by Blake Crouch
It was nearing 10:00 p.m. on a cold and glorious November Monday, the sky more milky, star-ridden than any night in the last three years. Loading his precious purple notebook into a small backpack, he climbed out of the car, shut the door, stepped out into the road, blending seamlessly into the dark in black jeans, hiking boots, and a chocolate-colored fleece pullover.
The night was windless, the first killing frost of the season beginning to blanch blades of grass and island shrubs. He started walking, past the mailbox, down the shadowy drive, the ceiling of live oaks and Spanish moss shielding the starry sky. Horace almost turned on the flashlight but then decided it might be prudent to arrive unannounced.
He broke out of the grove and there loomed the House of Kite—crumbling masonry and rectangles of orange windowlight embossed against the blackwater sound. Andrew Thomas had come here twice last week, presumably in search of Luther Kite. Before abandoning Ocracoke and his dream for good, Horace felt an inexplicable pull to see this manor for himself.
He crept along the perimeter of the live oak thicket until he faced the side of the house. The yard was a field of waist-high weeds. He dropped to the ground, crawled through them, the icy fingers grazing his cheeks.
The moon lifted out of the live oaks, lit the sound.
Horace scrambled to the corner of the great stone house. Rising, he palmed the granite, fuzzy with frosted fungi. Two steps and he peered through a tall and narrow window. The room was dark, empty. Bare bookshelves abounded. Embers glowed in a distant corner.
Horace crept to the other side of the stoop where he knelt finally beneath the only lighted window on the first floor.
He crouched in the sandy soil to rest.
The night aged silently.
He gazed up briefly into the stars, his breath clouding now in the damp southern chill.
When he’d caught his wind, Horace turned and faced the house.
He rose up slowly to the window ledge, stole a glance inside.
He ducked down instantly, back against the stone, replaying what he’d just seen—a living room steeped in firelight, decaying furniture, and a pale-faced man with long black hair sitting directly across from him on a couch, staring through the window into nothing.
Horace heard footsteps. He stood, peered back through the glass in time to see the long-haired man exit the living room into a foyer, where he stopped beneath a staircase. Plucking something off the wall, he reached forward, opened a little door, and stepped through into total darkness.
Two seconds later, it hit Horace between the eyes—he thought of Andrew’s manuscript, Desert Places, and his descriptions of a man with long ebony hair and a pale "baby ass-smooth" face.
Horace smiled but fear tempered the excitement—he’d found Luther Kite.
And it suddenly occurred to him.
What if Andrew had never left this island?
What if Andrew Thomas was dead along with the blond who’d been with him?
Horace sat down in the shadow of the House of Kite. For twenty minutes he watched the moon rise into the sky, mulling over whether he should do the safe thing—leave immediately and contact the police—or the ballsy thing that might make him famous.
By the time Luther reemerged from the door beneath the staircase, Horace had made his decision. From the window he watched Luther trudge upstairs. A moment later, the last light on the second floor went out. Now, aside from the dwindling firelight in the living room hearth, the house stood still and dark.
Horace came to his feet, moved quietly toward the stoop, and climbed four steps up to the door, his legs gone weak and rubbery. Regardless, he reached for the doorknob. It turned but the heavy door would not open. He leaned his weight into it, gave the wood a bump with his shoulder. It didn’t budge.
Horace walked back down into the yard and jogged through the beach grass around the side of the house, the smell of woodsmoke strong at the chimney’s base. There were no windows on the north end—just a wall of granite pushing into the sky.
The moon was high enough to set the backyard alight with its sickly-gleaming radiance. The Pamlico Sound stretched out before him, a black chasm, hugely silent and smooth as volcanic glass.
Horace proceeded toward a stone porch with a jaw-dropping view of the sound, climbed several steps to the back door, and looked through screen and glass into a kitchen.
He pulled on the screen door. It opened. He tried the next door knob and though it wouldn’t turn, the inner door appeared not to have been soundly closed.
He thrust his shoulder against the door.
It jarred open.
Horace stepped into the kitchen and carefully shut the door behind him.
There didn’t appear to be a single light in operation in the entire house.
Nor was there any sound.
The kitchen reeked of raw fish and vinegar.
Horace inched forward. The splitting linoleum creaked.
Three more steps and he reached the intersection of two hallways, one leading to the front door, the other running the whole of the first floor into a room whose only light source emanated from the weak brown glow of those dying embers he’d glimpsed from outside.
Horace crept across a dusty hardwood floor, through the corridor that led past the staircase into the foyer.
Something popped.
Horace flinched.
It was just the fire, feeding off pockets of sap in the logs.
He entered the living room and stood before the hearth, basking his hands in the rising heat. Shadows flickered in delicate motion on the walls and ceiling. Flames hissed softly. Even through the woodsmoke he could smell the age and neglect of this ancient house.
Horace turned and let the fire warm his back, staring through the long room at the staircase. The itch of curiosity dragged him toward the foyer, away from the heat and light and sound.
