Alone

by Holly Hook

  “Are you kidding?” Travis says. “Look up.”

  We do.

  There's no light bulb. It's been taken out.

  “What the hell?” I ask. I search the room. There's not even a lamp. This isn't right. I remember seeing one last time we Skyped, a bright one glowing behind her. I never got a view of her bed or the window and I can see why. She didn't want me to see this. She angled her computer away from the worst of it. Talia was so embarrassed about her situation that she wouldn't even tell me.

  I want to kill Lily Abner. I go to turn her computer on, but there's nothing. A check confirms that all the wires to the computer have been taken. The police wouldn't have removed those—they're useless. The only explanation is that Lily Abner took them away along with the lamp. It's as if she wanted to seal Talia in darkness for some reason.

  “Wow,” Shawn says, turning in to take in the whole room. “This is like that show I saw one time where those sick parents kept their daughter in a closet for years and only let her out to do the housework.”

  “Talia was able to come out and go to the movies with us,” I say. “It's like Lily wanted her cut off from the world right before she vanished.” I feel sick, like I'm going to throw up. Why leave her with no lights? Why unplug the computer and leave her in the dark—literally? Maybe this happened after she left. It's my hope.

  Or what if her foster mom was into torture?

  “I don't see Talia's phone anywhere,” Shawn says, searching the desk. He opens the drawers. “There's nothing but a thumb drive in here.”

  “I'll take it,” I say, tucking it into my backpack. “Maybe she wrote something on it about Lily that we can give to the police. Now I think we should get out of here before someone manages to come in here and find us.”

  “Do you hear that?” Travis asks.

  I silence.

  The skittering has returned, as if an thousand tiny men are running through the walls. I hate that noise. No wonder Talia spent so much time telling me how much she hated this house.

  The noise surges through the wall next to us, then stops.

  “That is not right,” I say. “What's going on in here? If those are mice, there would be mouse crap all over the floor. It would stink in here. Either they're the most clean mice I've ever heard of, or this house is really, really screwed up.” My voice shakes and I don't care. I want Shawn to say that it's time to go so we can hop back in his car and leave this place forever. I can look at Talia's thumb drive at home. It's not like she has anything here to go through, except for her clothes which still sit inside her suitcase. She doesn't even have the dignity of a closet door. The alcove sits there, empty with the doors taken off.

  And there's an opening on the bottom of her wall, like a classic mouse hole from a cartoon.

  “There,” I say, pointing. “Those things or whatever must live in there. Why didn't Talia ever plug that up or something?”

  “Whoa,” Travis says. He heads into the closet and gets on his knees to look inside.

  “What if there are rats?” I ask. “There could be. This place is gross enough. I hear they carry diseases.”

  “This hole isn't quite big enough,” Travis says. “I'm sure it's just mice.”

  There's one lone set of feet pattering right above our heads, and then silence.

  “This smells weird,” Travis says, almost sticking his nose in the opening. “Like it's all cold and damp in there. It's not what I expected a house to smell like. Even one as crappy as this.”

  “I don't care if it smells like pizza with pineapples,” I say. “We need to leave. I have the thumb drive. It's the only evidence we've found.”

  “No,” Travis says. He looks up at us. “I think this is something else. There's a draft coming out of here. It's almost like there's some big space down here or something. Or a tunnel that leads to a big space. You know what it reminds me of? That cave that I visited in Kentucky that one time. My family went there once. This smells the same.”

  “Maybe this house has a basement,” I say. “I'm sure the smell is coming form there, and there's a mouse colony down there and they're having all sorts of fun making baby mice from the sounds of this place.”

  “I agree,” Shawn says. “But we might as well check the basement while we're here. It doesn’t hurt.”

  My stomach turns. The basement. What's going to be in there?

  But as much as I hate the thought, we need to do it.

