When the mayor finally emerged from the pit, there was more applause. He smiled weakly and waved. Daniël and Peter took him to the waiting ambulance. The crew started to unload the stretcher, but the mayor motioned it away and got into the ambulance himself to allow the paramedics to see to him.
The second excavator arrived, led by a group of men carrying thick cables. Daniël stuck his head inside the ambulance door. The blood had been wiped from the mayor’s face already and he sat holding a handkerchief to his nose while a paramedic wound a bandage around his head. He reminded Daniël of a footballer with a head wound, being patched up before returning to the pitch.
‘I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am, sir,’ Daniël began.
‘It wasn’t your fault … I don’t know what went wrong. I must have pressed the wrong button … It felt like there was some resistance and then I broke through something.’
‘We’re going to investigate, Mr Mayor. And again, please accept my sincere apologies.’
The paramedic finished dressing Freylink’s head wound and told him he would like to take him to the hospital for further assessment, to which the mayor agreed. Before he got into the ambulance, he gave another jovial wave to the people who stood watching from a distance. The ambulance doors were closed and it quietly drove away, without lights or sirens.
The cables had been attached to the excavator, and now the other digger reversed, growling and puffing smoke while four men stood around the pit to supervise it all. The trapped machine soon began to move and, after twenty minutes, it was back on the surface.
Daniël stood waiting impatiently with a rope ladder in his hands.
‘Do you want to go down?’ Peter asked.
‘Yes, of course! I want to see what the hell went wrong. We didn’t find anything unusual when we were digging. I inspected everything myself just an hour ago.’
They both stared down into the pit. It looked like part of the bottom of it had subsided. When the all-clear was given, Daniël carefully lowered the rope ladder. He made sure that it was securely anchored into the ground with two pegs before he put his foot on the first rung. He switched on the lamp on his helmet and began to climb down.
‘And?’ Peter called after him.
‘It smells different … like the air is damper, heavier. And …’ He had reached the bottom now. ‘There’s been a partial collapse at the bottom!’ he shouted. ‘It looks like there’s a space underneath it.’
‘Is there room for one more?’ Peter shouted. He wanted to take a look too, hoping it would take his mind off the strange text messages.
‘I knew you were going to ask that! Come on!’
Peter descended cautiously, as Janna watched, looking worried and indignantly shaking her head.
Daniël took off his hardhat and pointed the headlamp at the ground below him. ‘This is really bizarre. Look.’
Now Peter could see it too. It was obvious. The walls of the pit were clearly made of bricks and mortar. What on earth was this? A stone floor? Three metres underground?
Peter knelt down and leaned forward to see how far down the hole at the bottom of the pit went. He took Peter’s helmet and pointed its headlamp downwards.
Suddenly he heard a groan. A soft, but unmistakable groan.
He jerked his head backwards with a sharp cry. The helmet fell into the hole.
‘Have you seen a ghost?’ Daniël asked, laughing nervously.
‘I … I think there’s someone …’ Peter stammered.
The groan came again, harder now. He hadn’t imagined it. Daniël had heard it too.
Peter took a deep breath. He stuck his head back into the hole, searching for the source of the groaning. Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw.
Two bare legs poked out from underneath a pile of bricks. At the other end of the pile lay the naked torso of a young man.
The headlamp only barely lit the scene in front of him, but as soon as his eyes grew used to the darkness, he gasped as though he had been punched in the stomach. What appeared before him could have been a medieval painting of the torments of hell.
The man was covered from head to toe in blood.
Friday 20 March, 5:10pm
Anja Vermeulen’s shift was almost over, less than two hours to go. The kitchen staff were serving meals ahead of the start of visiting hours.
She set out the patients’ medication on her trolley. The general ward at Leiden University Medical Centre was known for being fairly quiet. Most of the patients were here to recover from minor surgeries like appendectomies, or to be helped with the transition back to their homes after a longer stay.
Ordinarily, nothing particularly interesting ever happened here. But today had been extraordinary. That afternoon, a young man had been brought in, a mysterious case. He had been discovered when a digger fell into a pit during excavation works in the town centre. The man, who was in his mid-twenties, was covered in blood. He’d been found lying in a cavity below the hole that had been dug for an underground waste container. Except for a loincloth, he had been completely naked. Nobody knew how he had ended up under the ground. Anja had heard the news about the accident on the local radio. It said that Mayor Freylink had been injured, but they hadn’t mentioned this nameless casualty.
After he was admitted to the hospital, unconscious but in a stable condition, the young man was washed from head to toe. Not a single wound was found on his body, and miraculously, none of his bones were broken. The blood that covered his body must have come from someone else. A sample had been collected and was being tested in the hope that it would reveal clues, a disease or some other condition. The police had said they would come the next day to take photographs of the young man and question him, if he had regained consciousness.
The anonymous patient was dressed in a clean hospital gown and taken to an empty room.
At about quarter past five, Anja looked in on ‘Anonymous’, as the name card next to his door said. She opened the door and saw that all was as it should be. The young man, well-built, clearly the sporty type, was breathing calmly. Everything appeared to be under control.
Clothes from the depot had been left on a chair, ready for him to wear when he was discharged from the hospital.
She stood next to his bed for a while, wondering what could have happened to him. As she turned to leave, she saw his eyelids flutter, a sign that he was regaining consciousness. She turned up the dimmed light on his bedside cabinet to make sure. Now the patient was clearly blinking his eyes. Instinctively, she blinked back.
When his eyes were completely open, he only stared at the ceiling at first, disoriented. Anja took hold of his hand. He slowly turned his head to look at her, furrowed his brow, and then closed his eyes again.
‘Can you hear me?’ she asked softly.
He nodded weakly.
‘Do you know where you are?’
He shook his head.
‘You’re in hospital. The LUMC. You were brought in this afternoon.’
He frowned again.
‘Do you know what happened?’
The young man pressed his lips together, as though he wanted to speak but was being silenced by something stronger than himself. He tried to lift his head.
‘Don’t worry,’ Anja said comfortingly. ‘Whatever happened