He slid onto his side, pulling her close, wrapping her in his arms. “That was incredible.”
“It was supernatural,” she agreed. “Why did we waste so much time hating each other?”
He leaned up, kissed her earlobe and held her for another ten minutes while their heart rates returned to normal. And then, finally, she sighed and got to her feet. “Shall we get this over with?” she asked.
“It’s as good a time as any.” He got up, found their clothes, helped her to dress, sliding her panties over her feet and pulling them slowly up for her. Every touch was a caress. He repeated the process with the T-shirt. She took the jeans from him, because if he kept this up he was going to make her decide to do something else besides explore the basement.
Hell, what was this now? Were they casual sex partners, or something more?
She looked past him at the darkened windows, heard the wind picking up outside. Branches moved, scraping gnarled limbs over the sides of the house, like demons trying to claw their way in. She shivered, all the fears he’d made her forget returning in force.
Jack slid an arm around her shoulders. “Don’t worry, Kiley. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Especially not now.”
The way his voice thickened on those words made her look up at him quickly. “Don’t wax mushy on me, Jack. That would be scarier than the basement.”
“Come on.”
She walked with him, wished he couldn’t feel her shaking, but not so much that she would give up the reassuring arm around her. In fact, she walked as close beside him as she could. At the basement door, she drew a breath.
Jack reached out, closed his hand on the knob and opened the door. She stared into a rectangle of utter blackness. Then she reached past him, into the inky dark, which felt like a physical thing, cold and dense. She found the light switch, flicked it.
Light flooded the stairway. She swallowed her fear. “We’re coming down here to keep our promise, ghost. We’re checking out the things you’ve been trying to tell us, but I’ll tell you right now, at the first sign you’re fucking with us, we’re out of here. Understood?”
There was no sound, no sign of any reply.
She looked at Jack. He nodded. “Let’s go, then.” Still holding her near his side, he started down the stairway. It was a solid stairway, modern, obviously not the original set. They walked down, thirteen stairs, to the bottom, a smooth concrete floor.
“So?” she asked. “Where was it you saw in this…vision?”
He looked at the ceiling, evenly spaced studs, with cross-pieces in between them. Steel pipe ran along the edges of some boards, laying a hot-and-cold running trail from the basement to the bathrooms and the kitchen. Then he lowered his gaze, scanning the basement. “Over here, I think.”
She walked with him across the basement. He moved slowly, and Kiley wondered if he was feeling the same things she was. It seemed to grow colder with every step they took. And there was something else in the air. Something electric and alive.
He stopped, and seemed to be staring at the floor.
“Is this it?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I think so.”
“What do you think we should do about it, Jack?”
He sighed, looking around the room. She followed his gaze. There were some old tools hanging from hooks in the wall. Hoe, rake, shovel. They were old, battered, dusty. They’d been here when she bought the place, and she hadn’t bothered to get rid of them. She hadn’t even touched them. Hell, she’d only been in the basement once, with the real estate agent. For some reason she hadn’t been able to come back down here since she’d moved in.
He seemed about to answer her, when a loud clattering sound made Kiley jump six inches and clutch her chest. Her heart racing, she scanned the basement to find the source of the sound. The old shovel lay on the concrete floor. It had fallen off its hook. She swallowed her fear, took a calming breath and looked up at Jack.
He said, “I think we need to dig up the floor.”
“Yeah. I kind of picked up on that.”
He nodded. “We’ll need something stronger than a shovel to break through concrete.” Taking her hand, he turned and started back toward the stairway.
From the corner of her eye, Kiley saw something flying toward them. She swung a hand to the back of Jack’s head, pushing him forward and down, ducking along with him, and the thing whizzed over their heads so fast and so close that she felt the breeze it caused, heard the sound of it passing. It slammed into the wall on the other side of them and stayed there.
“Holy Christ,” Jack muttered, straightening and staring.
She stared, too. The rounded end of the shovel was embedded in the wall, its handle sticking straight out, still quivering from the impact.
“That could have taken off your head,” Kiley whispered.
“Yeah.” He was staring behind him, eyes wide and watchful.
“Goddamn it!” Kiley turned and shouted. “What are you, stupid or something? We can’t dig the effing floor up with a shovel. It’s concrete, you blithering idiot. We’re going to need a jackhammer or something. So unless you’ve got one of those to hurl at us, knock it the hell off!”
Jack stared at her, then looked around the basement.
“You think it got the message?”
“Hell, you scared me. Should’ve worked on the ghost.”
She searched his eyes, suddenly, acutely aware of how ridiculously much he had come to mean to her. “It better have,” she said. She ran a hand through his hair, kissed his chin.
Then, turning, they took another step toward the stairs. Nothing happened, so they started up them. They made it almost all the way to the top, before the creaking, splitting, cracking sounds alerted them to trouble. Jack grabbed her waist and shoved her ahead of him and through the open doorway. Then he vanished behind her. Kiley shrieked, and spun around in time to see the entire staircase collapsing and taking Jack with it. “Jack!” She shouted his name, reaching for him. But the door slammed in her face.
