Lance was not surprised. He’d done nothing in life if not gotten used to things being difficult to explain. “When did she tell you this? When did the girl in the basement tell you that I could help you?”
The boy knew the answer to this question and spat out, “Last night. Last night when I ate the pizza and played the game with the boy, she started talking to me.”
Lance’s heart sped up. It was the first solid, tangible evidence that he was right about Ethan sharing his gifts. “She talked to you?” he asked. “You could hear her voice?”
Ethan made a face that said he wasn’t sure. He shook his head, then stopped, changed his mind and nodded. “I heard her up here.” He tapped his head with his tiny index finger. “She was far away, but I heard her up here.” Another tap.
“And she said I could help you? Is that all the girl said?”
Ethan nodded. “Yes, that’s all.”
Lance’s excitement had grown so great, he didn’t immediately allow himself to be deflated by the extreme lack of detail in Mary Benchley’s instructions to Ethan. Instead, he pressed on. “Ethan, you said you could hear the girl in the basement, right?”
Ethan nodded.
“Could you see her?”
Ethan looked at Lance like he’d grown a horn from his forehead. Shook his head. “No, she was in the basement.”
Of course. Try again, Lance.
“Ethan.” Lance got down onto one knee and looked the boy in the eyes. “Have you ever heard other people talking in your head? Or”—this one was tricky—“ever seen people that nobody else could see? People that … aren’t really here, maybe.”
“No.”
No hesitation. No contemplation. A simple answer.
He’s either telling the truth, or he’s a fantastic liar for a six-year-old.
Lance sat down on the floor and considered this. Unless Jacob Morgan had filled Ethan’s head with some sort of knowledge of what had happened in the farmhouse, it seemed too coincidental of a thing to make up on the spot. Plus, there’d been the buzz … that electric tingling at the base of Lance’s skull and the nauseous feeling in his gut. Something had certainly happened last night in the kitchen.
Could it possibly have been his first time? Was last night the first time his abilities had ever been exercised?
Lance remembered his own childhood and envied Ethan if that was the case.
Another question popped into Lance’s thoughts, and he changed topics, his own head going too fast to keep up with. “Ethan, why did you come here? Why now?”
The boy shifted from side to side and hugged himself again and then started to speak in a rapid burst of words that caused his eyes to tear up again and his voice to waver. “Uncle Jacob is mad and he was scaring me, and I started crying, and then I ’membered the girl said you could help me, so I went out my window and ran up here and the storm was loud and scary and I thought it was gonna kill me dead.”
Jacob’s mad, Lance thought as Ethan used his hoodie again to wipe his nose. Which part of our conversation set him off? Was it the part about Ethan … or was it the Benchleys?
And then Lance thought, with more fear than he’d been expecting, that maybe it had been both.
“Ethan, buddy, do you know why your uncle Jacob was mad?”
Ethan answered as he tried to hold back his tears. “I don’t know. He was yelling and scaring me and told me to go to my room, so I did, and then he yelled some more and I heard something break and that scared me more, so I went out the window because you can help me.”
Lance nodded his head. “That’s right, Ethan. That’s right. I can help. I’ll help you, I promise. Everything will be fine.”
Lance said the words and placed a hand on Ethan’s small, bony shoulder. He looked the boy in the eye and repeated, “Everything will be fine.” But he knew that he should not be making such a promise. He couldn’t take the boy anywhere except back to Jacob Morgan without it possibly being misconstrued as kidnapping, especially after Lance had been to the house and had his conversation with Jacob, where he’d asked what would certainly be labeled as strange questions about Ethan.
Could he call the sheriff?
And say what? Hi, Sheriff, I’ve got Jacob Morgan’s nephew here—you know, little Ethan—and he’s really scared and doesn’t want to go home. There was a hint of domestic abuse in that phrase, which might get the sheriff’s hackles up, but—
Lance saw movement from the corner of his eye. Ethan had started down the hall while Lance had been absorbed in thought. “Ethan?” Lance called after him.
