But then I look down. It’s coming from beneath my feet, the floorboards rattling.
Then somebody screams.
Chapter 10
Help!” It’s a female voice, hoarse and desperate. “Please, help! Don’t leave!” She breaks off in a fit of coughing, the pounding beneath my feet stopping for a second as she hacks.
I stare back into the house, the fire spreading slowly but surely. I scan the computer room, looking for whatever evidence it holds against me. I can’t afford to have anyone find this place, to find Footloose, whoever he is, to know what he knew. It needs to burn. I can’t stop now. But Becca is the murderer in the family, not me.
The fire on the desk snaps, making me jump. The bottom of one of the monitors has started to warp and melt, a spark leaping onto the cheap chair and smoldering. Footloose is the one I want to erase, not the woman beneath the floor. And technically, I haven’t murdered anybody. He hurt himself, and I just stopped him from getting help forever.
The pounding resumes, weaker this time. “Help!” she cries again, her voice breaking. “Please don’t…Please don’t…”
I drop to my knees and feel around the floor for any type of hinge or handle. “I’m here!” I call. “Where’s the door?”
There’s a pause, like she’s astonished to have gotten an answer. “Over here!” she shouts, her voice more muffled. “Under here!”
The floorboards under the burning computer desk bounce, and I spot another lock, black and silver, catching the firelight. I scramble over and turn it in my hand, but it needs a key. My eyes water from the smoke, and my throat starts to burn. There’s nothing in this room to use as a weapon, not that I’d be able to smash through a lock with an ax, even if I could find one.
I cough painfully and shove to my feet, racing back outside, gasping in the cold air. The rusted muffler spits clouds of exhaust as I run to the car, yanking open the door and snatching the keys from the ignition. The engine sputters in complaint, but there are five keys on this ring, and one has to work.
I cover my mouth and nose with my shirt as I return to the house, dropping to my knees and fumbling with the lock. Next to my head, the fabric on the chair sizzles, still struggling to catch fire. The desk and equipment have had no such problem. The flames lick up the walls, burning away all evidence of Footloose’s crimes. And hopefully mine.
I jam the first key into the lock, but it doesn’t go more than half an inch. Same for the second. The third slips in but doesn’t turn. My cheeks and forehead feel like they’re burning.
The woman bangs on the floor, whimpering and pleading and choking, her words muffled by the crackling of the fire. There’s a loud whoosh in the next room followed by a muted bang as something explodes in the flames.
The fourth key works. Tears stream from my eyes, and my fingers shake uncontrollably as I fumble to release the lock, forcing the hasp free and hoisting up the door to reveal a pale, gaunt face surrounded by stringy red hair. Cold, musty air emanates from the opening, like an old root cellar. In the firelight, I can see the packed-earth floor, shadows extending into the darkness beyond.
“Please,” she mumbles, her fingers scraping the edge of the floor, unable to find a grip. I try to grab her forearms and pull her up, but I’m not strong enough, and neither is she.
“Wait.” I shove her back, the smoke making it nearly impossible to speak, to breathe. The chair is smoldering but hasn’t caught yet, and when she backs away from the opening, I shove it in, stomping with my foot to jam the chair through the tight space. I hear wood splinter as the floor gives way, and after an agonizing minute, it’s through.
Beneath me, I see firelight flicker in red hair as the girl crawls back and rights the chair, climbing up and wobbling dangerously as she reaches her hands to me, like a child being collected from a crib. I wrap my arms under hers and lift, and together we topple into the burning room, faces turned toward the open door.
“We have to go,” I say, feeling her tremble next to me. “There’s no time.”
She’s sobbing, and even through our clothing I can feel the sharp stab of her ribs, her hip bones. Fiona McBride disappeared a week before we buried Angelica in the park, and was missing more than a month. She’s been here this whole time, waiting for her turn to run Footloose’s gauntlet. And while she waited, he played another game.
I crawl toward the door, the cool air a boon on my burning skin, my cheeks feeling sunburned and itchy. When I glance back, Fiona has pulled herself up next to the burning desk and stands completely still as she gazes into the flaming abyss beyond.