JACK HIT THE FLOOR HARD, then curled into a protective ball as debris rained down on him. He was pummeled, his head, back, shoulders, his hands and arms where he clutched them around his face like a makeshift helmet, pounded by falling debris. He thought he heard Kiley screaming his name, but he couldn’t be sure with the roar around him. And then, suddenly, there was just silence.
Swallowing hard, Jack tried to move. It hurt when he straightened. Boards fell off his body, clattering to the floor around him. He got upright, brushed some of the dust from his shoulders and tried to take stock. His shoulder throbbed. Lower back wasn’t feeling too pleasant, either. Above him, he could hear Kiley, pounding on the door, shouting and swearing.
He cupped his hands and hollered in her direction. It took two or three tries before she heard him and stopped her own shouting to listen. “Jack?” she called.
“Yeah. I’m okay.”
“Thank God.” He lowered his head, smiling a little at the level of relief that came through in that one simple declaration. “Jack, I can’t get the door open.” But he was looking at the floor now, frowning at the way the debris had come to rest on the other side of the basement. Broken boards formed a rectangle, framing the area where he’d seen the man laying concrete. He walked over there, bending low, moving the boards away. Frowning, he looked more closely.
“Jack?”
“Just a sec!” he called.
He bent closer, noticing now the way the dust had gathered into a tiny crevice, which, like the broken boards, formed a rectangle in the floor. He brushed at the dust, running his fingers along the fissure, realizing this piece of concrete was separate from the rest, not a part of the floor, but something else.
He looked across the room then, at the forgotten tools in the corner. Spotted a crowbar. “Okay, I get it,” he said softly. “We don’t need a jackhammer.”
He heard a soft creaking sound and turned to see the cellar door swinging slowly open. On the o
ther side, Kiley stood with a baseball bat in her hands, and it was raised up as if she’d been about to pound the door with it. She blinked down at him.
He said, “Is there another way in and out of here?”
She nodded. “A hatchway door that leads outside.”
He nodded.
“You going to come out that way, Jack?”
He thinned his lips. “I’m afraid if I try, that exit will get annihilated, too. No, I think we need to dig this thing up now.”
“But—”
“The cement’s sectioned here. I think I can pry it up.”
She stared at him, then at the area around him. “What, you couldn’t just say so? You had to risk killing him?”
The lights flickered off, then on again. Jack said, “Maybe you should stop yelling at them, Kiley?”
“Fuck them. I’m coming back down. See you in a minute.”
She vanished from the doorway. Jack went to the corner to grab the crowbar, then tugged the shovel from where it was embedded in the wall and carried both back to the spot with him.
A few minutes later, Kiley arrived at his side. She had found another crowbar and knelt on the basement floor beside him. “Are you really okay?”
“Yeah. I’ll be a little sore, but nothing serious.” He was jamming the flat end of the bar into the crack, moving it back and forth. The crack grew wider with every movement.
She did what he was doing, working in the other direction, and they made their way around the entire rectangle. She said, “You have a little blood on your face.”
“A few of the boards landed on me when the stairs collapsed.”
She pursed her lips, frowning hard. He smiled at her. “It does my ego a world of good to know you care, Kiley.”
“It’s not by choice, Jack.”
The edge he was prying rose up a little. “Here, quick, get your bar over here,” he said. Kiley hurried to his side and jammed her bar underneath, helping him pry the slab of concrete upward. Jack dropped his own bar, gripping the edge with his hands, pushing and lifting. Kiley used her bar to help him, until finally they managed to overturn the slab. It hit the floor and split into several pieces.
Jack looked at Kiley and she licked her lips as if she was nervous before handing him the shovel. He eyed the dirt, began scraping it aside with the shovel blade, felt something underneath. “It’s shallow,” he said.
She nodded. “It’s cold again. Hell, Jack, I can see your breath.” She rubbed her arms. “We must be close.”
He nodded and continued scraping away the soil, revealing a square of metal, two feet by two feet.
“What is it? A box, is it some kind of box, Jack?”
He ran his hands over the thing, tracing its edges. “I feel…hinges.” He lifted his gaze to meet hers. “Jesus, Kiley, I think it’s some kind of a…a door.”
“A door?”
He nodded.
“A door to what?”
Goddamn good question. The word hell popped into his mind, but he decided not to share that with her.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“JACK, I’M AFRAID.” For once Kiley didn’t mind admitting it, as she stood there staring down into pitch-black darkness.
“Me, too.”
“I think it’s time we call the police. Don’t you?”
He shrugged. “No proof a crime’s been committed.” He glanced down into the darkness. “Though I’d bet the farm on it.”