Ethan walked slowly but with a steady purpose to his gait. He turned his head and spoke with the same matter-of-factness as a man who was giving the time. “She’s still down there,” he said. “And she wants us to come see.”
Us.
“Us?” Lance asked, shoving up to his feet and hurrying after the boy. “She said she wants us to come see?”
Ethan didn’t answer, but Lance saw his shadow on the wall nod a single time.
In the kitchen, Lance flipped on the light switch and watched as Ethan stopped for a moment to investigate the broken chair on the floor, giving Lance a sidelong glance, and then the boy turned to the basement door.
A loud buzz exploded in Lance’s head, causing him to cry out and grab his head with his hands. His vision blurred and he tasted bile in the back of his mouth.
Then it passed, and when he could see clearly again, Ethan had opened the door and was halfway down the steps, the beam of his too-big flashlight shining into what looked like the mouth of a cave.
Lance followed, the cool, damp air of the basement biting at his skin and causing goose pimples to ripple along his forearms. And then he stood on the last step, Ethan standing on the hard-packed dirt floor a step in front of him. Ethan swung the flashlight beam to his right and started to walk in that direction.
“Ethan?” Lance said, stepping down to the floor and reaching up for the little bit of pull chain that was left on the light fixture above his head. He fumbled for it in the near-darkness, found it, pulled. Watched as the basement lit up in a dim glow, and he found Ethan standing in front of the row of metal shelves mounted on the wall behind the stairs.
“Ethan?” Lance tried again.
The boy stood motionless, staring straight ahead at the wall, his flashlight hanging loosely at his side, ready to fall from his hand and rattle onto the floor.
God, it’s like that last scene from The Blair Witch Project.
Lance had thought it a joke, but as soon as he’d finished thinking it, he found himself quickly looking over his shoulder, eyes peering into the rest of the dimly lit basement.
He saw nothing.
When he turned back around, he nearly screamed in surprise to find Ethan turned to face him, staring directly at him. “She’s back there,” Ethan said.
Lance’s gaze looked past Ethan and settled on the wall behind him. He knew there was a room back there. He’d seen it in that awful memory that had been stored away in the key he’d found atop the bathroom mirror. But there were two things that bothered him about this. The first was that he didn’t know how to open the wall, and the second was the fact that Mary Benchley’s body had been found burned on the brush pile in the backyard. Not the basement, and certainly not behind a secret door that apparently nobody knew about or knew how to access.
“We need to unlock the door,” Ethan said, pointing to the wall.
But he knows, Lance thought. This must be real, because he knows about the door.
Lance walked closer and stood beside Ethan, gently taking the boy’s flashlight from him and shining it across the wall, the shelves. He’d been over every inch of this wall earlier that day and had found nothing.
“I don’t know how,” Lance said, feeling his face burn with disappointment at letting the child down.
And then another zap of electricity started at the base of Lance’s skull and climbed up into his head, and his ears buzzed and his eyes
squeezed shut and he thought he was going to throw up and—
And it stopped as suddenly as it had come. Lance gasped in relief, sucking in large gulps of air, turning to look to Ethan to ask the boy if he was feeling any of this.
But Ethan wasn’t looking at Lance. He was looking at one of the shelves, his arm and hand outstretched, pointing. Lance followed to where the boy was pointing, and when he saw what he ended up on, he sighed and mumbled a bad word under his breath.
“I’m an idiot.”
The paint can, with its dribbles of dried paint splattered on its exterior, was exactly where it’d been when Lance had first discovered it last night, and when he’d examined the wall earlier that morning. And now, Lance wondered exactly how long the can had been sitting in that spot on the shelf.
Forever was the answer he arrived at. How inconspicuous, a paint can on a basement shelf. How completely forgettable, dismissible. And Lance had done just that. Completely dismissed the can as nothing but part of the scenery.
