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Annals of Fear II	By : DeathNoteFangirl Category: Death Note > Yaoi-Male/Male > Mello/Matt Views: 5803 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note and I do not make any money from these writings

Chapter List
- 40
- 41
- 42
Author's Note: I'm going away for the weekend and might not be back until Monday/Tuesday.   Therefore I'm posting up three day's worth of chapters.   Please note that, once these are up, there will be no more chapters until Tuesday.   Also, this story is being discussed here: http://mrsjeevas.joharrington.co.uk/forum/viewforum.php?f=11

Fenian had been in a daze, when he entered the shaft under the altar.    He knew that, but it hadn't seemed to matter.   The rope was supporting his full weight, before Fenian realised that he hadn't tested his anchoring.   He was wearing his harness, but hadn't put on any of his protective clothing nor even any pads.   His helmet was still in the bag beside the altar.   He hadn't done a single safety check, nor instructed Century in emergency procedures.   But it really didn't matter.   Kiana was going to marry him.

Besides, Fenian had already deduced that, contrary to the evidence of the pebble thrown down and the endless falling of his ropes, he could only fall around 15 feet.    He knew that because he recognised the nature of the stone. He simply needed to confirm his theory, before he had some quite important information to contribute to this case.   That felt good.   That felt really good.   Unexpected too, considering that Fenian was only officially here as a Watari observer; namely to ensure that Mello couldn't intimidate Century into simply handing over his evidence.    Mello didn't need this glory.   He had had enough. This was Century's hour.

Or, at least, it had been, until it transpired that Century had fucked up.   The baton had been dropped into the one area where Fenian was confident that he could beat Mello.   It was pot-holing, with a strong indicator that some geology was going to be involved.    Had it been anything else, Fenian would have already been initiating Plan B; as agreed with Kiana before they'd even left home.   Plan A was to support Century until completion or until he reached the end of his investigative skill-set, whichever came first.    If it came to an instance, like now, when the future of the case wasn't necessarily in history, then Plan B was to persuade Century to give up on health grounds.   They would take him back with them to Galway.   The spare room had already been made up for him.    Wammy's House was no place for someone suffering from panic attacks; and Kiana had been very confident that she could handle any ghosts that followed them into the bog.

Yet here they were and the next stage was geology!   That was worth coming out of retirement for.    To finally wipe the smug smile off Mello's face.   To avenge, for himself, those inescapable days of humiliation and pain, as the target of Mello's childhood bullying.    Perhaps then, Fenian mused for the dozenth time, he could finally put it behind him.    Get on with life.   Marry Kiana.

Butterflies flitted, en masse, in his stomach.    It was a sudden jolt of feeling too immense to take in.   Nerves that were almost pleasurable to feel.   Kiana had always seemed on the verge of kicking him out before, though, to be fair, she hadn't threatened it for a couple of months.   But then he hadn't lied to her for a couple of months either.   He had to remember how interlinked those two things were.    He'd also turned twenty, that last birthday, three months ago.    That had helped.   Kiana had fretted in private so much about the fact that she was dating a teenager.    In public, she'd fuck off anyone who had a problem with that.   Her business.   His business.   No-one else's, as long as it was legal and both consented.

Now she was going to marry him.   Fenian beamed, though his mind kept slipping from it; as if he couldn't quite grasp it, because it was so unbelievable.    He was vaguely aware of Kiana freaking out in the room above; even more distantly cognitive that Century shouldn't be aided and abetted in feeling doomed.    Fenian's steel toe-capped boots braced against the dog-leg corner of the brickwork, as he shone his torch down the length of the quartz at his back.   He knew he was right.   He was gratified, but not surprised to learn that the quartz carried on.

