. He reluctantly set it on her palm. After touching the screen a few times, she brought up the dialer and turned the brightness almost to zero. “We just need enough to see by. Even the screen light uses up a lot of the battery.”

He didn't comment, neither arguing nor conceding.

“Okay.” She stood and turned around, finally able to see what she was doing. Toto walked in a circle around her feet, mimicking her movements, as if he were going to help her deconstruct this place. “Let's see how we get out of here.”

She scanned the room, looking at the shelves and the walls behind them. On the other side of the room, two walls were dirt. She whipped back to the wood.

“Okay. The wood goes up the ceiling. The dirt walls go to the outside edges of the house down here, but this wall … the one directly opposite the steps… is wood. Interesting.”

The planks were old. Cedar, maybe? They were rough from not being sealed and from years, or maybe decades, of being down in the cool, dry cellar space. Walking over, she touched the wall first, then pushed on it.

Her own shadow got in her way. Though she'd adjusted, and the light was a thousand times brighter than the dark, the illumination the phone provided was still dim. Joule stepped aside, getting better light on it, and then reached out and tested the wall, pushing on it again. She commented as she went, thanking God for an engineering degree.

“From what I saw before we ran down here, it looks like the cellar is in this corner of the house. And the house itself has outside walls, here, and here, and here.” She traced the dimensions above her head, making a line with her finger that ended at the thick post in the corner. It anchored that edge of the house above. Definitely old construction. The foundation was raised a little bit, if she remembered correctly. So she added, “The dirt walls down here are the edges of the houses and these two—” she pointed, “—are wood, holding back the dirt from under the house.”

Considering that fact, she traced her finger up one of the pieces of wood and then began knocking as she got higher. “Yep. This covers an entry into the crawlspace under the house!”

“Okay?” Jerry asked, as if to say what good was that?

“The cellar doors are blocked.” She turned, hands on hips. “The walls are dirt and unless we have a method to tunnel out, we’re not going to make it. Honestly, I'd be tempted to tunnel out right next to the cellar doors. But that’s the place most likely to be blocked.”

Because what would fall directly on the cellar doors and not also block the space beside them? They could tunnel out and be just as stuck as they currently were for the effort. Not a good bet. “However, if we head the opposite direction, then we can get under the house. From there, we should be able to get out.”

“Won't we just be trapped under the house then?” he asked, still not having moved from his seat on the bottom step.

Joule shook her head. “Crawl spaces have to have entries and exits.” At least, they did by modern housing codes, but she didn’t mention that. “There should be a doorway to the outside—probably small, but a door!”

“What if it's blocked?”

“It could be, but what if it's not? What if there's another place in the skirt where we can push our way through? And if we can't get out that way, we might be able to find a door up into the house. Some places have one. Lastly, if we really are trapped there, maybe we can bust our way up through the flooring.”

This time she could see Jerry's skeptical response.

“We can't get out that way.” She pointed to the cellar doors, still shut tight despite their removal of their brace system. “And you don't seem to think the Larkins are coming back to find us.”

When he tipped his head this time, she noticed the odd expression.

“What?”

But he only shook his head.

Joule decided it was best to ignore him. He wasn't going to be the brains of this operation. She could hope he would join her and do the work, but apparently she was on her own to get started. She was tall, but not tall enough. So she looked around and, spying the wooden toolbox under the steps, she headed over to drag it back.

Quickly she quit that effort, realizing it was far too full. But that was good. There had been hand saws, the little crowbar, rusty screwdrivers and more. All of which would be good for busting their way out of here.

She looked up where the wood met the reinforced ceiling above them. How much space was there under the raised foundation of this house? It might be a full crouching area, or merely enough room to army crawl. And the space she had to work in might depend on the size of the I-beams that held up the subfloor. But Joule corrected herself: A house like this probably wasn't constructed with MDF, non-squeak I-beams.