The E-bike Tunnel Rats

The Cutter House

The next morning, the sun hadn't even cleared the treetops when the six of them gathered at the waterhole. The boys arrived first, their e-bikes humming with fully charged batteries. When the girls rolled up on their mountain bikes, Turbo was already leaning against a tree, checking his watch with a smirk.

"You're late," Turbo called out, even though they were exactly on time.

Mussels stepped forward and adjusted the heavy straps of his pack. He looked at the dense, tangled treeline of the Black Gum Forest, then back at the girls. "You won't be able to cut through the forest this time. The scrub beyond the creek is too thick, and there aren't any walking tracks. You'll have to take the long way around on the old fire trail, just like us. And our bikes are faster."

Short-Stop didn't look worried. She adjusted her helmet and glanced at Mia. "We'll see about that. A straight line is still a straight line, whether there's a track or not. The girls know this part of the forest like the back of their hands."

"Ready?" Jax hovered his hand over the throttle.

"Ready." Mia adjusted her grip.

The race started in a storm of gravel. The boys leaned on their throttles, their e-bikes screaming as they hit the dirt road. But the road eventually narrowed to a track, and a wall of ancient, gnarled Black Gum trees soon choked the track.

Mussels was right about the scrub being thick, but he had underestimated how much the heavy e-bikes would struggle. The road's easy pace evaporated. One by one, they had to dismount. They spent the next fifteen minutes shoulder to shoulder with their machines, heaving the heavy frames over moss-covered roots as the forest seemed to close in around them.

Then the trees broke, revealing the nightmare in the clearing.

Cutter's House didn't just look old; it looked exhausted, as if weary of fighting the forest. It was a sprawling, two-storey skeleton of ironbark and cedar, greyed by decades of mountain mist until the wood looked more like bone than timber. Huge swaths of weatherboard had peeled away like dead skin, revealing the dark, spider-webbed ribcage of the wall studs beneath.

The windows were the worst part. Most were shattered, leaving jagged teeth of glass that caught the dull forest light, but a few remained intact, so coated in grime and ancient dust that they looked like cataract-blind eyes staring blankly into the trees. To the left, a massive brick chimney had begun to separate from the main structure, leaving a vertical crack wide enough for a person to crawl through. Rust-red stains bled down the whitewashed stones, looking uncomfortably like old wounds.

The boys were already there, standing at the edge of the rotting porch. They were panting, their shirts stained with sweat, but they wore identical triumphant grins. Turbo didn't wait. As soon as he saw Mia emerge from the treeline, he sprang into action. He scrambled up the steps, his boots thudding on the hollow wood, then marched straight to the heavy, salt-pitted oak door.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The sound echoed through the clearing like a heartbeat. Turbo spun, flinging his arms into the air. "I did it! I did it! We beat you by a mile!"

Mussels and Jax stepped onto the porch, looking as if they'd just conquered a mountain. Jax wiped a smear of grease from his cheek, then gave Mia a silent shrug that said, better luck next time.

The girls didn't look upset. They started laughing.

"Do you not know the curse, Turbo?" Mia asked softly. "The story says Jack Cutter is trapped in the House. Whoever knocks on the door first loses their head."

Turbo's hand snapped back as if the handle were red-hot. Just then, Short-Stop's head snapped up, locking onto the dark, grime-streaked glass of the second-storey window.

With a grin, she whispered, "Look! I saw a light."

The group fell silent. They waited, frozen, as a rusted gutter let out an agonising skritch against the wood.

Mia stepped onto the porch. "We aren't leaving yet. Now we'll see who's brave enough to look inside."

Jax felt his heart thudding against his ribs. "We didn't come this far to be scared of a light in a window."

The heavy front door groaned on its hinges as the crew stepped inside. The air hung thick with dust and decay. Turbo and Jax moved towards the centre of the room, their flashlights cutting through the gloom. Mussels brought up the rear, his heavy pack shifting as he stepped over a patch of dark wood.