His heart was so light right now, but he wouldn't share until he was certain.   Yet he should give a progress report, just so they knew he was still alive.     He called upwards. "It's really narrow, all the way."   Fenian pondered the shape of the brickwork.   Was it an old chimney?   Had the builders removed a chimney shaft from somewhere, then knocked out one side and used the remaining three to construct this.   Whatever this was.   "Same as above, brickwork on three sides and quartz on the other.   I think I know what it is."

Fenian silently added a correction.   He [i]knew[/i] what the quartz was.    It was going to be a late-Neolithic import, probably from the Mynyedd Carningli quarry, miles away to the south-west, in Pembrokeshire.    Or, indeed, from any of the mines down in the Preselis.   Obviously, he would have to run some tests to match it perfectly, then he'd chuck the results at Century to date.   However, there was a certain kind of inevitability in what the conclusion would be.   This was a megalith; a standing stone.   The Preseli Mountains had been the great quarrying powerhouse of its day.    Megaliths R Us.   In relative terms, it wouldn't have been too bad getting it here.   They'd have just pulled it downhill to Pembrokeshire's northern coast, then sailed it up to where the River Ystwyth emptied into the sea. Turn right.   Sail it up the river, then pity the poor bastards who had hauled it up the side of the mountain outside.

Fenian wrinkled up his nose.   Every so often, there was a gust of air circulating from below.   There was presumably some opening somewhere, creating a convection current.   His money was on the wind getting in from the atmosphere outside.   In itself, it wasn't a problem.    The wafts escaping upwards weren't particularly strong nor cold.   In fact, if wind was getting in, then he might be able to get out, without having to squeeze through this narrow gulley between bricks and stone.   But the further down that he manoeuvred himself, the more rank those streams of air became.    His guess was that, depending upon where the opening would turn out to be, something had either crawled or flown in to die.   It didn't smell like fetid water nor stale air.   He shone his torch down, but he was still a couple of inches too high.   He mused on the fact that it could be trapped and composting vegetation.

Another blast of air came, stronger now that he was almost below the brickwork dog-leg.   Fenian had been facing downwards and so got a whole face full of the obnoxious odour.    He winced, trying not to gag.   He could hardly hear Kiana's ranting now.   He couldn't make out Century at all.    Nevertheless, Fenian yelled up, "And a fucking bad smell.    And..."

He was free, but there was no foothold beneath.   His legs flailed, but it was easier to just let gravity do its job.   He was practically at ground level anyway.   With great satisfaction, he felt his boots connect with the soil, just a couple of feet down. His torch had picked out the length of the megalith all the way down.    Standard issue, late-Neolithic, Preseli cut, over-grown rockery.   Or Pagan worship thing.   Or clock.   Or calendar.   Or territorial marker.   He'd know shortly after Century's lot finally made up their minds and told the rest of the world.   But whatever its purpose had been 5-6000 years ago, Fenian had one certainty on the matter. It had no business being bricked up inside a house now.   If they had been that desperate for an extension, then they shouldn't have built their house right next to a fucking megalith in the first place.

It was a very snug space.   The standing stone did what it said on the packet.   The brick walls were built tight against the megalith on two sides.   The third wall had a bit more room before it.   Fenian's torch-light picked out a small door in this wall. It was like the lower half of a set of stable shutter doors, but had also been bricked down to that level.   Fenian could use it well enough.   He would just have to crouch to get through.    He took a step towards it and noticed that it was already ajar.    But that's as far as it was going to go, until he dug out the soil and other debris from around its passage space.   Fenian bent down, shining his torch through the crack into the room beyond.   It looked like the way was blocked anyway.   It was stacked high with coal, right up to and covering the entrance through.

The wind, when it assaulted him this time, carried a stench that seemed ten times stronger than it had been while climbing down.   It definitely smelled like something dead and decaying, which was fucking ironic, in the circumstances.   How close were they to the river?   It would be an otter.   Or a feral cat.    Hell, it probably wasn't even in here with him.   It was more likely to be a rotting sheep, which had landed wherever that convection current was being generated, and hadn't been picked up yet.

