Carrie had already gone down the first few steps of the other spiral staircase, moving without fear or pause into the inky blackness that reached beyond the dimming glow from Ginny’s flashlight. She spoke over her shoulder, “Come.”
Ginny followed, slowly and carefully. Her hand shook, which sent the light tipping back and forth. Shadows, light and dark. She eased down, step-by-step. The air smelled damp, thick with must that wanted to make her cough, if only she could draw a breath deep enough.
“Wait,” Ginny whispered. Then louder, “Carrie. Wait for me.”
The narrow corridor bent at a right angle and ran along what must’ve been the back of the house. The exterior concrete wall was black with wet, and water was actually trickling in fast streams down from the ceiling. Water on the floor too, a couple inches that got deeper the farther she went, as though the passage was on a downward slope.
Ginny put one hand on the inside wall, also of concrete. George Miller had really done his work well. There was no sign from the basement that this section was two feet shorter than it should’ve been. She shuddered, stopping, her gorge rising. Her muscles tensed again as she leaned against the wall to let the contraction pass. Ginny swallowed bitter saliva, trying not to puke. Still, no pain. Just discomfort. Yet there was no denying it—she was in labor.
“Carrie. Wait.” The spasm passed, Ginny straightened and pulled out her phone again. Upstairs she’d fluctuated between one and two bars. Down here, with multiple layers of concrete and earth between her and the sky, there was nothing.
The water had risen another inch while she stopped. Carrie danced in it, impatient and frantic, while Ginny slogged toward her, grateful for her slippers. Even heavy and soaked, they were protection against whatever might be on the floor under the water.
The flashlight dimmed drastically before rallying and returning at half its former brightness.
Ginny shook it, knowing even as she did the effort was silly. It didn’t have batteries the way old flashlights did. You couldn’t rattle it into another burst of energy. Instead, the beam of light shook around and went even dimmer.
“Shit,” she breathed.
What the hell was she doing? Nine and a half months pregnant, no power, no phone, a faulty light, following some feral child into a basement that was flooding. She didn’t even have a weapon. It was the classic stupid move from every horror movie, and suddenly she was choking with laughter. Bent with it, shoulders heaving as the flashlight swung dangerously close to the water and she fought the grip of another contraction.
No, no. Don’t fight. Don’t fight it.
Ginny tried to breathe through it the way the classes taught, but the laughter wouldn’t let her. All of this, so ridiculous. So surreal. She’d have gone to her knees right there in the water if the passage weren’t so narrow there wasn’t room for her to fall.
The laughter and the contraction passed. Ginny wiped her face—tears or sweat, she couldn’t tell. Carrie had moved even farther down the passageway, around another corner. Ginny followed with the lamp, the light now the strength of a guttering candle, held high.
The corridor came to a dead end. Not a concrete wall here, but something shiny. Metal? Shit, the wall was metal, smudged with handprints and splashed with water where Carrie must have kicked. The girl turned as Ginny rounded the corner. She gestured.
“Come. Please.” She tugged at a metal handle and the wall moved the way the bookcase had, sliding like a pocket door into a recess in the wall. Carrie put her back to the door and braced her feet against the wall on the other side. She grunted with the effort.
Ginny sloshed closer. The flashlight swung in her hand, back and forth. Dark and light. She could see nothing beyond the sliding metal door.
“Honey, I won’t be able to get through there. There’s not enough room.”
Carrie pushed harder, forcing the metal door farther into the recess. Her legs shook, and she bit on her lower lip. There was still no way Ginny could step over Carrie’s legs and shove her bulk through the opening. Ginny put a hand on the door just above Carrie’s head. She could feel it threatening to move the moment the little girl ceased her counterpressure.
Ginny wedged herself into the space as far as she could, her breasts and belly crowding against the girl. “I got it. Go.”
Carrie moved at once, slipping from the space and letting the door move against Ginny’s weight. Ginny had a vision of an elevator door slamming shut on an unwary passenger—but somehow she guessed this door wouldn’t spring open. It would cut your fucking fingers off instead.
The door sprang shut behind her the instant she left off the pressure, but she wasn’t all the way through. It would’ve snapped her ankle had she not shoved the flashlight between the door and the wall just long enough to get her foot out. That was the end of the flashlight, which cracked with a snap and plunged them into perfect darkness.
Ginny closed her eyes and tried to catch her breath. Sounds became magnified without sight to counter them, she knew that. She heard the soft swish of Carrie’s feet in the water and felt the push of it against her calves. Carrie’s chilly fingers slipped into hers and squeezed. She probably could see much better than Ginny could, but even cats needed some amount of light in order to see in the dark. Carrie was still human.
Wasn’t she?
Ginny grabbed her phone from her pocket and pressed the Home button to bring up the menu. Instant bright-white light. She slid her thumb along the screen to unlock it and tapped quickly, looking for a flashlight app. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before.”
She found it. More bright light, using her phone’s LED flash set to a permanent glare. It lit the corridor, even narrower on this side of the door, and threw giant shadows on the walls. The ceiling was lower, hung with shiny ductwork and wires that cast weird patterns of shadow. Ginny ran her hand along the door. This side had no handle. Nothing but smooth, cold metal reflecting the light from her phone.
Then, up near the top, higher than a child could reach, higher than Ginny herself could reach, she saw a small dark circle. She stretched to touch it, and her fingertip felt a rough edge before dipping just barely inside. A hole. Probably for some sort of key, which she did not have.
She was trapped down here.
