Changeling by David Wood, Sean Ellis

a bit of fun at her expense, take her right to the “fuggy hole.” Jade thanked the clerk and then asked for a dinner recommendation.
    “You’ll want to visit the Weston Tavern,” the clerk told her. “Try the haggis, neeps and tatties, if only to say you did.”
    “I’ll do that,” Jade lied. For the first time since his departure, Jade was actually glad for Professor’s absence, as he would have almost certainly double-dog dared her to eat the traditional Scottish meal of sheep’s stomach stuffed with organ meats and oatmeal, and served with turnips and mashed potatoes. As it was, she had no intention of stopping for dinner, not with the goal finally within reach.
    Armed only with a flashlight, she braved the chilly rain and set out on foot from the hotel for the two mile walk to Jocksthorn Farm, a forested parcel of land that jutted up out of the rolling fields like an island in a sea of green. After a quick look around to make sure that no one was around to observe her, Jade, hopped over the low stone guardrail and ventured into the woods.
    The map was of little use since there were no landmarks to speak of, but twenty minutes of methodical searching finally brought her to a fenced area surrounding a hole in the ground that, if the hotel clerk was to be believed, was the entrance to the fogou. Jade climbed the fence, switched on her light and dropped into the opening.
    The ground at the bottom of the hole was covered with loose soil and moss, but just a few steps into the covered passage brought Jade to a tunnel with gently sloping walls of carefully fitted stones—a technique called “battering”—reinforced every few feet with buttresses and corbels, and roofed with large stone slabs that easily held the weight of the earth above. The floor was damp but mostly clean and free of debris. Jade proceeded slowly down the passage, playing the beam of her light on every crack and crevice, looking for anything that might reveal the reason for Roche’s interest, but aside from the obvious craftsmanship required to construct the subterranean vault, there was nothing remarkable about the tunnel leading into fogou. After about twenty-five feet however, the passage opened into the central chamber and Jade was obligated to revise that opinion.
    The heart of the fogou was a broad circular chamber. The battered stone walls sloped outward gently up to a point higher than Jade’s waist, then reversed, with each successive layer of rock overhanging the layer beneath it to create an inward slope that continued all the way up to form a domed ceiling. It took Jade a moment to realize that she was standing in a roughly spherical room, remarkably similar to the cavern she and Rafi had fallen into in Peru.
    Jade glimpsed something out of the corner of her eye, a man standing beside her, lurking in the gloom. She spun toward the shape, aiming the light where she thought his eyes would be, but the flashlight beam revealed nothing but stacked rock.
    She took a deep breath, trying to calm her racing heart. Her eyes had tricked her. The similarity to the Paracas chamber had triggered a subconscious memory of the strange “ghost” hallucinations, and her imagination had taken care of the rest. That was the most plausible explanation, but she could not shake the feeling that she was missing something.
    She took another breath. She had not thought about the ghosts since leaving Peru. That particular mystery had taken a back seat, yet she recalled now that Roche had asked about her discovery. Almost as if he knew, she thought. As if he had seen something like it.
    Jade shone the light around, searching for more ghosts, but instead of the elusive and ephemeral shapes, her beam picked out something almost as fleeting. A shadow, sliver thin, cast by a rock protruding ever so slightly from the thousands just like it, stacked up to form the curving walls of the fogou. She took out her pocket knife, a Victorinox Swiss Army Tinker model.