Page 126 of Cruel Riches

25

Nate

I pulledmy clothes and shoes on and stepped out of the bunker, mind whirling as it searched for answers.

All this time, I thought Alexis was batshit insane and hearing things in her head—or simply making things up to get under my skin—but I was wrong. I couldn’t deny the faint, lilting strains of music emanating from the storage cupboard.

There was something on the other side. Or someone.

I initially thought about getting a sledgehammer and knocking the bricks out of the back of the cupboard, but then I figured it would be quicker and easier to go out and find what was almost certainly a second bunker on the estate. I had no idea where it was, because I’d never heard of such a thing existing on this land, but I knew the entrance and main body had to be somewhere nearby, or else the music wouldn’t drift through to the first one.

Once I was outside, I sealed the hatch and turned on my phone’s flashlight app. It was so dark in these woods that the light died only inches from the narrow beam, and the harsh winds rustling through the trees were freezing, making my bones ache. Obviously, it would be better to wait until daylight before beginning my search through these woods, but once my interest had been piqued, there was no going back. I wouldn’t be able to sleep until this mystery was solved.

I found a big stick and held it in my spare hand, using it to brush up layers of leaves, stones, twigs, and pine needles in the hope that a hidden hatch would suddenly reveal itself below the detritus. As I tirelessly worked away at that, my mind continued to race with questions.

If there was another bunker on the grounds, why had no one in my family ever told me about it? They had no problem with me playing in the other one when I was a kid who thought old war stuff was the coolest shit on the planet.

It could be that they thought that the bunker I played in was the safer, closer one, so they decided to only tell me about that, and then they forgot to mention any other bunkers when I got older, seeing as it wasn’t exactly an important issue. Or maybe they simply didn’t know about any other bunkers on the grounds. If that were the case, though, how could anyone be using the mystery bunker right now?

Could a random trespasser have found it and decided to use it? If so, how did he or she find it? What were they even doing here in the first place?

Another option that crossed my mind was that no one was using it at all. Perhaps there was an old record player down there, put in when the place was blocked off from the main tunnel system and refurbished into a bomb shelter, and it played by itself from time to time when the generator turned on and off for whatever reason.

As soon as the idea occurred to me, I realized it didn’t make any sense. Why would the generator down there switch on and off all by itself? The one in the other bunker didn’t—unless it ran out of fuel, it was always on and capable of providing power. So unless there was someone using the generator in the mystery bunker, there was no reason for it to ever run out of fuel. It wouldn’t turn back on afterwards unless it was refueled, either, which had to be done manually.

Also, as far as I knew, record players didn’t play music just because the power had turned off and on again at some point. There had to be someone there to make it happen.

I kept searching, moving slowly in a grid pattern so I didn’t miss anything as I swept the ground with my stick. Night birds called to each other as I worked, and every so often I heard the scrabble of claws as squirrels dashed to the top of nearby trees, frightened by the sound of my feet crashing over dead branches and leaves.

Frustration boiled up inside me when my phone beeped at me, alerting me to a low battery. The clock said it was almost three in the morning. That meant I’d been searching these grounds for almost two hours, and I had nothing to show for it. I knew there had to be something out here, though. There was no other explanation for the music that Alexis and I heard earlier. Not unless the rampant sex had melted our brains and turned us both insane.

Folie à deux,the French called it. Madness shared by two.

I remembered it from a documentary I watched in class in my junior year of high school. It was a condition in which delusional beliefs were somehow transmitted from one person to another. Sometimes those delusions included auditory or visual hallucinations.

Just as I was starting to worry that Alexis was driving me crazy—literally—I stumbled over a tree root and crashed to the ground. My hands shot out to break my fall, and my phone flew several inches away and landed on its side. The bright white light from the flashlight app caught a strange silvery glint several feet to my left.

Heart thudding with anticipation, I hurried over to the spot and pushed piles of leaves and twigs to one side until a large metal hatch was revealed.

It was nothing like the hatch on the other bunker. The other one looked old and rusty, and it locked from the inside to protect occupants from the outside world, so the only way I could keep Alexis trapped in there was to add my own chains and padlock to seal it off when I left.

This new hatch looked far more modern with barely any grime and no rusted parts, and it had been designed differently, with a twisting lock mechanism in the middle that could only be manipulated by a person standing outside.

That meant it wasn’t designed to keep the world out. It was designed to keep someone—or something—inside.

“What in the fuck?” I muttered to myself as I stooped lower to twist the locking mechanism. The small metal wheel on the main component was a bit stiff, but it opened easily enough once I wrenched it around to the left a couple of times.

I lifted up the hatch and peered downward. The steps leading into the mysterious shelter were dark and silent. There was no light or sound spilling out from farther down the passage, either. I knew the music had come from somewhere in here, though. Nothing else made sense.

I picked up my phone and used it to light the way as I trudged down the steps. So far, it looked the same as the other bunker.

Halfway down the passage, I found the main light switch on the left wall. Above it was a hook with a large silver key hanging on it.

Frowning, I wondered if I should turn the light on or leave it off to give me the element of surprise. Fuck it, I finally decided. This bunker lay beneath land that belonged to my family, so I had every right to poke around inside.

I flicked the switch upward and looked around as light flooded the passage. “Anyone in here?” I called out toward the main room.

No answer.

I slipped my phone back in my pocket, leaving both arms free in case of a confrontation. Then I headed down to the end of the passageway. At the end lay a large rectangular room, just like the one Alexis was currently trapped in.

As I looked around the new space, adrenaline flushed through my system, and my muscles went rigid.

There was a man on the other end of the room, chained to a bunk.

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