Fenian held his breath, with his forearm over his mouth and nose, until he no longer felt the breeze on his face.   By then, he had made his decision.   He wasn't going to call this report up.     If something small and fluffy had come in here to die, then Kiana probably already knew about it.    She did tend to know these things.   While Century didn't need to know. Not when his nerves were already on the ceiling.   It wasn't fair on Kiana to have to do the whole, 'you're not having a heart-attack, Century' thing.   Fenian would just check out the source of the wind.   Remove the offending squirrel.   Or whatever.   Then climb back up, unless a better route out presented itself in the meantime.   They would go back to the chalets.   Brainstorm over a nice cup of coffee.

He rounded the megalith and saw what it had obscured from his view.   It was a tall, narrow door.   Well, more like a door-shaped gap, as there wasn't one actually fitted into it.    Fenian drove his torchlight over the space, quickly, with only a flash for viewing. It was just in case he didn't want to see what was in there.   It was just more brickwork.   A wall, leading away, formed what seemed to be the head of a corridor.    Fenian let his torch linger on it now, but nothing untoward happened, except for another session with the putrid wind.   He covered his mouth and nose until it went away.

All the time his torchlight was fixed on the narrow doorway. It remained resolutely empty.   Fenian took a step forward, then switched to view the smaller door behind him again. Then back at the narrow doorway.   Back at the half sized. Back at the oversized.   Fenian smirked, muttering to himself, "If I go and ask Alice, do you think she'll know?"   He took a small step, mustering the courage to peer around the edge of the doorframe.   The house's spirits could give themselves a tea-break, Fenian decided.   His own imagination was supplying enough horrors for any freak shop.   He was currently amused at his own hesitancy, but he was right on the cusp of switching to irritation instead.

The voice was baritone deep and extremely loud.   It growled right in his right ear.   "Go!"

"Fuck shit!" Fenian yelped, fear moving his feet, bypassing his conscious brain's directive. He darted through the doorway, because he was only one pace away and it was the only direction he could go.   He grasped the doorjamb with his right hand, swinging around to see, as Kiana's scream filled the shaft above.   The initial jerking sweep of his torch found no-one there.   But by then, it was too late.   His feet had just discovered that there was no floor, beyond the initial square.    He fell, whilst scrambling, in wordless terror, into the darkness below.

Fenian landed on something that smashed and scattered.   Icy, pungent water swilled around him and dispersed.   It didn't at all break his fall.    A sickening pain shot through his spine.   He was winded.   He lay there, on cold stone, in stunned disbelief.    He tried not to move under the agonised attempted wracking of his body.   It was trying to rectify the spasming of his diaphragm.   He had fallen on his back.   He might be too full of adrenaline to feel a serious injury.    He couldn't breathe.   He was winded.    What had hit him in the abdomen on the way down?   The rope should have caught him.   It hadn't even moved.   It was still wrapped around the megalith.    He had been unhooked from it.   He hadn't done that.   He should have worn his helmet and his protective padding.    It was too late for that now.

Oh God!   Would Kiana still marry him, if he was paralysed?

Panic and intense pain pushed reason from his mind.   He curled into a foetal position, kicking and splintering something ceramic in the pitch blackness.    Then the messages of his training and his experience made it through the mire.   Ideally, he should be staying stock still, but a broken back counted for nothing, if he suffocated first.    The treatment for winding is to encourage the casualty to crouch down, so to relax their muscles.   He had already struggled to his feet, squatting and holding his knees with his hands, before he considered that the foetal position would have sufficed.   But his muscles were rigid with adrenaline.   They would not relax, if he remained this scared.

Fenian closed his eyes to forget about the darkness.    He mentally told himself what was happening to him, so it could feel like someone was there with the knowledge to help him.    Someone was there.   He was doing alright.   Gentle with yourself, Liam Tighe. Gentle now.   Oh God! It was so painful.   He was seeing stars in hyperdrive.   He was going to pass out.