She gripped his arm, as if she could convince him by squeezing her words into him. “Let’s at least try. If the police won’t come out here, then we’ll do it ourselves.”
He tipped his head to one side, started to speak, but then seemed to decide against it.
“Come on, Jack. We’ll call the police, we’ll do it right now.”
He nodded, so she tugged him away from that inky maw and toward the shallow concrete steps that led up out of the cellar to an angled hatchway door. She pressed her palms to it, to push it open. But it wouldn’t budge. “Hell, I know it’s not locked. I thought I left it wide open, but—” She pushed again.
Jack said, “I was afraid of something like this.”
She frowned at him, then she understood. “They won’t let us out, will they? Not even if it’s to tell their story?”
“They don’t trust us, Kiley. What’s to stop us from getting out of here and running like hell? Never looking back? God knows that’s what everyone else who’s lived here has done.”
She licked her lips, and turned slowly to face the now-open metal trapdoor in the floor. “I don’t want to go down there, Jack.”
“I know, honey. I know. Neither do I.”
“Do we even have a light?”
“Yeah.” He pulled a flashlight from somewhere. “I remembered about the lights going out before. Brought backup.”
“Good thinking.”
He drew a breath. “Stay up here, kid. As close to the hatchway door as you can.”
She shook her head. “I’m more afraid to be here alone than I am to go down there with you. We do this together.”
“If you’re sure…”
She gave a firm nod.
“Okay, then.” He put her behind him, drawing her hands to his waist just above his hips, and she knew it was because there wasn’t enough room for them to go side by side down the concrete steps that led deep into the earth. “Stay close.”
“No problem there,” she said.
He flicked on the flashlight, holding it in front of them as they moved slowly down the steep, narrow stairs. He kept his free hand over one of hers on his waist. The darkness closed in around them. She knew there was light behind her from the cellar, but without turning she couldn’t see it. And knowing it was there wasn’t nearly reassuring enough. Feeling Jack’s warmth suffusing her hand helped more. But it didn’t dispel the chill of foreboding that gripped her more thoroughly with every step. It was more than blinding darkness that surrounded her. It was physical, real. It hugged her with cold dampness. She smelled it—dank and sour. She tasted its bitter, stale, putrid air. She even heard it, containing and muffling every sound.
“God, there’s a smell.”
“I know.”
At the bottom of the stairs, the floor leveled off. Concrete, perfectly rectangular, just tall enough for an adult to walk upright, and only wide enough for one to pass through. Jack’s shoulders brushed the walls if he leaned even slightly to one side or the other. It was a concrete tunnel, with only the occasional cobweb blocking the way.
And at its end, the darkness widened.
Jack paused, shining the flashlight’s beam around. “It’s a room, I think.” He traced three walls, then examined the fourth, the one with the doorway in which they stood. “I don’t see any other exits. This is the only way in.”
“Or out,” she whispered. “Jack, do you feel that? We’re not alone.”
He pulled her up beside him, now that there was room to stand two abreast, sliding an arm around her and holding her close, even as he moved the flashlight beam around the room again, lower this time, tracing the floor from end to end. The light beam stopped when it hit the body.
Kiley yelped and turned her head into Jack’s chest. But then she forced herself to look again. Trembling, straining against her own will to turn her head once more, she looked.
The darkly stained bones and leatherlike flesh slumped against the wall. Tangled blond hair clung in patches to the skull.
“There are chains,” Jack said. “Look.”
She followed the beam of light to the manacles on the wrists and the chains mounted to the walls behind. “This is a nightmare.”
“It was for her,” Jack said.
And suddenly, the gut-wrenching, bone-numbing fear she had been feeling vanished—replaced by a wave of grief as it hit her that this scary, smelly, partially decomposed body had been a person. A woman, or even a girl. Brought down here, chained up and…
“Oh, God, there are more,” Jack said.
No.
The word was spoken, she heard it, and yet it felt as if it were not a word at all, but a feeling. A powerful emotion. She heard the trapdoor slam down, behind and above them.
“The spirits of this place aren’t ready to let us leave,” Jack whispered.
“Maybe they never will be,” Kiley said.
Jack touched her shoulders. “Don’t think that way.”
“How can I not? God, Jack, we could be trapped down here. We could die the same horrible way they did.” Pulling away from him, she started back along the tunnel, hurrying through the darkness to the stairway, and seeing just what she had expected to see. The closed door at the top. She went up, pushed at it, but nothing.
Jack was behind her, his arms around her, and she turned into them, let him hold her. Eventually she calmed enough to sink onto a step, and he handed her the flashlight and tried to open the door himself, but it was no use.
Sighing, he sank down beside her. “It’s going to be all right. Chris knows we’re here, he knows we were planning to dig.”
“You think anyone will find us if these ghosts don’t want them to?”
He sighed. “I think they do want us to be found. Just as they wanted to be found themselves. We just have to wait until they’re ready.”
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