He found himself standing in the darkness under the stairs, facing a locked door, the top of which came only to his eyes. From his pocket he took the flashlight. Its beam revealed a deadbolt in the door.
I saw Luther take something off this wall.
Horace shined the flashlight around the perimeter of the door. To the right of the doorframe, a shiny key hung from a nail.
He jammed it into the deadbolt.
The door swung inward and a cold dank draft swept up out of the darkness and enveloped him.
He smelled stone and water, mold and earth, as though he stood at the entrance to a cave. Though he’d yet to cut the darkness with his flashlight, there was no question in his mind that this door led to someplace underneath the House of Kite.
And the hair on his arms stood erect and some primal siren sounded in his brain, but mistaking terror for adrenaline, he walked down into the darkness because he’d never felt more alive.
54
HORACE kept the beam of the flashlight trained on the rickety steps. They creaked as though God Himself were standing on them—twenty-two in all—and it grew colder the farther down he went so that his breath was pluming again by the time he reached the bottom, a dusty vapor in the lightbeam.
At last Horace stood on a dirt floor.
He shined the flashlight back up the staircase. The door at the top felt miles away.
The basement lay in pure silence and blackness. Horace imagined sitting at a table in the Ocracoke Coffee Company the following morning, near a window with the early sun streaming in. He would write this scene over coffee. It would be amazing. It would be safe.
Horace swiped the beam in a slow circle to gain his bearings.
What he saw unnerved him—doorways into nothing, stone passageways, shoddy wiring snaking up the walls. He shivered, stepped back from the steps, and shined the flashlight down the widest passageway, one that ran behind the staircase into seemingly infinite darkness.
It occurred to him that a person would have to be mad to enter that tunnel, and for a moment, he strongly considered heading back up the steps, through the kitchen,
into the moonlit yard. The comfort of his bed at the Harper Castle B&B seemed more enticing than ever but he steeled himself, gripped the flashlight, and proceeded into the passageway.
He progressed slowly, letting the beam graze every surface.
The corridor appeared to narrow the deeper he went.
Horace passed a doorway, shined a light through it. In the brief illumination, he glimpsed a big oak chair in the throes of construction, dripping with wires and leather restraints.
He lost his breath, leaned against the wall to get it back.
When the sound of his own panting subsided, he listened.
Water dripped somewhere in the distance, beyond the ellipse of light.
He heard something move behind him, spun around with the flashlight.
There was nothing there but the sound repeated.
When the beam hit the floor he saw the fat rat sitting on its haunches staring at him, eyes glowing like luminescent beads.
It scampered back toward the stairs and Horace moved on in the opposite direction, the passageway now turning and branching and turning again, passing through alcoves and various rooms—one with a low ceiling, filled with empty wine racks, another with the burned and splintered remains of a bed frame. There lingered a foreboding, a dread attending these rooms and tunnels. Horace could feel it. Awful things had happened here.
He approached yet another corner, disorientation setting in. The basement seemed to extend beyond the boundaries of the house and he doubted whether he could readily find his way back to the stairs.
At the corner he stopped, shined his flashlight through the next fifteen feet of passageway.
An icy drop of water splashed in his hair.
He glanced up.
Another landed on his nose.
Horace wiped his face, moved on.
A moment later he arrived at a fork in the passageway.
He stopped, looked back in the direction he’d come, trying to recall the turns he’d taken, resolved now to find his way back to the stairs and leave this place.
He heard something, turned, now facing the two tunnels, sound coming from the one on the left, and not the scratchy footsteps of a rat or dripping water.
As Horace illuminated the tunnel, he wondered if the beam had weakened. It seemed softer, less focused.
He ventured in.
This corridor ran straight and narrow, the sound louder now, a metallic clink-clink-clink.
The beam of light revealed a wide doorway ten feet ahead on the right.
The clink seemed to originate from there.
Horace killed the light and approached in darkness, dragging his hand along the stone so he’d know when he reached the doorway.
He soon felt the break in the wall.
The clinking stopped.
He stepped through the threshold, thinking, Maybe I imagined it.
His foot hit something.
Movement below him.
Chains rattling against stone.
He turned on the flashlight.
The beam lit the horrified faces of two women and Andrew Thomas, each manacled and chained to an iron ring in the center of the floor.
They looked vanquished—faces filthy and bruised, streaked with dried blood. But they were shivering and very much alive.
Horace stepped back in shock, a tentative smile parting his lips.
Rich, hero, famous, author—
Andrew Thomas said, "Who are you?"
Horace put a finger to his lips, knelt at the captives’ feet, whispered, "My name is Horace Boone, and I’m here to get you out."
One of the women started crying.
The other asked, "Are you FBI?"
Horace shook his head.
"You look familiar," Andrew said.
"I followed you from Haines Junction."
Horace shined the light on the manacles that bound Andrew’s wrists.
"You followed me? How did you find me in the first—"
"Let’s talk about that when we’re safe. Now I don’t know how to get these things off."
He tapped the stainless steel manacles.