The abdomen is the large central trunk muscle, which separates the stomach from the lungs and heart.    That was wrong.   He knew it was wrong.   Oh God! Linda was going to over-take him in the rankings again.     It felt like his whole brain stopped, under the bewildering incongruity of his own thoughts.    He was going into shock.    No.   He wasn't.   He should carry on forcing himself to take slow, steady breaths.    If he did pass out, then fine!   That was possibly the quickest way to make those stomach muscles relax anyway.   It was an option.

The abdomen doesn't separate the stomach from anything, because it is the stomach.    It was everything between his chest and his pelvis.    It was all of the bits that were hurting like fuck right now, with the exception of his back, lungs and throat.    Winding is the colloquialism for 'blunt trauma to the solar plexus'.   The force of impact to the abdomen causes that area to spasm. This creates a chain reaction, which begins with the solar plexus shutting itself down in nervous shock.     The solar plexus is the mass of nerves behind the stomach, which acts as a control panel for the diaphragm.     Taking its lead from the solar plexus, the diaphragm paralyses itself.    This causes a sudden drop of air pressure within the respiratory system.   The lungs try to deflate and the diaphragm, in turn, begins to spasm.

Fenian realised that he could actually breathe now.   But he remained like that, because to unfurl was to have to deal with things that he really didn't want to know about.    The treatment for winding was to stop the abdomen spasming.   Once it is still, the solar plexus will restart and it will guide the diaphragm into behaving.    With the respiratory system no longer subject to pressure changes, the lungs can operate.   Fenian opened his eyes, stating firmly, "And the casualty will begin breathing as normal."    Eyes open, eyes shut, it made no odds.   It was very dark in there; and whatever was decomposing had to be doing it quite close by now.   The stench was turning his stomach.    It no longer came and went.   It was in the room with him.

His torch wasn't shining.    Nor was it in his hand.    He must have dropped it and it could be anywhere.   Light was the most important tool for a caver.    But he still had the passage of air on his shoulder and the side of his head.    He had a direction.     Unless relocation is a necessity, in order, for example, to save a life, then the injured party should remain where they fell.   Monitor temperature and hydration, but if they remain stable, then try not to move the casualty more than is unavoidable.    This is especially important if a back or neck injury is suspected.

He honestly didn't know.   He couldn't work out if he had been hurt in the abdomen all along; and the pain he had felt in his back was just more of the general pain in that area.    Nothing hurt very much now.    That could be dangerous.   It could be endorphins in his system masking the damage.    What he really needed to do was to calm the fuck down, so that he could think straight.    What would he do if this was someone else?     Fenian immediately yelled out, "Kiana!"    His voice was surprisingly strong.    Yet there was also a subtle change in the atmosphere.    Like he had awoken something that was now paying attention to him.   Or he had become aware of something that had been there all along.    "Kiana!"

He waited, listening, but there was no answering call.    In fact, there was nothing at all.   No rodent scuffles.   No buzzing of insects.    There should have been.   Unless they were all frozen.   Evaluating him.    Fenian prised his right hand from his knee and explored inside his chest pocket. His cigarette lighter felt intact.    He held it tightly.   Did he want to see?    He couldn't answer, because he was ashamed of his truth on that one.   He extracted his cigarette packet from the same pocket.   He meant to feel along them, until he found one that was whole.   The very first cigarette was fine.   He held it unlit, while he conscientiously tucked the packet back into his pocket.

Fenian felt so sick.

