by Mia Sheridan
It was the school. This damn house where an oppressive feeling of doom suffocated them. The way she felt both lost in time and utterly aware of every tick of the clock.
The way screams sometimes echoed from the floors below, and then one of the girls would be missing from class for the next few days. She wanted to ask them about it, to get their account, but socializing with anyone other than your roommate—or in her case roommates—was not facilitated. Somehow it was all the more horrifying to let your own mind wander as to what was happening in rooms beyond your own. She wondered if Ms. Wykes knew that and figured she must. Everything here was calculated.
“What happened to you?” Aurora asked quietly, her words mumbled around a mouth of toothpaste.
Kandace looked at her in the mirror in front of where they were both brushing their teeth at the large farmhouse sink in their shared bathroom and then followed her gaze to her arm where there were several small, round bruises.
For a moment she frowned in confusion, but then she remembered the kid grabbing her arm as he’d pulled her from the forest. She hadn’t thought it’d been with enough strength to cause bruising, but obviously it had been. She wasn’t going to mention the kid to Aurora though. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust her. It wasn’t that she did either, it was just that she wasn’t going to risk getting the boy in trouble after he’d put himself on the line to help her.
“I was late to class yesterday. One of those old bitches pulled me into the room like I’d personally insulted her with my tardiness.”
Aurora’s eyes widened and she glanced behind her in the mirror nervously as if one of those “old bitches” might walk in unexpectedly at any moment. God, everyone walked on eggshells around here. She was beginning to as well. The rigorous academics, hours of Bible study, the rigid schedule, strange sounds in the walls, secret, forgotten children living in the basement, and of course those screams. She felt like she was walking through a different life, one she had no compass for, one in which every step felt precarious and uncertain.
“Play by the rules, okay, Kandace?” Aurora said, leaning over to rinse her mouth. When she stood, she laid her hand gently on the fingerprints on Kandace’s arm. “I don’t want to see anything bad happen to you. Let’s do whatever we have to do to get out of here.”
She offered Aurora a weak smile. God, she had a headache. Those damn dreams. She really hadn’t slept well at all. “I will, I promise,” she lied. Because while she realized doing anything other than “playing by the rules” was risky, her curiosity was spurring her to learn more. Whatever she could. She did plan on getting out of there, but she’d also like to send a whole team of law enforcement officers back. Those who would expose Lilith House and all its dirty secrets.
All three girls dressed in their uniforms and left the room together, headed for their first class. As they stepped down onto the first floor, bells began clanging.
“Holy fuck,” Kandace swore softly.
“Line up, girls,” one of the teachers said loudly from somewhere up ahead.
“Fire alarm,” Sydney said, a worried line forming between her eyes. The small group of girls in front of them started moving toward the front exit.
“There’s been a grease fire in the kitchen,” the teacher ahead explained. “We have it under control, but the fire department is on the way nonetheless. Single file, girls. No need to panic.”
Kandace took hold of Aurora’s arm and tugged at her gently. Her roommate gave her an astonished glance and shook her head. Please, Kandace mouthed.
The girl glanced in front of her, but the staff members were all around the corner, only the group of girls they’d come down the stairs with shuffled ahead of them, those at the front of the line rounding the corner toward the front door. “Cover for me,” she whispered when Aurora widened her eyes in question. “Please.” She didn’t give the girl time to agree or disagree, turning and rounding the corner behind them, hurrying toward the back hall and those basement steps that led to the rooms below.
This time, however, the door was locked. “Dammit,” Kandace swore, reaching up and taking the pin that held her bangs back out of her hair. The hum of voices grew dimmer as did the retreating footsteps. Kandace wiggled the pin in the lock, letting out a frustrated breath when it slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor.
A lone set of footsteps suddenly sounded on the hardwood, drawing nearer. “Is everyone out?” a voice called. Ms. West, she thought, but she couldn’t be sure. A swooshing sound filled her head and that damn headache still throbbed. Kandace glanced around desperately, but there was nowhere to hide, only a long empty hallway in front of her. She dropped the pin again, the small dark object disappearing onto the dark mahogany floors. “Hello? Anyone?” the voice called. “There’s been a fire. All students must gather out front.” Kandace dropped to her knees and grappled blindly for the pin, the feel of the small tool meeting her fingertips. She grasped it and stood quickly, sticking it in the lock.
You can do it, you can do it.
With a very small click, the lock disengaged. Kandace grimaced as she opened the door as slowly as she dared, only one tiny squeak emerging. She prayed whoever was coming hadn’t heard it, or that it had been disguised beneath her own clicking footsteps.
She slipped through the crack of the door and pulled it closed quickly behind her, engaging the lock from the other side.
As Kandace stood stock-still just like she’d done the first time she was behind this particular door, the footsteps moved past, not stopping. She let out a long, slow breath and headed down the steps.
When she reached the bottom, this time she didn’t linger. She headed straight through the piled furniture and boxes, rounding the corner into the dim hallway beyond.
The first room was empty as was the second room. As she approached the open doorway of the third, she heard the very distant sound of fire engines approaching Lilith House. Please let the arrival of the trucks cause enough distraction that I’m not missed.
