Page 59 of Brody

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A wide chasm had opened up in the ground just behind Magnus’s house. It was the exact same spot where Magnus had dug up the coffin. He’d been planning on putting a greenhouse there, but now, instead of a crumbling old concrete slab, there was now a gaping hole straight down into the earth.

“What the hell?” Magnus shouted, stumbling a few feet toward the hole before Trent stopped him.

I silently agreed with Magnus, although my own feet stayed rooted to the floor of the porch.

What the hell?

A surprisingly soft touch to my arm startled me out of my shock as Ellis clung to my arm.

“Should we… I don’t know, call someone?”

His dark eyes looked toward me, expecting me to have the answer.

I didn’t. I had no idea what was going on. All I could do was solve the problem the way I always did. By charging forward.

“Wait here.” I removed his hands from me, squeezing them for a moment in a show of comfort, before stepping off the porch and heading for the newly opened hole in the ground.

“Are you sure that safe?” Trent called out, still holding back Magnus from following me.

“I won’t get too close,” I called back over my shoulder. “I just want to try and see what happened.”

The ground felt solid under my feet as I approached. If it weren’t for the big hole right in front of me, the land would have seemed exactly the same as it was a few minutes ago.

The closer I got, the more I could tell that the hole wasn’t as big as I first thought. Its sudden appearance had made it seem massive enough to swallow Magnus’s entire house, but it was actually only about ten or fifteen feet across. The most concerning thing was the fact that it was on our property, and so close to our houses. Out in the middle of the forest, a chasm of this size wouldn’t have been worth a second thought.

This new observation gave me the confidence to step a little closer, still on the lookout for any more unstable land. I was only a few feet away from the edge when I discovered that the hole also wasn’t as deep as I thought. The walls of the hole were only a little taller than me. I could easily climb down without hurting myself.

Finally at the very edge, I could see the entire floor of the pit. There wasn’t as much rubble from the collapsing land as I expected, and the floor was surprisingly flat.

Almost as if it had been made that way.

My philosophy in life was to keep charging forward. It was how I survived the most grueling moments on the battlefield, and it was how I would get my answers now.

Not waiting another moment to second guess myself, I took hold of the edge of the hole and lowered myself down.

“Brody!” Several voices shouted at once, but I was already out of sight. I saw nothing but exposed soil and rock as I hung from the edge of the hole. Even with my arms extended as far as they would go, my feet didn’t quite reach the ground.

With a small, but potentially dangerous leap of faith, I let go of the edge.

My feet hit the ground almost immediately, and just as I thought, it was perfectly stable. I didn’t even stumble when I landed.

Looking up, I found three worried faces staring down at me.

“I’m fine,” I waved to them.

Ellis and Trent both looked relieved, but Magnus’s worry turned to anger.

“Fuck off. Don’t you dare scare me like that. I thought you just jumped to your death.”

His accusations almost made me feel insulted.

“I’m not that stupid,” I insisted, though the look on Magnus’s face said he wasn’t convinced. “I noticed something about this pit and wanted to take a closer look.”

Running a hand over the wall of the hole, I found it smooth and straight. Earth didn’t crumble in such perfect lines.

“This isn’t natural,” I called up to the others. “This hole was built.”

One side of the hole had a lot more debris than the other. I started shifting it out of the way, moving aside large stones that were also too perfectly shaped to be natural. Behind me, I heard whispered voices, followed by a shifting of rock and earth as Magnus climbed down into the hole with me.