A/N: Enjoy! This story will have 10 chapters.
From Where We Came
Chapter 8
After dinner, a light-hearted atmosphere developed as the men cleaned up and the women talked. Doris was a great story-teller, regaling everyone with her stories of the past. She brought life into the history of the house, telling of parties and dances when she was a young girl before 'the war'.
"We had a delightful dance here when I graduated from high school. We decorated the central hall with lights and streamers." Animation played across her face as she told of the band arriving and some of the kids coming in wagons and riding horses. "There was a real shortage of gasoline so one traveled as one could!" The old woman shook her head, adding, "We didn't know how many boys would die—how many would never return."
"You worked in Washington, D.C., right?" asked Sara.
Doris laughed, saying, "That was a chapter all on its own! First time I had ever been so far from my parents! But I wrote a letter home every week—there were so many young women were working—all of us doing clerical work."
Suddenly, music was playing a melody of piano notes before a male voice began to sing. Nick was holding his phone in one hand and dancing slowly across the kitchen floor.
As Perry Como's voice sang 'Till The End Of Time', Nick extended his hand to Doris saying, "May I have this dance?"
Doris' laughter filled the air as she got up, saying, "I always loved Perry Como! Ahh—this was such a popular song when I was young!"
Nick placed a hand on the older woman's back and they danced around the table until the last notes of the song.
As soon as the two stopped dancing, Greg's phone began to play another song, as Bing Crosby sang 'Don't Fence Me In". He elbowed Nick out of the way and presented his hand to Doris.
Laughing, Stan and Carol led everyone into the large open central room, turning on lights as Greg and Doris continued to dance. Nick turned to one of the other women and Sara saw the nodding of heads as the two shuffled into a two-step dance. Then Grissom was touching her elbow and they danced into the center of the beautiful room with music soaring to the ceiling.
Several hours later, after everyone had danced to a favorite song, after more food had been served, and Doris had told more stories, declared she was exhausted in ways she'd forgotten, her guests insisted she go to bed.
Nick, Greg, Grissom and Sara were left to turn out the lights and make their way to the third floor where they ended up in Nick's room—talking about the day.
"Greg, do you think we've found those kids?" asked Grissom.
Nodding, Greg said, "If they disappeared around the house, I think they are there—I'm sure there is some metal down there—not big, not like pipes. I think I'm looking at a cave-in or something like that."
Nick stretched across the bed. "Ninety years is a long time—think we'll find anything? They were young."
Grissom had taken the only chair in the room. Greg was sitting on a bench and Sara, on the floor, leaned against Grissom's legs.
"How did her shoes get in the pond?" Sara asked. "If the other two are near the house—practically at the back door—why was she at the pond?"
Grissom stroked his wife's hair as he said, "These kids were running free—I don't think anyone followed them around as they played. Safety in numbers. They found a hole and dug around or maybe they didn't even find a hole but were digging." He shrugged his shoulders, continuing, "Something happened and two of them fell or slid into that old cistern—I'm sure that's what it was."
"But her shoes?" insisted Sara.
"She took them off—left them by the pond—maybe waded into the pond. We'll never know but hopefully we'll find something tomorrow for Doris."
Sara pushed up, reached for Grissom's hand, saying, "Let's get to bed—you know Doris and Carol will have breakfast by dawn. And Stan will have shovels!"
By the time the clear eastern sky was brightening to a pale blue, everyone but Stan and Greg was in the kitchen drinking coffee, dressed for the work they planned to do. Doris and Carol had made hot cheesy muffins and had a bowl of cut fruit and kept putting food into hands of others.
Greg and Stan arrived, leaving shovels, rakes, and gloves at the door; Greg pulled out his laptop and explained what they needed to do with shovels and rakes.
He said, "It's possible the hollow area has trapped some gases that could be harmful, so we want to open it up as much as possible. But if anyone starts feeling funny—light headed—back off and warn the rest of us." He had used a 3-D program to show the likely shape of the area. "Its bottle shaped, narrow at the top, wide at the bottom with debris or something like that along one side of it."
By the time the sun had cleared the horizon, they were digging in the dry soil. It took nearly an hour to remove a foot of dirt and expose a dome of very old brick. A while later, several inches of a round structure was exposed.
"Has anyone found an opening?" Greg asked.
He heard negative responses as shovels dug deeper.
"I'm going to break it open," said Greg.
Grissom asked, "Do you think it might be historical—some kind of protected structure?"
Greg shrugged, saying, "No one knows it's here."
Stan stepped up with a large hammer and crowbar and everyone else took several steps away from the brick dome. Greg went to work with the hammer and the crowbar and finally pried several bricks away. One dropped into the opening; he handed the others to Nick.
"How's the air?" asked Grissom.
"Old," Greg answered as he removed several more bricks.
Stan appeared with a small fan, tied it to a rope, turned it on and lowered it into the dark pit.
As the fan whined, Doris leaned to Grissom saying, "If it's filled with gold, I'll split it with everyone."
Grissom chuckled, patting his cousin on her shoulder. "I hope we find something."
Nick and Grissom began removing more bricks, stacking them along the grassy edge until they had an opening several feet wide. Greg and Stan continue to work dropping a light into the hole. Greg had tied his phone to a cord and lowered it.
A few minutes later, he pulled the phone up and said, "Let's see what's there," and turned the phone so he and Doris could see the screen.
The others watched and waited until Greg said, "Dirt—looks like the walls are stone or brick but one side had a landslide." He looked puzzled as he enlarged the video. "Who is going in there? Because I'm wondering how this landslide got in there."
Nick said, "I'll go—but I want a ladder."
"Got one," Stan said and he hustled around a corner of the house. He returned with a ladder and a climbing harness, saying, "I wear this thing anytime I go high. You wear it in case we have to pull you out." He tied the end of a rope to the tractor and clipped one end to the harness.
It took longer to position a ladder but quickly became evident that only one person was going to be able to work inside the space. The ladder was placed against the slope of soil, tied with more rope to stabilize it, and finally, tested by Nick.
Within minutes of Nick descending the ladder, everyone else had managed to find a position to peer into the opening. The hanging light swayed around him creating weird shadows; Nick asked for a bucket. A few minutes later, they created a bucket-brigade, scattering the soil around their feet.
The sounds of Nick scratching around with his hands came from the hole; Greg, on his stomach to pass the bucket back to Nick, saw something at the same time as Nick.
"What's that?" Greg whispered as his long-time friend tugged something out of the dirt. "Is that what I think it is?"
Nick, his arm looped around a rung on the ladder, used both hands to brush away soil. "Oh, Greg, I think we've found…" His hand wiped away the dirt before he reached for the light and brought it nearer.
Air expelled from Greg's lungs turned into a long whistle at the same moment he heard several voices asking what had been found.
Greg did not reach for the object but stood, holding the rope attached to Nick's harness and reached out to steady Nick's climb as everyone watched.
Covered in dusty sand, Nick, as soon as his head cleared the opening, opened his hand. In his palm was a single shoe, child-size, a buckle on one side of the aged brown leather.
He said, "There is more."
A/N: Two more chapters for this story. Thank you for reading. A special thanks to those who leave a comment!