He cautiously searched his pockets for his 'phone.   It wasn't in its little holder, that was attached to the back of his belt.    Had he gone pot-holing without a 'phone?   That was really stupid.   He couldn't believe that he'd done that.   But then maybe he hadn't.   Maybe it had been dropped.    He sparked up his lighter and lit the cigarette.   Blessed, calming nicotine coursed through the smoke.    He hadn't seen anything.   He had meant to catch himself out.   Just randomly, suddenly light up, so that he was forced to see what was around him.   But apparently, at twenty years of age, and having made it onto the shortlist as a successor of L, he still thought that if you can't see the bad guys, then he had immunity from them too.    L would be so proud. His number 9 buckling under pressure.   Substituting childish superstition for adult logic.

"Sure."   Fenian startled himself, saying that aloud.    He was pissing himself off now.    He had his wallet in his back pocket. He could feel it.   Inside that wallet was his stone.   Nothing special about it in itself.   In fact, if he was honest with himself, it was a piece of fucking gravel.   But it was something tangible from home, that he'd grasped tightly in his hand, when the institution got too much.    The last thing he'd grabbed, from the surface of the carpark, when he was 11 years old.   Could have been anything.   It was right by the open door of the car that the Watari agents were forcing him into.     So many promises whispered to a little chip of basalt.   Swearing that he would take it home.   He didn't recall ever acknowledging to himself that he wasn't telling the basalt.   He was telling himself.   He kept his promise to himself.   But the basalt was still in his wallet.    It wasn't in Galway.   It was in Wales.   So he'd better stop procrastinating.

Fenian sparked his lighter, holding it aloft like the Statue of fucking Liberty.     He was in a charnel house.    Nothing else to explain it really.   He was surrounded by the stripped clean bones of 300 year old skeletons.   There was a skull just three inches from his left hand.    He didn't move his hand; aware, even while doing it, that he was trying to prove himself to himself. He didn't question it.   Just let it happen.   However, he would query how he knew that they were 300 years old.    His gaze alighted on the item that he was trying not to see.   Another stone altar, but this one had never had the stains scrubbed off.   Time had just lightened them.   Pastel bloodstains.    The wind came again and blew out his lighter flame.   He let it go. It was getting very hot anyway.

"I think it's time for me to go."   Fenian didn't even feel like he was talking to himself anymore.   There were any number of eyes in the darkness, staring back unseen.   He could feel their ears straining to discern his mumbling.    He stood, slowly, because his back really was hurting him.   He just didn't want it to.   "Should I find my torch or just go?"   He pondered it. This cave was breathing; it could be big. Light could mean the difference between survival and death. "A little look won't hurt."    He hobbled along the little avenue of smashed skulls, that he had created by arriving.   He only lit his lighter again, when his gingerly placed boot encountered a full one.   Even held high above his head, his tiny flame wasn't enough to illuminate the floor above.   He didn't really need it.   He could see the remaining bits of rotten wooden ladder from here.   Like this was some sort of death pit.   A sudden anger flared.   "You think this is horrific?   Is this all you've got?   Fucking piles of calcium and phosphorus."   He snorted.   "You're out of luck, mate.   I live on peat back home.   You should see what we pull out fully preserved."

There was no reply.   Fenian dreaded hearing one.    He'd remembered the chalk that he always kept in his climbing pouch.   He would be adding a lot more to that after this was over.   Extra torch.   Spare 'phone.   He wrote a big 'F' on the wall.   He wanted to write more.   'Following wind' perhaps.   But his back was hurting.   Really hurting. He was going to walk it off though.   It was going to be alright.   Just bruising.   He would have to stop climbing.    He could still do his research.    He was not resigning his search and rescue.   Fuck 'em.    This was his life.

It seemed to take an age to make it across the chamber.   He knew that he'd disturbed several remains.    The stick he'd gleaned, from the broken ladder, was less than useless.   It was slimy to the touch and too short.   Fenian left it propped at the entrance. He spoke to the floor.   "I'm after apologising for calling you piles of calcium and phosphorus.   I'm not that insensitive.   I just forgot I was addressing the victims too."   He thought about it. "The victims solely, probably." He lit another cigarette, using the illumination to note that the next stage was a tunnel.   It was paved with bricks, as well as encased in them.   It sloped quite steeply downwards.   Perhaps this really had been an escape route for persecuted priests once.   Fenian doubted it.   He used his hand, against the wall, to both support and guide him.   He had seen no obstacles in the way.   He did, however, stop after a few yards.   He called out, "And no. I didn't miss the fact that someone in there is newly dead.   I can smell your decomposition.   It's clearer out here.   I promise you that I will get this dealt with.    Proper graves.   Proper trials."