“Let’s go,” I say, staggering to my feet.
She turns to look at me for a haunted minute, like whatever happened to her in that cellar is not worth living to remember, and then gives herself a hard shake, voluntary or otherwise. She shoots one last look at the hole in the floor before walking past me out the door.
The smoke is thick and sticky now, and I can see dark patches of soot on my clean clothes. My instinct for self-preservation is screaming at me to run after Fiona, get in the car, and drive away from here as fast as we possibly can. But the way she lingered and the way she looked at the hole in the floor are making my other instincts shriek in warning. I’ve had this feeling before, too many times to count. Don’t do it, they’re saying. Don’t look. But my legs move of their own volition, away from safety and into the fire. I drop to my knees, the air slightly less choking at this level, and peer into the cellar, my eyes watering in the acrid smoke. The chair lies on its side, and the glow of the orange flames licks over the damp earth, like I’m peering into hell. My eyes burn, making it impossible to see, even as I stick my head down farther, craning for a closer look at something I don’t want to find.
And then I see it.
A faint yellow glow, tucked far enough back I would have missed it if not for the light from the flames growing around me. The synthetic yellow of Becca’s puffy jacket, stained with dirt and worse, glimmering like a beacon that’s fast losing hope. It’s too dark to tell if there’s more than just a jacket down there, and I really don’t want to know, but I snag the edge of a branch from one of my piles of kindling and plunge it into the hole.
It’s only a coat. The shadows on either side are dark, and there’s no blond hair, no legs, no body. She’s not here. I don’t know if I’m devastated or relieved.
He killed her and hid her body, and like the families of Becca’s victims, I may never learn the truth about what really happened. Maybe that’s what makes me cry. Or perhaps it’s just the smoke stinging my eyes. But the karmic irony that I know the answers to thirteen families’ heartbreaking mysteries and will likely never know the answer to mine makes my chest ache and my tear ducts work overtime. I sob pitifully as I crawl away, my palms scraping over the floor, every movement more arduous than the one before.
Finally, I’m outside. I collapse on the leaf-littered ground and gulp in mouthfuls of clean air, swiping the back of my hand across my sweaty, tearstained face. It comes away black with soot. My whole body is begging me to lie down and close my eyes, but I know I can’t. The sky is dark enough that the smoke is obscured by the night, but it’s not impossible that someone, somewhere, will notice something amiss. We have to go.
I stumble to the car and get in. Fiona is slumped in the passenger seat, unconscious. Jamming the keys into the ignition, I search until I find a switch for the lights, high beams bumping against a thick wall of trees. I shift around, scanning every direction until I spot a slight opening in the forest about ten feet behind the car. I navigate the perimeter of the house, smoke billowing out the roof, and steer us onto a narrow lane, the tires bumping over unseen rocks and divots. The old car creaks and bangs as we trundle away into the darkness, my fingers gripping the wheel to steady myself for every jolt. Beside me, Fiona is slouched in her seat like a rag doll, the seat belt the only thing keeping her upright.
After ten minutes or so, we come to a road. It’s two lanes, roughly paved, wit
h no signage to indicate where we are or which direction we might want to go. Fiona is still out cold, so I make a left and slowly press down on the gas, wanting to get as far away from this place as possible but also wanting to make sure that if Fiona wakes up she won’t be able to lead anyone back.
It’s another thirty minutes before I pass a faded green sign, one corner missing. It says the turnoff for Highway 95 is six miles ahead. I drive a little faster. Highway 95 cuts through the state from north to south, but I have no way of knowing where we are in relation to Brampton. The car is so old it has a tiny clock to tell time, both hands stuck at twelve as if in prayer, giving me no sense of how far I’ve traveled or have left to go.
There’s no warning about the approaching highway, just the abrupt end of the thin wall of trees on our right to reveal six lanes of silent road. I still have no idea which direction I’m facing so I cut across and carry on in the way I’d been driving, the moon our only witness. Eventually, I see an overpass in the distance, dark shapes bolted to its side. I steal another look at Fiona, but she’s snoring softly, her hands folded protectively over her middle. The highway signs come into focus, and I see that the next exit is Newport Village, where I attended Jacinda’s funeral. Brampton is thirty miles past that. If I keep driving, I’ll be home in an hour.