In the last room, the three children sat together on the bed. Dreamboat was sitting with his back against the wall, the girl—Georgia—was at the end, and another boy was sitting on the right edge. All three of them looked up as she appeared, their eyes growing wide with surprise.
“What are you doing here?” Dreamboat asked, setting down the hefty-looking book in his hands. A Bible. He’d been reading to them from the Bible.
“There’s a fire,” Kandace said. “Did anyone tell you?”
The girl’s crooked mouth set in as thin a line as it could being that her lips didn’t—couldn’t—meet. “We already have a caretaker,” she said. “You should go.” Well. Wasn’t she a pleasant little thing? Kandace identified, but it didn’t mean she appreciated the nasty attitude directed straight at her.
Even so, she couldn’t help feeling some pity for the girl. Despite the unlucky hand Kandace had been dealt in some respects, she’d always had a pretty face. And she hadn’t hesitated using it to her advantage. This girl didn’t even have that.
Kandace narrowed her eyes at the girl briefly just to show her she didn’t care for her, shifting her attention to the other boy sitting on the edge of the bed. “Hi, I’m Kandace.”
“Mason,” he murmured, his shoulders curling slightly as he looked down.
Kandace looked at Dreamboat. “What if there’s a serious fire? You’re just supposed to stay down here?”
He shrugged. “Ms. West would make sure we got out. It’s not like we’re locked in here.” Still . . . if something happened to the school—if a fire really erupted and burned the place to ash—where would they go? She had a feeling that at least on paper, these kids didn’t exist.
“Where’s Ms. West now?”
“She had a class upstairs. She used the intercom to tell us what was happening.” He nodded to an ancient-looking receiver on the wall—one of those antique intercom systems that had once been used to summon servants. So these kids weren’t even considered
important enough to leave the premises during a kitchen fire? Her own problems, her own grievances with life, the fact that she felt invisible to her mother unless she was disappointing her, suddenly seemed sort of . . . pathetic.
“You’re just supposed to stay out of sight?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you ever left Lilith House?”
The three of them glanced back and forth between each other. “No,” Dreamboat finally said.
God. They’d spent their lives in these three, small basement rooms? Kandace studied the teens for a few seconds. She needed to find out more about them. Because when she left, she might not have proof that the people who ran this school were batty as shit. Maybe no one would believe a word she said about her own experience. But maybe, if she produced some evidence about these children, they’d do something about the fact that three kids had been hidden away from the world, outcasts through no fault of their own. And yet, they seemed to simply . . . accept that this was normal. To them, it is. They weren’t asking for help. They were just existing. Are they allowed to see the sunshine? Or do they always have to sneak? Too weird. So wrong.
The girl—Georgia—stood. “I’m not sure why you’re down here. We’re not your business.”
Dreamboat rose to his feet. “She’s just being nice, Georgie.” He squeezed Georgia’s shoulder as he walked past her. Georgia’s eyes softened and her hand went immediately to the place he’d just touched. When Kandace moved her gaze to the other boy, he was watching Georgia as well, only his expression was sad, sullen, as though he’d noticed her reaction to Dreamboat and it caused him a measure of heartbreak.
Huh. Interesting. There was a little love triangle going on down here. A soap opera playing out between three abandoned teens in the basement beneath Lilith House. Oh, the pitiful angst. Especially considering love triangles never ended well.
“You really shouldn’t have risked coming down here again,” the kid said, leading her out of the room.
“I was concerned about you.”
He looked briefly confused, as though he didn’t know what to make of the idea that anyone would be concerned about them.
They walked to the back of the basement, turning where she remembered the hidden door was.
He began to reach for it. “Can I ask you a question?” she said.
He paused, his hand dropping momentarily. “Sure,” he answered warily.
“Do you have any idea who your mothers were? Their names? Anything?”
He shook his head just as noise sounded from upstairs. Footsteps, voices. Damn. It sounded like the girls were heading back into the school to return to class. If she hurried up the ladder in the wall, came out in that empty corner on the top floor, she just might make it back down again in time. The kid pulled the hidden door open and Kandace crawled inside.
She turned back to him. “Hey, Dreamboat, that girl, Georgia, is she trustworthy?”
The boy paused, but then nodded. “She’ll do what I tell her to do. She won’t say a word about you.”
Kandace recalled the way she’d looked after he’d touched her so briefly. Yeah, Kandace could believe she’d do whatever this little dreamboat told her to do. She started to climb but then paused again. If she was going to find out more about these three, she needed to know as much about them as possible.
She had a feeling they were the key to bringing this place down.
She’d enjoyed the blush on his face every time she teased him with the nickname, but it wouldn’t be enough if she hoped to uncover more information. “What’s your real name, Dreamboat?”
His eyes moved away and then back. “Camden.”
“Camden what?”
He shook his head, eyes lowering. “Just Camden.”
Then he shut the door behind her and she heard him walking away.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Camden knocked loudly on the front door, hoping his own pounding could be heard over the steady bang of hammers from within. After a few minutes of no answer, he tried the door, leaning inside. “Hello?” he called, stepping into the foyer of Lilith House.