Was it his imagination, or did the atmosphere lighten slightly?   He pressed on, towards the cold air that buffeted him at intervals.   He tried, quite successfully, to ignore the sensation that other elements were also rushing by.   He had believed that he would never get the smell of putrification out of his nostrils.   That it would cling to them like glue.   But it was already transforming.   The wind brought hints of smoke and Sunday dinner.   Perhaps a pub with a hog roast for Hallowe'en.   Or his invisible companions trying to tell him something.   Kiana said that producing aromas was the least energy intensive of all the things that a ghost could do.   It took them a lot to actually materialise in front of you.   That's why it always went so cold. They were sucking the heat energy out of the molecules in the air.   Just to get enough boost to make that contact.

He reached the end. His fingertips lost the brickwork to his right hand side.   He could smell petrol.   He had been smelling it for quite a few yards, but his psyche had shut down from accepting that.   He lit another cigarette from the first, but flicked the flame onto his lighter anyway.    The second he stepped out beyond his tunnel, the lighter was blown out.    The wind was really quite strong here.   A cross stream.   He tried six or seven times, using the tunnel to ignite it, then his hand to shield the flame.   It was always extinguished within seconds, but he gained enough quick looks to understand.

Fenian had found a small rockfall on his first day in the valley.   Abseiling down from the courtyard above, to follow the fairy path to its conclusion.    He had just found the other side of that.    It made sense.   The sidhe did like the menhirs and megaliths too.    Great.   He'd solved the case.   He had the source of all of their ghosts, in a room full of corpses.   He had more to add to his on-going fairy path theory.    Though he had the feeling that Century was never going to accept that one.

Now all Fenian had to do was get out.     The route behind him was another brickwork tunnel.   There was no telling where that one ended up.    He would rather get out here.   He knew exactly where he was here.   He was just a wooded hillside's short scramble away from Kiana.     He had seen the thickness of the rock pile at its base.   He could see the sky near to the top though.   He would climb up and hope that the debris held.   If it didn't, then he really would be fucked.    He wasn't going there.

"I love you, baby,"   Fenian sang, softly to himself, "and if it's quite alright..."   A hefty cargo of acrid smoke was wafted into his upturned face by the wind.    He leapt back down to choke, nervous of disturbing the rubble any more than was strictly necessary.    It tasted toxic.   It smelt and tasted like something that he was not prepared to smell and taste ever again.      "I know what you're trying to do."    Fenian diverted his rising panic into fury.   "You actually made Mello believe that he was caught up in a 20 year old war, on the other side of the world.    You so convinced Century that he had guns pointing at him, that he pretty much improvised getting himself shot.   Albeit with a heart-attack, in lieu of anyone actually shooting at him."    Fenian was near to the top now.    His eyes stung.   His nose was filled with the scent of it.   It was in his mouth.    The others had said that their hallucinations had felt so real.    Deontic had panicked in two inches of water.   She had been seeing a Malaysian monsoon in flood.    "But I got tipped off.   Bring it on. I'm ready."

Fenian's head crested the unstable summit of the rock-pile.    He could hear it.   The crackle of burning rubber. Fenian pushed away the topmost big boulder and ejected two handfuls of shale.     He could hear the thud of the airbag hitting his mother's head. Who was he kidding?   He hadn't stopped hearing it, in the nine years since it happened.    She shouldn't have died.   Airbags are supposed to save lives.   They aren't supposed to do that.    Fenian hoisted himself out, with one leg over the edge.   Now he could see it too.   So fucking real.   That distinctive popping of the underside going.    The sheer height and heat of the fire.   The layers of colours in it - black smoke, white smoke, grey smoke; the oranges, reds, blues and yellows of the flames.   The white hot intensity within.