  Shawn keeps my hand in his and I put my backpack back on. Thankfully, it's light without all the homework inside. I open one of the doors, which leads to another dusty bedroom that must belong to Lily. It's in better shape than Talia's—much better shape. There's no board on the window and the walls appear to be free of holes. There aren't even any funny smells in here. There's a cabinet for clothes and nothing else. A lamp waits on a bedside table. Lily's kept all the lighting for herself. I hate her.

  The basement.

  I gulp.

  “Lily's gone. If there was anything really horrible in the basement, the police would have found it already,” Shawn tells me. He must sense my nerves. “We'll take a peek and we'll leave. Then we go to your place and check out whatever's on that thumb drive. That should be safe.”

  I listen for any more weird noises, but they're gone, at least. I check the hallway. There are no more doors except for the bathroom. This house is fairly small. We come back out into the living room. There's nothing here but the front door and a small closet. Then, we're back in the kitchen. The one swinging door leads to the laundry room, but there's nothing else.

  “This house doesn't have a basement,” I say. “Travis, where did that drafty smell come from, then?”

  Travis shrugs. “Maybe this house has a cellar. It smelled like dirt and moisture in that wall. I swear. None of this is making any sense.”

  “Then what if there's a secret room in this house?” I ask. My terror grows with each word I speak. There could be, especially in a place like this. What if Lily tied Talia up and is hiding her in that secret room? We can't leave without checking. Talia could be dead already if that's the case. How long can a person go without water? Talia could be trapped without any and they arrested Lily just a couple of days ago. She might even be screaming at us right now to come down and untie her.

  “That's a very good question,” Travis says. He scans the area. “I don't see anything except for a panel back here for the water heater. At least, I think this goes to the water heater.”

  He's right. There's one nailed to the wall, just like in our house. “It's worth a shot,” I say. “I just want to make extra sure before we leave that she's not here somewhere. After this, we need to check outside for any cellars, too.” The thought of her trapped is even worse than how many mice could be living in these walls.

  “We need to find a screwdriver,” Travis says, running his hands along the panel. He taps on it. “It sounds hollow to me. There's empty space behind it.”

  I open the kitchen cabinets. There's nothing. This place hardly even has any food. Why on earth would Lily Abner want a foster child, anyway, if she can't even feed herself?

  “There might be something out in the yard,” Shawn suggests. “I can just go out the back door here and look. Or do you still have that crowbar looking thing?”

  Travis holds up a finger. “Good idea.” He opens the back door, steps out onto the back deck, and retrieves it. “I hate to vandalize this place.”

  “I hate to potentially lave my best friend here to die of thirst.” I feel bad that I'm putting this on him because it's probably nothing, but I'm not going to leave her here. I won't.

  Travis positions the bar and yanks. The board gives way and cracks. It's nothing but cheap plywood. It's flimsy and the cops likely haven't thought to look behind it.

  Then it breaks and Travis falls back into the wall, ramming his shoulder up against it. He curses. “This worked a little better than I thought,” he says. “Let me do this a few more times.” He pe
eks into the hole. “Yeah. It's a water heater.” But then he looks close and his mouth falls open. “Something's really weird here.”

  Shawn and I cram in next to him. My heart pounds. I try to peek into the foot-wide opening he's created, but it's too dark to see past the narrow metal cylinder. There's a strange smell and a draft blowing in my face. It's earthy. Stony. Cold. Is it just me, or is the water heater lying up against the wall like it's not even attached to the pipes in the house?

  “Let me get out my phone,” Shawn says, doing so and turning on his flashlight app. I back away and he shines it in.

  I gasp.

  The water heater's there, all right--and behind it, there's a large hole in the wall that opens into pure darkness. It's big enough for a person to walk through if they can squeeze past the metal cylinder. I breathe in. It does smell the way I'd imagine the inside of a cave to.

  “What is that?” I ask, heart leaping.

  “I think you're right about the secret room theory,” Shawn says, pulling me closer to him. “We might have to check that out. If you want to stay up here in the kitchen while Travis and I go down there, I understand.”