He took Ethan’s flashlight and walked to the wall, watching the light reflect off the can’s spots of bare aluminum. Lance reached up and tried to gently push the can to the side along the shelf.
It wouldn’t budge.
He tried again, pushing harder, putting more weight behind it.
Nothing.
He set the flashlight on the shelf next to the can, the light bouncing off the wall and giving Lance just enough to see by, and he grabbed the can with both hands and tried to push and pull it left, right, forward, back. It didn’t so much as wiggle.
Lance grabbed the flashlight again and bent down and shined it under the shelf, peering under and looking for what was holding the can in place. The metal shelf was maybe two inches thick, but there were no signs of screws or bolts or anything else keeping the paint can stationary.
Lance turned and looked at Ethan, raising his eyebrows. Well, kid, you seem to be the one running the show. Any ideas?
Ethan stared back. Said nothing.
Lance sighed and studied the can again. Stepped back and looked at the shelf, the whole picture.
The shelf, he thought. The can has to be attached to the shelf somehow, and there’s nothing underneath, and nothing behind it, so…
An idea.
He stepped back to the shelf and reached up and used both hands to press down on the top of the paint can.
And the can sank into the shelf. Not much, maybe only half an inch, but enough. When the can had been depressed into the shelf, Lance heard the shifting of metal on metal, the clinking of some sort of interior mechanism hidden away inside the body of the shelf itself. He released the can and it popped back into place quickly … and the shelf loosened the tiniest bit, sliding over to the left a quarter of an inch, if that.
Lance placed his palm against the right edge of the shelf and pushed. Watched as the shelf slid left six inches on tracks inlaid in the basement’s wall, and then came to a stop.
Lance grabbed the flashlight and shined it on the newly revealed spot on the wall.
Found a small keyhole. A dull silver mouth for which Lance knew he had the key tucked away in his pocket. He quickly pulled the key from his pants and stuck it in the lock. Then, after looking back to Ethan, who was still standing and watching attentively without a word, Lance turned the key. He heard an entire chorus of clinking and clanking and hinges in need of oil softly screeching inside the wall.
When the noises had finished, Lance stood and waited for something more to happen.
Nothing did.
Lance pulled the key from the lock and pocketed it.
He walked down the wall to the corner where it met the intersecting wall. He shrugged, placed two hands on the closest metal shelf, and pushed.
The entire basement wall began to slide open, and Lance had a startling idea that he was opening a tomb.
35
There was no corpse in the room—a room that had been presumably sealed and undisturbed for the better part of six years—but there was blood.
Just like the key had slid into the lock in the wall and opened the room with a satisfying clicking of tumblers and gears, a key also slid into place in Lance’s mind. The secrets he’d been trying to unearth, the questions he’d given up trying to answer—they were here, waiting for him. He knew this instantly as he took his first breath of the stale air and was able to see the dark stain on the concrete floor revealed in the flashlight’s sweeping beam. When he took a step closer, the flashlight reflected off something else, a metallic glint winking back at Lance as he approached. When Lance saw what it was, he stopped and turned to look over his shoulder. Found Ethan standing in the opened mouth of the wall, peering in with nervous fascination. “Stay right there for a bit, okay, Ethan? Nobody’s been here for a long time, and I want to make sure it’s safe, okay?”
Ethan wrapped himself up again in the long sleeves of Lance’s hoodie and nodded, but his eyes were pleading to see more. Lance turned and stepped closer, finding that metallic glint again and moving toward it, a sick feeling growing stronger in his gut with each step he took.
He reached the grotesquely large black stain on the floor, which was directly in front of the futon, and for an instant it reminded him of spilled coffee, brewed strong and just the way he liked it. He would have liked some coffee right then, for he had a strong certainty things were going to start moving very fast, and he’d have to stay ahead of it if he wanted to accomplish what he’d been brought here for.