The boom.

He couldn't hear that again.   He did not want to see that again.    Fenian dropped back inside.    He jumped from a reasonable height and felt, without registering, the shooting pain in his lower spine.    He didn't care.   He actually started running, though he hadn't even scoped the direction.    He only stopped when he ran into something large and metallic.   He did not want to hear the petrol tank exploding.    If he heard it now, he... He didn't know. He just didn't want to hear it.   They said that they'd already been dead by then.   His Dad had died instantly, as the car over-turned and crushed him into the framework; and halfway across the space in the front.     His Mum was such a tiny lady.   Child-sized really, with a teacher's gob on her.    She had died mere seconds later.   Defective airbag.   It couldn't happen today.   It shouldn't have happened then.

And Fenian, without a scratch on him, even able to open his backseat door.    He'd run.   He'd left them.   Then it went boom.

Fenian pushed away from the invisible metal thing.   He stumbled, trying to rush on, but there was too much junk in the way. He was going to have to stop and sort himself out.    He was so angry with himself for needing to stop and get sorted.   He whipped around, yelling furiously at the darkness.   "I thought I was better than this!"    The sound of it bounced into oblivion.    "They were already dead!"   He kicked the thing in front of him.   It clanged dully.    He bellowed out, "Fucking shit!   Sort it the fuck out, Ó Taidhg!"   They had never called themselves that.   It had only ever been Tighe with them.    They hadn't spoken Gaelic at home.   His mother only had about six words of it.    He'd reinvented them to impress Kiana.   Hell, he'd told her that he was born in Connemara, because that was in the fucking Gaeltacht, whereas Galway city could be so hit and miss.   He had no idea where he'd been born.   But it was almost certainly a hospital in the city.    It's not like anyone could actually check.   Liam Tighe had been erased from existence by Watari.    Fenian could be born on fucking Mars, if he wanted to.   They only had his word to go on.   He'd run from their car then.   He'd run from the replay now.   He'd lied about them.   He'd lied to his girlfriend. The only thing that he had that was real was a fucking piece of gravel in his wallet.   But this was all old ground.   Why on Earth was he letting it get to him now?

Fenian lit his lighter.   He was in some kind of fucking mine now.    He'd been attacking a rusted carriage.   It was slowly merging into an equally rusted set of tracks.   He let the flame go out.   It was winding him up.    Light meant that he could see that he was crying and he wasn't going to let this shit make him cry.    But, of course, it had got to him.    The house's psychological tricks had got to Mello, Matt and Deontic.   He didn't outrank them.    He was never, ever going to do anything better than them.   It was futile to even try.

He began picking up shards from the tracks and carriages.   Flinging them into the void, just to burn off some of that fury.    Punctuating each wild throw with expletives in Gaelic and English.    It took him twenty of them before he realised that this wasn't coal.   It didn't feel like coal and it wasn't coating his fingers as coal.   Fenian exhaled and took out his lighter again.    His back was trying to get him to sit down.    He finally gave in, feeling spent and emotionally exhausted, as he turned the shard over and over in his hand.   His mind wasn't on this.   It took him a full two minutes to register what he held.   Then he dropped it with a loud ping onto the tracks.    "Fucking lead mine?"    Fenian gasped, incredulous.   "Lead?"   He stared blindly out into the darkness.   "Why is there a fucking lead mine under the house?"   No-one answered him.   It took nearly a minute for the next question to dawn.   "Shit!   How much of this is actually real?"   And there was the briefest touch, as someone cold and unseen, gently rubbed his shoulder.
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Annals of Fear II