The Friday 56 for 8/13/21: The Dead House by Harry Bingham

This is a weekly bloghop hosted by Freda’s Voice.

RULES:
Grab a book, any book.
Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your ereader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
Find a snippet, short and sweet.
Post it

from 56% of:

The Dead House by Harry Bingham

The chamber we’re in isn’t vast by the standards of vast. It’s perhaps twice the length, height and width of that common room at Penwyllt, but it feels cathedral-like to me. Lofty and aerial.

I sit on a hunk of rock and wait for Lloyd (grinning) and Burnett (muttering) to appear. We congratulate each other. Learn to keep our torch beams angled slightly away from each other’s eyes, so we can see each other without dazzling ourselves.

Water pools in places on the floor, but is nowhere more than a few inches deep. Somewhere there’s a drip of water against rock. A faint draught.

Burnett sits next to me, mixing blasphemy and old-fashioned cursing in a way that is both dully conventional but also pleasingly heartfelt and direct.

Lloyd bounces round like a puppy. Splashes to the end of the chamber. Points out that the passage continues on from there. Pokes around a rubble of loose rock along the chamber’s right hand edge, muttering to himself.

When he’s done, he trots back.

‘OK? OK? You both all right? You’ve done well. That was a good crawl. Not as good as Ogof Daren Cilau, but still a good ’un. A really good ’un. Now, OK, take a break. Have a rest. I’ll get the sacks and we’ll set up base camp.’