The candle did little to penetrate the darkness. The feeble glow from the candle showed her only walls of hard-packed dirt around her and the supporting beams of the cottage overhead. The smell of decay was even stronger underneath the house so that she had to put her apron to her face.
Ahead, she found only more dirt. She held her breath as she released her apron and then chipped away at some of the dirt with her fingers. Behind it was more dirt of the same gray-brown color. Maybe it isn't dirt at all, she thought. She put a chip in her mouth. Her face puckered with disgust and she spat until the taste left her mouth.
With that mystery solved, she pushed ahead. Then she saw a pair of eyes looking up at her from the floor. She put a hand to her mouth to keep from screaming. After a moment, she collected herself enough to realize the eyes were painted onto the face of a doll. Samantha bent down to dig around the face until she managed to pry away a chunk of white porcelain with a tress of rough hair the same color as her own.
She doubted The Way permitted owning dolls. She dug around the area more, turning up the body of a doll dressed in plaid fabric unlike anything seen in Eternity. The fragments of porcelain she hurled into the dark, but the dress she tucked into her apron to show Prudence later. Her friend might know more about the fabric.
The doll was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The farther she crept along the cellar, the more items she found. Broken cribs, tattered mobiles, and splintered bassinettes lay stacked in heaps, enough for at least two-dozen babies. From the brittleness of the materials, she guessed they must have been down in the cellar for several years at least.
The smell of decay increased until her eyes watered. She crept around a stack of buggies to find a cabinet lined with clay jars. She opened one to find it filled with a cream-colored sludge that made her gag. She forced herself to jab a finger into the pot to taste the goo. Baby formula, she thought. Formula long since expired.
She put the jar back on the shelf and opened a wooden box next to the cabinet. Inside she found neat stacks of tiny white nightgowns. A tag on the first nightgown read, 'Prudence Elizabeth Gooddell.' She found another for 'Helena Marie Bloom' and 'Phyllis Jane Baker.' These are their baby clothes, she thought. Yet from the spotlessness of the fabric, they didn't appear to have ever been worn. She shoved Prudence's nightgown into her apron pocket.