From his perch on the trembling landing, Len looked straight down through the two-inch gaps between the floorboards.
Doma Reel looked like an ancient river creature rising out of the ancient mud. The scalding wastewater swirled in yellow, rotten-egg eddies around her waist. It soaked her wool cardigan until the dark grey yarn clung to her torso like wet canvas. Her teeth were bared, white against the dark soot on her jaw, her neck muscles corded like hemp hawsers as she leaned her full strength into the iron turning-bar.
CLINK-SCREEECH.
The bronze collar of the locomotive jack turned a quarter revolution. The square-cut Acme threads, coated in thick black axle grease that hissed and smoked in the eighty-degree water, groaned under the huge downward thrust of the collapsing stairs.
The effect was instant.
Beneath Len’s sound shoulder, the crushing weight of the handrail lifted by a fraction of an inch. The landing rose half an inch, the two rusted lag bolts in the brick wall groaning as the tension was passed from the crumbling stonework to the slanted pine strut. The shrieking of the torn mortar ceased, replaced by the deep, solid creak of twelve-inch seasoned pine taking five tons of crushing load.