I glance at the gas gauge, now at a quarter full, and slow the car to make a gentle U-turn, careful not to wake my passenger. I’m running on little more than adrenaline and panic right now, relief at having survived the most horrific ordeal of my life held at bay by the fear that I still have to figure out what I’m going to do to prevent anyone else from finding out about it.
I drive for another hour, watching the gas gauge tick lower and lower. By the time it’s hovering near empty, the pale glow of the sun has started to emerge over the horizon. Every time I see headlights in my rearview mirror, my heart jumps, praying this isn’t the Good Samaritan who decides to point out my missing taillight. My eyes are burning and fatigue is setting in, and I can’t hang on for much longer. All I want is to curl into a ball and sleep like Fiona, but I can’t. Not yet.
Another sign announces a rest stop in ten miles, and I find it abandoned when we arrive, the small wood structure advertising bathrooms and drinking water. I pull in and park. Fiona stirs but doesn’t wake as I remove the keys, pull the car key from the ring and replace it in the ignition, and then put the rest in my pocket, just in case.
I get out and pace, plotting our next move. Then my eyes lock on the trunk of the car. While we navigated our way out of the woods, the car had bumped and jostled, and I’d attributed the noises to the car’s age and undercarriage. Now I open the trunk, the metal parting with a soft squeal. I hold my breath as I peer in, expecting the worst.
What I find is a twenty-four-count case of Soda Jack with one can missing.
It’s a variety pack, six flavors arranged in rows of four. I peer closely to see the tab on the red cans, ancho chile flavor. HA! it says. I scan the row. HA! HA! HA!
My eyes sting, and a hot lump lodges itself in my throat. Becca would laugh if she were alive to see this. She’d think it was hilarious that the man who meant to kill me thought it was funny, and she’d think it was hysterical that I’d survived. This whole thing has always been one big joke, and my life is the punch line.
“Hey.”
I scream and slam the trunk closed, revealing Fiona on the other side, where she’d gotten out of the car without my noticing. She screams, too, and trips over her feet, sprawling on the pavement in terror. The cries shatter the stillness of the morning, and somewhere an owl hoots, a low, haunting sound.
“I’m sorry,” I say, covering my face with my hands and slumping against the car, my legs suddenly too weak to stand. “I’m sorry, I—”
“No,” Fiona says, struggling to get up. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Everything’s scary right now.”
She hesitates and then cautiously rests next to me on the trunk. “Not anymore.”
I drop my hands and gaze ahead at the trees that surround the rest stop and line the highway, the ones that hid Footloose from the world so efficiently that he killed a dozen people in his house of horrors and no one even guessed.
“I don’t know where we are,” I say finally.
Fiona glances around. Her eyes are struggling to focus, and there’s a gash on her cheek I hadn’t noticed earlier. It must have split open awhile ago and festered without treatment, the skin dark and rotten around the edges. It pulls her face up on one side, trapping her mouth in a permanent sneer.
“Me either,” she says. “I remember you opening the door, then…nothing. This.”
I stare at her, trying to gauge her sincerity. Somewhere in the distance, a train whistle sounds. Fiona doesn’t even blink, like she can’t hear it.
“There wasn’t much gas,” I lie. “Just enough to get out of the woods. I found the highway and drove until we reached this place. We’re almost out.”
Then she does blink, a tear slipping from her cheek. “We’re still close, then? To…him?”
“Yes.” I gesture to the woods on the opposite side of the highway. “Over there somewhere.”
She’s wearing a pink hoodie, just like in the missing posters her mother hung around town, but now it’s so stained with dirt and soot and whatever else that there’s only the occasional splotch of pink visible. “So he can still come?” she asks, voice breaking. “Take us back?”
“No.” I stick to the truth. Sort of. “He wanted to burn us alive, but while he was setting the fires, he fell into one of his traps. He cut off his hand and bled to death. That’s how I managed to escape.”