He reached for the pull cord attached to the bank of overhead fluorescents and gripped the chain, pulling gently. Above, a noisy flickering of lights sputtered briefly like the engine of a long-idle car choking itself awake and then came on. Lance looked up and saw only one row of the lights were working, but it was enough. He switched off the flashlight and set it on the ground, careful to avoid the stain that he knew wasn’t coffee.
The metallic reflection was coming from a rolling IV stand positioned next to the futon. Two clear plastic bags hung like a cowboy’s saddlebag from the hooks on either side. They each looked half-empty. Beside the IV stand was a rolling cart, a metal tray atop it full of a handful of medical and surgical tools. Lance recognized most by sight but could not name them. The whole scene looked eerily like something you’d see on one of those tours of an abandoned mental hospital where the guide would tell you chilling tales of patient abuse and archaic medical procedures that once had been thought groundbreaking but were later proven to be nothing but torture. Lance walked around the black stain and the front of the futon—the futon he tried not to think about with little Ray Kruger lying atop it, his pants and underwear pushed down around his tiny ankles—and nearly tripped on a pile of towels scattered along the side of the futon. Towels that had once been white but were now tie-dyed a dark crimson. Lance jumped away from the towels as he might if he’d accidentally stepped on a rattlesnake. He looked down at them for a long time, his mind trying to add the IV stand and the bloody towels and the black stain together in some sick calculation that would show him an answer.
“What’s there?” Ethan’s voice, nervous and curious.
Lance looked up and saw the boy staring at him. Contemplated telling him the truth or trying to keep him calm.
What would my mother do?
The truth. She’d always told him the truth.
Lance chose a compromised answer. “Ethan, listen to me, okay? I think somebody got hurt down here. Pretty bad, too. So I really need you to stay right there unless I tell you different, understand?”
Ethen did not protest. Did not inquire further. Just nodded his head and kept his arms wrapped around himself, his eyes wide as he watched Lance’s every move.
Lance stepped carefully around the towels and stood next to the IV stand, grabbed each of the plastic bags and read their labels in the half-lit room. One appeared to just be saline. The other was something called oxytocin. Lance, having misplaced his nursing degree, found this information less than helpful. But r
egardless of his understanding, one thing was clear: somebody had been down here and had needed medical attention. But who, and for how long?
Lance stepped back, allowed himself to fully take in the room. When he’d opened the door initially, he’d been overwhelmed with the memory of what he’d seen when he’d found the key atop the mirror, and those images played through his head and drew his eyes directly toward the futon in the center of the room. Now, with the lights above and his attention refocused on the grand picture, Lance saw additional details. Things that at once painted a new picture. One that chilled his blood.
A pink-and-blue bedspread atop the futon, now a tangled and twisted mess, pushed far down toward the foot of the bed and spotted with blood; a small nightstand placed next to the futon on the opposite side from the IV stand, atop it a hairbrush, thin wisps of hair tangled in the bristles, bottles of vitamins, a small stuffed pig, pink and plush, and a copy of one of the Twilight novels, a bookmark sticking out from somewhere near the end.
Lance turned around and looked toward where the toilet and sink were. The shower rod was still there, only the curtain was much different than the one he’d seen in his vision from Ray Kruger’s childhood. The curtain here was a pink-and-blue print matching the bedspread on the futon.
There was a scented candle on the counter by the sink, burned most of the way to the bottom.
Lance took another long look around the room.
Somebody lived down here, he thought. Somebody was trying to make this a bedroom.
He looked back to the Twilight novel on the nightstand. To the hairbrush with the strands of hair stuck in it. Recalled the black-and-white image of the Benchley family from the newspaper archives at the library. The hair in the brush was light in color. He looked at the book again, considered the subject matter.
Mary Benchley’s hair had been much lighter than her mother’s.
Lance remembered the voice he’d heard calling out from behind the locked basement door. A young girl pleading to be let out.
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