There was a sickening CRACK.

The floorboards beneath Mussels shot upwards as the centre of the room gave way. He vanished into the darkness.

Jax lunged forward. "Mussels!"

He aimed his torch down the hole. It didn't hit a crawlspace; it kept going, revealing a hidden descent into the cold, damp throat of a tunnel.

"I'm okay," Mussels called back, though he sounded breathless. "But you guys need to see this. It's not a cellar. It's huge."

His voice didn't just carry; it echoed, ricocheting off distant, cold surfaces that sounded far deeper than fifteen feet. The scrape of his boots on stone rang hollow and metallic. Without hesitation, Jax drew a secondary torch from his belt and dropped it straight into the void.

The light tumbled through the air, a spinning blade of white that sliced through the ancient dust. It illuminated hand-cut stone walls and massive, rusted iron support beams slick with condensation. It finally settled near Mussels, who stood on a stone floor. The beam didn't stop. It cut across a vast, echoing cavern that stretched beyond the light's reach, revealing the entrance to a tunnel that extended in both directions.

"We're coming down!" Mia shouted from the edge.

Jax grabbed the climbing rope from his pack, looped it around a structural beam, and kicked the coil into the hole. One by one, they slid down. As they landed on the stone floor, the temperature dropped by ten degrees.

A thin, bone-white mist was coiling from the tunnel mouth, hugging the stone floor like a living thing. It didn't drift like ordinary smoke; it seemed to pulse, retreating into the shadows whenever the light struck it.

"What is that?" Mia asked.

As the torch beam swept past the mist, it lit the far wall. The stone was covered in deep, vertical furrows. They weren't the clean marks of a drill. They were jagged, uneven scratches, as if something had torn them into the rock while trying to climb toward the floorboards above.

Jax swept his light over the jagged furrows in the stone, then back towards the rotting floorboards of the Cutter House far above. The cold air from the tunnel seemed to be lunging at them, and for the first time, the torch didn't seem bright enough.

"We aren't ready for this." Jax's voice dropped an octave. He looked at Mussels, still shaking dust from his hair, then at the girls, their eyes fixed on the dark tunnel mouth.

"What do you mean?" Turbo didn't move an inch towards the darkness. "We're already down here."

"I mean, look at this place. What an adventure. But we don't have the right gear. The tunnel is dark, and it stretches a long way. Let's bring the e-bikes down here so their lights can show us how far it goes." He turned to the group, his expression hard. "I say we go back up, gather what we need. Bring extra batteries for our bikes. We need better torches and enough backup power to make sure we aren't stranded in the dark. We come back tomorrow morning and do this right, or I don't think we should do it at all."

Mia nodded slowly, her gaze lingering on the deep scratches on the rock. "He's right. The tunnels ain't going anywhere. But if we go in there like this, we might not make it back out."

They scrambled back through the broken floor and climbed out of the darkness, leaving the House's heavy, predatory silence behind. The shadows in the corners of the rooms seemed to stretch towards them as they fled. No one spoke as they hiked back to the main road; the image of those shredded stone walls was seared into their minds.

That night was spent in a fever of preparation. It wasn't just about charging cells and checking bolts. They stripped their rucksacks and repacked them with supplies from their dads' workshops, including heavy-duty climbing ropes, steel carabiners, and heavy tools, knowing exactly how dangerous the dark labyrinth beneath Cutter's House could be. Turbo raided his garage for every high-lumen torch he could find, taped them to his handlebars, and packed extra rolls of reflective trail tape so they wouldn't lose each other in the darkness.

No one needed to pack food; Mussels had raised his hand to do the job, promising a high-performance spread to keep them going.

Back in their own homes, the girls were doing the same: Sprocket sharpening her multi-tools and Mia double-checking the supplies in their first-aid kits. They weren't just packing for a ride anymore; they were packing for an expedition.

Tomorrow, they were going back with the right gear. They wouldn't be going in as rivals; they would be going in as a team.