Tears roll down her cheeks and drip off her chin, but she doesn’t move to wipe them away. “No one escapes,” she whispers.
“We did.”
“That’s what he said. No one escapes.”
“Well,” I try, nudging her gently, “we did.”
“The other girl didn’t.”
I freeze, thinking of Becca. “Did she stay with you?” I ask. “The other girl? In the…basement?”
Fiona shakes her head, her long red hair so greasy and matted it doesn’t even move. “I don’t know who it was. I never met her. I think he…forgot about me. He was getting the house ready for my turn, and then…he just wasn’t. He said not yet. He had better things to do.”
“What about the yellow coat that was down there?” I ask, trying not to let my desperation show. “Who did that belong to?”
“I don’t know. I kept shouting that I was cold, and one night he threw it in and told me to shut up.”
“Did he tell you where it came from? What he was doing?”
Another twist of the head. “No. I could just hear him working. He was happy. Excited. Always in that room. Sometimes I heard him whistling.”
A semi-truck rumbles past on the highway, but neither of us moves to flag it down.
“I heard her,” she says softly.
“Heard who?”
“The last girl.”
I grip the edge of the trunk. “She talked to you?”
“No.” Fiona’s face crumples, and she uses the cuff of her dirty sleeve to swipe at her eyes. “But she screamed. She said, Is this what you did to my friend? He hurt her. A lot.”
My stomach twists. Shanté. The last player to die in his sick game. I did that. Becca did that. If we hadn’t buried Angelica at that place on that night, none of this would have happened. And if we hadn’t decided to start our own investigation, we’d have never met Shanté, and she’d have never met Footloose.
“Could you hear him talking to her?” I ask, because I have to. I have to know what Fiona could hear down there. “Anything else?”
She shakes her head. “I covered my ears. I didn’t want to hear. And I don’t think I could have heard anyway. There was stuff on the ceiling so I could only tell when someone was walking. Or screaming. And then when there was fire. I could smell the s
moke. That’s why I started shouting. I didn’t think anyone could hear me. He never did.”
“Did he tell you his name?”
“No. Did he tell you?”
“No. But the newspapers call him Footloose.”
She sniffles. “Why?”
I decide to delay her discovery of the details of what made Shanté scream, of the fate that awaited her. She would have nightmares of her own to deal with.
“I don’t know where we are,” I say again, pushing away from the car. “And I don’t have my phone.”
“Me either.” She thunks the side of her hand on the trunk. “And this thing is, like, a million years old. Before GPS.”
“We’ll have to flag down a car. Someone will come. Someone will rescue us.”
Fiona lets out a broken sob and then flings herself into my arms, pressing her uninjured cheek into my chest. “You rescued us,” she sobs. “You did it.”
When I hug her back, all I feel are bones.
* * *
Fiona and I confirm to the police that the man who abducted us was Footloose. Fiona describes her time in the cellar, the screams she’d heard from an unidentified woman and then later from me. I tell them about the room with its fake hope and its trapdoors designed to sever feet. I tell them the same thing I told Fiona about Footloose’s attempt to set the place on fire and then falling into his own trap and dying, allowing me to escape and rescue Fiona in the process.
Neither of us can guess where the house was located. Fiona because she was unconscious, me because I was blinded by darkness and terror. Footloose had wiped down the car, and the only fingerprint in it that didn’t belong to me or Fiona was unidentifiable.
We tell the stories over and over again to different detectives in different places. I spend a night in the hospital while Fiona stays much longer. She tells the police I’m a hero.
It’s a week before anyone dares leave me alone. Graham has been stuck to my side almost nonstop, breaking away only when my parents came for a three-day visit, which was long enough for us all. Graham feels guilty for everything—not offering to fly with me to Phoenix, not sensing that the fake Detective Schroeder was insane, not realizing I was in a house of horrors instead of my parents’ home—and hasn’t stopped apologizing, though I’ve practically begged him to. He feels like this is all his fault. I tell him it’s not, though I can never tell him why.
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