  “But it's a hole,” I say. “Talia!”

  Nothing. Then, my voice echoes back at me, small and scared.

  Something about standing at the edge of this hole makes me shudder. It could be anything—anything at all—down there.

  “Talia!” I call again.

  Talia, my voice echoes.

  “Marco!” Travis shouts.

  “This isn't funny,” I say as his voice echoes back at him. “This is downright creepy. It sounds like there's a lot of empty space down there. What if this house is built over one of those thousand foot deep sinkholes that people find under their floors?”

  “You read too many of those weird Facebook articles,” Travis says. “I think we should take a peek. And by the way, I didn't hear 'Polo.'”

  Travis angles his phone to look at the bottom of the hole. He reaches out and pushes the water heater out of the way. I'm right that it's not attached to the pipes or anything. It's here to hide the hole. The police have missed this.

  And there are stairs.

  They're made of stone and they spiral down into the earth. This hole is a narrow stairwell. The wall back here is dirt, packed tight. The smell of it is overwhelming. I wonder if this is what a grave smells like. This could be a grave. I have to get ready for that and I'm not sure if I can.

  Shawn’s grip tightens on my arm. “I think someone just pulled in the driveway,” he says.

  Then I hear it. The sound of a motor, purring right outside the house.

  Travis curses and we rush into the living room. The curtains are open just a tiny bit. It’s just enough to let us see a rusty black car sitting in the driveway. There are two figures inside. The engine turns off.

  “I think it’s the landlord,” I say, glad that we've left the lights off. “Talia said something about this house being rented to some guy. We’ve gotta go.” The back yard is enclosed in a fence. We'll have to get over it. How are we going to get out of here before they see us? There’s the back door, but we still need to circle around the yard.

  Shawn pulls me into the kitchen. “Worst case scenario, we can tackle those guys,” he says.

  The man gets out. He's an old guy in a leather jacket. His face is pointed like a shark's and he even has an overbite. There’s something on his hip that I see as he adjusts his jacket. A pistol.

  Travis curses. “That's out, man.”

  The old man walks faster than I expect. Around the house and to the side. He’s heading for the back yard and he's drawing his weapon, ready. He's coming around to the back. Did someone call him? Someone must have seen us heading back here. There's no other explanation.

  “We can't go out that way,” Shawn says, looking at the back door. “The fr--”

  A second man climbs out of the car. He's heavyset and bald. He reaches for something on his hip. That makes both of them armed.

  And he's waddling towards the front door.

  We're trapped.

  There's only one thing left to do.

  Chapter Two

  Escape

  Travis pulls the water heater away from the hole. It's even darker inside now.

  I have to go in there. God.

  Shawn pulls me towards it. “In,” he says. “I'll go first.”

  The knob to the front door rattles. The fat man is unlocking it.

  Shawn slides past the water heater, barely fitting. At least the fat man won’t be able to get through here without pulling the broken heater all the way out, but the skinny one—yikes.

  I slide after him. The water heater is cold. It’s never been used as far as I know. Travis squeezes in as well and lets the water heater fall back to the middle. Darkness closes in as he slides the panel back into place. It's still cracked around the edge. They're going to notice. We're putting off the inevitable. And those mice. They might still be in here, ready to swarm us. I hold my breath, one foot on tile and another on the first step. Shawn's already in the stairwell.

  “Go,” Travis whispers.

  Shawn takes my hand. I bite in a scream. He pulls me away from the water heater and I enter the stairwell. This must lead down to some other chamber. The smell is damp, earthy, stony. There’s moisture. I can almost hear it dripping. I tiptoe down one step, then another. My shoulder brushes dirt and some of it crumbles. What if this caves in? We leave the water heater behind and I reach out, scraping soil. Some lodges under my fingernails. We’re underground. Spiraling down. Footsteps sound from above us and I tiptoe faster, almost falling into Shawn. The two men are in the house.

