Moira walked out of her cottage to greet the morning sun as she put on her light farmer's jacket. She walked to the chicken coop, picked up a metal bucket on the way and filled it with feed. She started calling the chickens to feed and they started to pop out of the chicken coop and trot down the ramp, clucking as they came. Moira scattered the feed around so they could all get a decent amount. Emptying the bucket, she placed it upside down next to the coop and moved on to the cattle barn. She unhooked the gate, entered the corral closing the gate behind her, then opened the barn door, and called the cattle out, she counted them as they came out, only to find one cow missing. She called and called the missing cow's name, then she was quiet for a few minutes and heard the muffled sound of mooing. Following the sound, she walked to the far end of the barn.
What she found there was quite the site, a gaping hole in the floor where one of the stalls used to be and there was her cow about 10 feet down looking up at her. She ran to the house, called a neighbor to come help, then she went to the tool shed to get a torch (flashlight) and a strong rope. The cow was mooing and Moira attempted to calm it by talking to it. She put the torch into the back pocket of her overalls and fed the rope through a large strong ring she found on the ceiling. Tying the rope around her waist, she lowered herself down into the hole, once on the bottom with the cow, she petted it as it nuzzled her. Taking out the torch, she turned it on and shone it around the hole. There were bones, skeletons, human remains and some jewelry and chests. It looked to be an old tomb of some kind, but what was it doing there? She untied the rope and explored the tomb.
She saw something in one of the walls that looked like a door and pushed on it, it swung open stiffly after much encouragement and she shone the light down the tunnel. The tunnel was big enough for her, but not for the cow, although the cow did try to follow her into it. Moira walked about twenty feet into the tunnel and it opened into larger tunnels and chambers off that tunnel. She looked back and it seemed that the sides had collapsed around the door where she came through. She continued to follow the tunnel and found that it opened onto a narrow railway and doors all along it. She saw a light at the end of the tunnel, but heard no sounds in the tunnel. Following the railway, she was elevated onto a sidewalk that had shop fronts along it and the walls were made of cobblestone. This was all man-made she thought, but what was it for?
Coming to the end of the tunnel, some thousand feet away, she peered through the fence to see she was at a gasworks plant. She got her bearings, then went back down the tunnel to the tomb and the waiting cow. She heard her neighbours' voices from up above and responded. The neighbour had brought other neighbours to help get the cow out of the hole. Moira refastened the rope around her waist and pulled herself back up out of the hole. She took a minute to explain that she'd found an old narrow railway tunnel that led to a gasworks plant, but there was a very secure fence at the other end. The neighbours' eyes grew wide at the mention of it.
It seems that the tunnel used to be part of the postal system, as well as storefronts from the train system that used to run through it. The city had closed it off due to the homeless and vagrants and possible evil-doers who would frequently be found there. The old storefronts were now actually sealed-off accessways to the ground level stores' storage rooms or basements. It was told that there were three other levels of tunnels down there, for service access and such when it was a taxiway.
The cow mooed and brought them all back to the present and how to get it out. The neighbours worked out a plan to enlarge the doorway to the tunnel and get the town to open the gate in the fence. One neighbour ran into the house to call the town to find out how to get them to open the gate in the fence Moira had found. After much argument, the townsman conceded and agreed to open the fence. Another neighbour hooked up their pickup truck to a trailer to go to the fence gate and fetch the cow and still another ran and grabbed a shovel from the shed, returned quickly, took the rope from Moira and lowered himself into the hole to enlarge the doorway so the cow could pass through. Moira meanwhile went to the feed room and got a makeshift bridle for the cow and a small amount of feed, putting it in her coveralls pocket to entice the cow to follow her to the fence gate.
Returning, she heard the digging of the dirt near the doorway in the tomb and the sound of a pickup truck rattling off with her livestock trailer. Soon a townsman showed up in the barn to see about the tomb and how to secure it after cataloguing the small treasures found there. Not long after, a group of anthropologists from the local university showed up to gently remove and document the human remains. The townsman then departed to go and open the fence gate to retrieve the cow, he could be seen talking to someone on the phone as he got in his truck.
The neighbour who was shoveling, stopped digging and returned to the surface to give Moira the rope to lure the cow to the gate. Moira lowered herself down and gently fastened the bridle on the cow and gave it some grain to entice it to move. She and the cow both moved from the hole into the tunnel and the clip clop of hooves could be heard on the cobblestones.
The university group then set about securing the walls of the tomb and started cataloguing and removing the bones, which turned out much later to be the last known remnants of pirates who had been caught in a sudden flood in the tunnel, hence the small treasures found there.
The townsman on the phone had called the Mayor, who arrived on the farm after the cow was returned to bestow upon Moira a finders fee of such, for uncovering the tomb and a part of the history of the town long forgotten. The Mayor even had contractors come out and build another barn for her cows in an area that was not over the town's underground tunnels.