The woman who was crying said, "I pulled my hand through one of them, but I can’t get the other out."
"Horace," Andrew said, "we’ve been hearing a lot of hammering and sawing nearby. Go see if you can find an ax or something."
Horace remembered passing the room with the oak chair. He’d seen tools scattered all over the floor.
"What time is it?" asked a quiet beaten voice.
Horace shined the light into the face of the little blond he’d seen with Andrew. "Not even midnight," he said. "We’ve got time."
55
THE joy, the giddiness, the aching hope consumed him. Horace Boone ran through the tunnels in search of the room with the oak chair, knowing that he should be afraid, though excitement overwhelmed what little fear there was.
He emerged from the labyrinth on the opposite side of the staircase from which he’d entered just ten minutes ago, and plunging back into that wide passageway, soon found himself standing at the entrance to the little room with the oak chair.
He shined his failing flashlight across the floor. There were hammers, wrenches, pliers, piles of nails and screws. Stepping inside, he saw what he was looking for—a hacksaw lying on a sheet of copper.
He grabbed it and headed back toward the staircase, attempting to retrace his steps to Andrew Thomas and the women.
The light went out.
Sheer darkness.
Horace knocked it against the stone. The light came back weaker.
He moved on through the twisting tunnels, taking only one wrong turn before arriving at the alcove.
"What’d you find?" Andrew whispered.
"Hacksaw."
"Since Beth already has one hand free, cut her chain first."
"Hold this steady."
Horace put the flashlight in Andrew’s hands. Then he walked over and took hold of the chain that linked Beth’s manacles to the iron ring.
"Lean back," he whispered. "You got to pull it tight."
Beth pulled the chain and Horace set the blade of the hacksaw against the metal.
"Andrew," he said, poised to begin sawing, "would you grant me an exclusive interview when we get out of this?"
The second he asked, he felt dirty, and wished he hadn’t.
"You get us out of this, I’ll father your children."
Horace began to saw.
It was awkward at first, the chain moving so much the blade kept slipping. But once it had begun a groove in the link, the blade moved through the metal like it was rotten pine. He’d cut the first link in less than two minutes, but as he started into the next one the light died again.
"Piece of shit."
"That beam was pretty weak," Andrew said. "Might not come back on."
"I put fresh batteries in this afternoon."
Andrew flicked the on-off switch several times and the light returned, just a faint orange glow, but adequate to work by.
Horace attacked the final link.
When the chain severed, Beth fell back into the wall, a manacle still attached to her left wrist.
"Who’s next?" Horace asked.
"Do him," said the little blond.
Horace handed the flashlight to Beth, told her, "Aim it here."
Andrew leaned back, pulled the chain taut.
Horace drew the blade slowly against the metal until he could feel a groove deepening. Then he sawed like mad, the friction of the blade on the chain filling the alcove with metallic screaming and the odor of heated steel.
He made it through the first link in less than a minute and had started into the second one when the blond whispered, "Wait!"
Horace stopped sawing.
They listened.
A creaking emanated from somewhere in the basement.
"What is that?" Beth asked.
Horace felt a tremor sweep through him.
"Someone’s coming
down the steps," he said.
As he reached for the flashlight it went out.
"Fuckin’ kidding me."
Horace grabbed the flashlight, flicked the on-off button, and when nothing happened, smashed it into the stone. He heard the batteries fall out and roll across the floor.
Andrew said, "Horace, you have to leave and hide. Beth?"
"I’m right here."
They were nothing now but whispers in the dark.
"Get back down on the floor and hold your hands like you’re still chained."
"Who do you think is coming?" Horace whispered.
"Doesn’t matter," Andrew said. "They’re all psychopaths. Now go and take the hacksaw with you so they don’t see it."
The creaking had stopped.
Horace reached forward, felt the side of the wall, and stepped into the passageway. There wasn’t even the subtlest inference of light. Horace groped for the wall, found it, and crept away from the alcove, away from the stairs, staying close to the left side of the tunnel.
After ten steps the wall ended.
Reaching around he found that he could palm both sides of it.
He stood at the fork in the corridor.
Gazing back through swimming darkness toward the alcove, his eyes played tricks on him, firing phantom bursts of light.
The silence roared.
He strained to listen, thought he heard things—voices, footsteps—but it might’ve been his own heartbeat hammering against his eardrum.
When he saw the lanternlight on the stone he doubted his eyes. But the shadows were real, as was the sound of shuffling footsteps, and then the silhouette of a crooked old woman emerging from around a bend in the tunnel.
Horace slipped back into the adjacent corridor.
The voice he heard was soft, sweet, and utterly disarming.
"Rufus and I heard something. Ya’ll wanna go ahead and tell me what it was?"
"We haven’t heard anything," Andrew responded.
"No?"
The old woman laughed. Horace peeked around the corner, saw her standing in robe and slippers in the threshold of the alcove, firelight from the lantern playing on her deeply wrinkled face.
"Well that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all year, because the door under the stairs was open. How do you think that happened?"