  “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” Travis says, coming up behind us. He crashes into me.

  “Stop pushing,” Shawn says. He pulls my arm.

  “How far down does this go?” I whisper. “Can someone turn on a light?”

  “Not yet,” Shawn says. “They might see it if they take off the panel. I think this goes down a long way.”

  There's a muffled shout from above. “Larconi!”

  They've spotted the damage.

  There's another set of steps, this one fast and on alert. Dirt crumbles and lands on my head.

  “Hurry.” Travis shoves me into Shawn.

  “Hey!” he says.

  “I need to be able to breathe,” I manage.

  Another step down.

  And another. Our shoes make slapping noises on the stone of the stairs. I just wish I could see. Travis's hot breath blows on my hair. Shawn's pulse matches mine as he squeezes my hand. We've already gone down at least two dozen steps. I count them. It's more to calm myself than anything else. One...two...four...six...seven...

  We spiral down, down, down. Darkness. Earth. Cold. Fourteen. Seventeen. Doesn't that make for a total of forty steps in the ground or something? I'm losing count. We should have passed three basements stacked on top of each other by now. I keep my hand linked in Shawn's. I'm smashed between him and Travis. We don't dare speak. I stumble and reach out and hold the wall to balance. It's stone now, smooth and cold. We're going through a tunnel into a deep layer in the earth. What the heck can this lead to? Who would carve a passage this low in the ground?

  “A light, please,” I say. I'm begging.

  “Keep going,” Shawn whispers. “Once we get to the end, Travis and I will wait for them. We can tackle them and take their guns.” He doesn't sound so sure, but it's the only option we have. They will kill us down here, especially if it's a dead end.

  Sixty one. Sixty two.

  Shawn pulls me down onto what might be step number sixty-three. Still no floor.

  The voices fade up above us. We must be so far down that they're not reaching us. “Turn on a phone,” I say. “They won't see it now unless they're right behind us.” My hand scrapes stone again. It's even colder than before. I can’t breathe down here. It’s pitch black. Is this the remnant of some well or something? Why the steps?

&nb
sp; “I’m trying.” Shawn’s phone lights up beside me, casting the narrow stairway in a blue glow. There's still only enough room for us to walk single file. It’s stone all around us, all right, a brownish, striped kind that I almost expect to see fossils in. I look up the stairwell to see if anyone's behind us, but it spirals out of view. That, and Travis stands in the way.

  “This goes down even further,” Shawn says. “We should have hit a basement by now.”

  “Or some hidden room,” Travis says. “Or a torture chamber.”

  “Don't say that,” I say.

  “At least we can climb out when those guys are gone,” Shawn says. “I don't hear them.”

  Instead, there's the low rumble of a car passing overhead, and another. It's reassuring. We're not too far into the depths yet. I hold onto that noise until it fades.

  Shawn leans to look down again. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Those guys could be leaving right now.”

  There's the metallic bang of the water heater falling to the kitchen floor above. It echoes down at the stairwell, riding on the cold draft.

  “Time to go,” Travis says.

  Shawn bolts down the stairs, pulling me with him. We go down. Further.

  I count how many time my feet slap against stone. Sixty-seven. Seventy. Seventy five.

  Forget it. Nothing's going to calm me down now.

  This must be where they have Talia. She's down here somewhere.

  “Faster.” Travis rams into me, urging us to go.

  “Is anyone down there?” It must be the old man. His voice rattles with malice. “I repeat, is anyone down there? Show yourselves. You don’t want to go any further.”

  Why does he think we're going to answer him? We want to be up there even less.

  Footsteps rush down after us.

  The light from Shawn's phone leads the way. The stairway widens as we descend. I can run beside Shawn now instead of behind him. The air takes on a strange, electric feel and the steps of the men vanish as if we've stepped over some kind of threshold and left them behind. My skin tingles and a chill runs across my body. It seems too silent all of a sudden. The world blurs and for a second I'm disoriented. A high whine fills the air.