There's something down there...

John Monaghan’s timing was spot on as Spencer saw his truck pulling up outside the farm house with another van just begin it at exactly 9:15 the following morning. Spencer stepped out onto the front porch while John gave instructions to his men about where to start work. Spencer already had his mug of coffee in his hand as John came over as his workers started to unload the gear they would need.

As John came over carrying a thin brown leather satchel that contained the quote he’d prepared over the last few days, Spencer called him inside. “John come inside while it warms up out there.”

John and Spencer shook hands in greeting and made their way inside where it was warm. A thin frost was covering the grass outside and would likely remain in place for much of the morning. Inside Spencer prepared a drink for John before they sat down at the kitchen table to go over the documents.

In addition to the $300 for todays work, John had priced up a build for a barn very similar to the one that had used to stand beside the old farm house long ago. John was able to cut Spencer a good deal on the build by using a prefabricate design that only really needed to be assembled together on site. The main cost coming in laying the foundations for the walls to makes sure the whole thing stayed up.

“The only real difference in price will come if we find anything untoward today which shouldn’t really change the cost all that much. At most that should only really add a day or two tops and I’ll just charge you a day rate for the machines and the men to get it done,” John explained to Spencer as they went through the quote between them.

All in all, Spencer found the offer to be very reasonable really. John agreed to let Spencer be involved with the physical building of it as much as he liked. Spencer putting pen to paper to sign the contracts right then and there.

“I can give you a cheque for today if you like but how would you like payment for rest of it? I can write one for the lot or organise with Dani at the bank to transfer it to your account?” Spencer asked.

John smiled before laughing, “you coming up with ways to see her again?”

Spencer laughed too “we’re catching up for a date this Friday actually.”

“Massie told me she thought there was a sparkle between the two of you at dinner the other night. Well I’m glad to see she was right, although I’ll never hear the end of it when I tell her.”

The two men drank their coffees while they waited for the work to be done outside. Spencer happy to chat and shoot the breeze with the other man. After about an hour they came back outside to see how things were getting on with the radar. Spencer could see where the crew had been working. Darker green tracks were etched in the white tinged grass where they’d been back and forth. The main centre of operation based around the outline of the barn’s footprint. Seeing John come outside one of the two workers waved for them to come over. It was the one who’d been stationed at a laptop set up on a folding table while the pushed what looked like a sort of oversized lawnmower back and forth on its wheels. Coming over John asked him what they’d found.

Turning the laptop screen so they could both see the man explained what they’d discovered, “there looked to be a metallic sphere in the centre of a void with all sorts organic and other materials all around it.”

“What do you think that it?” John asked.

“I can’t be sure what the metal object is but the rest I would hazard a guess would have been a basement of some sort which the barn itself collapse in on top of it. The organic matter being the timbers the barn was originally built with,” he offered his opinion on the readings.

“Well Spencer, looks like there’s a bit of a mystery down there after all,” John said taking his time to confirm on the screen what he’d just been told.

“What might have happened if we didn’t do this first?” Spencer asked, glad that John had recommended they do this first.

“The foundations could have warped potentially, ground sinking probably. Worst case scenario; whole thing could have collapsed in on itself,” John outline some of the ‘could-of-been’s.

Spencer blanched at the thought of his barn coming down while Amy had been inside of it. John saw Spencer’s face pale and quickly reassured him it was highly, highly unlikely and there would have been plenty of warning beforehand.

“Ok. So, what’s the next step?” Spencer asked. He was still keen to get on and build it after having put the ground work into it as well as having a rising curiosity to see what was down there.

“We can start excavating the space this coming Monday and see what’s inside. I’ll do the digging on the excavator myself personally,” John offered. He was just as interested as Spencer to see what might be buried under the ground.

It didn’t take long for the radar crew to pack up after that. The technician on the laptop would prepare a full report that he would email through to John by the end of the week in time for work to start the following weekday. John and Spencer headed back inside as the van drove off down the farm lane on its way back to Oxford. Inside John gathered up the contracts he and Spencer had signed. Leaving a copy of both the quote and signed documents. Spencer offered John another drink before he left but he had more work to get done after lunch and wanted to get back to Massie to fill her in on her suspicions about Spencer and Danielle. Massie had kept silent on her and Dani’s little girl talk upstairs instead telling her husband it had been her own intuition picking up on Dani’s interest in Spencer.

With the place to himself again, Spencer had lunch before taking his canoe out on the lake that afternoon. The temperature at last warm enough to melt the ice from the ground. After receiving treatment from Jessica Wolfe, Spencer found that the clicking in his shoulder had mostly stopped and the pain was reduced by around half. It was getting better, he was thankful, but not quite 100% yet. Still it felt great to get out on the water again and get a good sweat going in the cold air. The combination of heat coming from his body and sharpness of the wind as it hit his skin filling him with a sense of exhilaration at a level of anything he had achieved in his old work life as a lobbyist.

The same rush of energy and endorphins continued to fill Spencer with a general feeling of happiness and well being as he made his way into the school that afternoon to collect Amy. His talk with John about Danielle as well as with Avery put Spencer in the mind that he would have to tell Amy about himself and Dani and soon too. There were going on a date that Friday and he would need to tell Amy of his plans to be out of the house that evening.