A handyman who often worked for Mason stepped around the corner, gripping a crowbar in his hand. “Hey, Cam.”
“Hey, Kenneth. I’m looking for Ms. Lattimore.”
The man pulled a bandana out of his back pocket and wiped the perspiration off his forehead. “She left about an hour ago. Asked if there were any bodies of water nearby. I heard Mason mention Hermosa Creek.”
“With her daughter?”
“I think the daughter’s with her sitter in town.”
“Is Mason still here?” he asked. He hadn’t seen his truck out front, but maybe he’d ridden with one of his team.
“Nah. He left right after Ms. Lattimore.”
Camden pressed his lips together, that disquiet that had been his constant companion since they’d fought in Mason’s office the week before gripping him tightly.
“Thanks, Kenneth.”
Kenneth gave him a small salute and Camden exited the house, heading for the path that led to the shallow creek about a quarter mile from the house. Hell, at this time of year, it might not just be shallow, it may have dried up completely. But if she hadn’t returned to the house yet, maybe she’d found something worth lingering for.
She’s not your responsibility, yet here you are. He’d promised himself he’d stop checking on her. And he would.
He swore beneath his breath, even while his feet kept moving down the dusty, dirt road that his young legs had traveled so many times when it’d been safe for him to sneak away for an hour or two.
He’d heard it said that some roads steal your time, some steal your comfort, and some steal your heart. Where had he read it? He couldn’t remember, but it had stayed with him the way quotes sometimes do. He’d thought of it that first day he’d made the winding drive that led back to Lilith House. He’d pondered on the question of what else the road that took him back to the place of his birth could possibly steal from him when it’d already taken those things. Nothing, he’d thought. There’s nothing more Lilith House can take from you. Now it was his turn to retrieve what he could. Until the other night, it had been thirteen years since he’d been in that basement. And the darkness . . . the damp smell . . . the familiar creaks of the house . . . it brought back too many memories. Conjured up the echoes of the screams from above, ones he could do nothing about. Strengthened his resolve to own those ghosts . . . that pain.
As he moved quietly through the forest, he heard the soft trickle of water up ahead. It drew him as that same sound drew all creatures, great and small. Life. He could smell the clean sweetness of it before it even met his eyes.
When he stepped through the trees, he stopped short, his ribcage tightening and his breath falling short. There she was, her skirt drawn up her legs, her feet submerged in the clear, shallow stream, her hands behind her on the ground and her face tilted toward the sun.
Something wild and ancient inside him responded. He didn’t know exactly what it was. Instinct? Some primal law of attraction? Whatever it was, it was simply part of nature’s order. Cam had studied math and English and science—Ms. West, the woman who’d eventually shared her name, had been an excellent tutor—but he’d also made nature part of his education by spending every second he could in the woods beyond the school, the only place where his soul felt truly free. The only place he’d ever felt he mattered. Not to any one person, but maybe just to some . . . system, or plan that was bigger—loftier—than the small world he’d been relegated to for his whole life up to that point.
What are you thinking?
I was thinking that I like that idea . . . that everyone who’s here is here to serve a purpose.
Their conversation came back to him. She’d put into words the things he’d felt—yearned so desperately to believe about himself—when speaking about her daughter, and it’d filled him with a wild hope, lit a small fire in his belly. It’d also caused turmoil, uncertainty,
because it didn’t align with his well-laid plans. It went in opposition.
He drank her in, his eyes moving over the feminine lines of her body, her profile lifted to the sky. He’d meant what he said to Scarlett about the nestling—though he was pretty sure she knew as well as he did that he’d also been referring to himself—those primal responses determined by nature could not be avoided, nor changed. They simply were. That part he couldn’t fight, even if he tried.
Scarlett lowered her head slowly, her eyes opening and meeting his gaze. She startled slightly, sitting up straight and bringing her hand to her chest. “You’ve really gotta stop doing that,” she said on a small laugh.
“Sorry,” he murmured, stepping out of the trees and walking to the other side of the stream from which she sat facing him. He could have taken three steps and walked across it, but instead he sat down on a large rock next to him, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “One of the guys working at Lilith House said you were headed this way.” He squinted at the crystal-clear water rolling steadily over the rocks in its bed.
“Yeah?” she asked, eyeing him, obviously questioning why he’d decided to come in search of her through the woods.
What reason did he have? I’m drawn to you. I can’t seem to stay away. I think about you far more than I should. Those were all true, but he couldn’t tell her that. Wasn’t ready or willing to admit any such thing. He’d admitted far too much already. He needed to be drawing away, and instead, he was seeking her out. “I, uh”—he reached forward and scooped up some water, drank it from his cupped hand—“was really thirsty.” He gave her a wry smile, hoping his humor had worked to deflect her question.
She laughed. “Seems like you could have quenched your thirst in any number of more convenient ways.”
He squinted off behind her, smiling. “More convenient, but not half as refreshing. There’s nothing quite like flowing stream water.”
She eyed him, acquiescing with a smile. “You are correct there. I tasted it. It is indeed refreshing,” she teased.