But she would not be afraid. She would not let herself give in to terror. All the creepy, scary things that had happened since moving into this house had not sent her gibbering, and neither would this, especially since she knew the cause was nothing supernatural. She would not be afraid.
She was a liar.
She followed Carrie down the corridor and the ceiling got lower and lower. The light from her phone was eye-achingly bright and far-reaching, yet like the high beams of a car, limited in scope. They’d only gone about four feet when the corridor jogged again, this time to the right.
The smell hit her first, hard as a fist, thick like smoke. The musty, earthy smell of the water had been nose-tickling but normal. Natural. This stench, of unwashed bodies and rotten teeth, of food left to spoil…of human waste… Ginny retched, turning her head and certain she was going to vomit. She hadn’t eaten anything in hours. Nothing came up but bile she spit into the water that was now up to her knees. She heaved again, then stood to shine the light.
The room was no larger than her bedroom and built on a cant that left her thinking of those haunted house rooms with the strobe lights, usually painted black and white, the kind with tilted floors to screw up your perspective. The ceiling was so low she had to bend her head, and the light showed her there were at least two slanted fun-house doorways. A small, domed refrigerator took up space in one corner, with what looked like a tiny two-burner stove next to it and a spindle-legged sink. Beside that, a child-sized wooden table perfect for tea parties in which every cup was poisoned. The furniture wasn’t all she saw in this nightmare room.
There was some
thing else too.
Chapter Forty-Two
Carrie splashed through the water to reach a low metal bed frame and stained mattress shoved against the far wall. The water licked at the mattress’s bottom edge. It would be sodden in minutes. There were four of them. Or five. Ginny could not yet look at whatever they were, those crouched and shivering things with pale faces and grasping, skeletal hands.
Ginny switched the phone from one hand to another. The light shifted. Shadows loomed and swooped from the shaking of her hands. She closed her eyes. Pain, this time fierce and deep and seemingly unrelenting until then…it was gone. She opened her eyes.
Whatever was on the other side of the room had moved closer.
Ginny couldn’t speak. Her breath came short and sharp as dizziness assailed her. She almost dropped the phone, but then clutched it so tight her fingers hurt.
She gave a breathless, gasping scream. They were in front of her, two of them, with Carrie hanging back with the other three still huddled on the bed. One stood, up and up, curving and hunched, its neck and head tilted at a strange angle to show her a smooth, pale face with dark eyes. It held out a hand to Carrie, who linked her fingers with it. They stood in front of Ginny, saying nothing. Just watching.
And… Oh God. They were not monsters, they were not things made of shadow and fear. They were children. A boy of maybe thirteen, grown too tall for this cramped space. A girl a little older than Carrie but not much bigger, her dark hair as tangled and dirty but pulled back from her face with a length of frayed ribbon. And there too, thinner and without her collar, but purring as she was cuddled—Noodles.
“Oh,” Ginny said in a broken, hesitant whisper. “Oh, you poor things.”
From beyond one of the dark doorways came a low, rattling hiss that turned the heads of all the children, those in front of her and the ones who’d hung back on the bed. Something slithered through the water, and Ginny saw a snake before she recognized it as something more sinister. A length of chain coiled and moved, disappearing into the water, now just past Ginny’s knees.
“Mama, I brought the lady.” Carrie turned with another shy smile, and the shadows shifted.
The figure in the doorway moved toward her, one shoulder higher than the other as the weight of the shackled wrist kept one hand closer to the floor. The shaved skull and hollow cheeks made it impossible to guess its gender, though the worn dress gave a hint. Ginny knew at once who she was.
“Caroline. Oh my God. Caroline Miller.”
Caroline gave a hoarse croak. She was weeping, Ginny saw, though it was too dark to see if there were any tears on her wasted cheeks. She drew Carrie to her and kissed her head. She looked at Ginny.
“Is he gone? He’s really gone?”
Ginny pushed closer, carefully, through the water, though the small room was mostly bare. “He’s gone,” Ginny said, and let Caroline’s withered hand take hers. “I’m here.”
Caroline’s body racked with silent sobs, but when she raised her face to Ginny’s again, her eyes were dry. She licked her cracked lips. “The water’s coming in.”
“Yes. I know.” Ginny tried not to shudder. She failed.
Caroline might look weak, but her grip was so tight it became painful. She leaned closer, her breath sour but her eyes bright. “I sent Carrie for you. She said you were a nice lady, that you left things for her.”
Ginny nodded, though that wasn’t quite the truth. “Yes. I didn’t know… Oh my God. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
Caroline’s bright gaze didn’t dim as she shook her head. “Nobody knew. It’s all right. It’s all right. You’re here now. You can help us. You can help us?”
“The door closed behind me.” Ginny tried to breathe shallowly so she could avoid the stink. “How do you open it?”
A rough and grating noise came from Caroline. Incredibly, a laugh. “From this side? You don’t.”
Ginny watched as Caroline’s children gathered silently around her, staring with wide eyes and open mouths. There were four children altogether. The oldest, a girl, hunched like her brother, put a hand on Caroline’s shoulder and murmured something Ginny didn’t understand.
Caroline replied, her voice pitched low and mumbling, the words not only indistinct but not quite right. Strung together in a pattern Ginny couldn’t recognize, like tuning in unexpectedly to a foreign radio station. Whatever Caroline said seemed to satisfy her daughter, because the girl nodded and stepped back, just outside the circle of light.
Ginny’s fingers cramped, and she switched hands again. She looked at her phone’s battery indicator. The water had risen impossibly higher, up to her thighs. “My light won’t last forever. We have to get you out of here. All of you. How do we open that door, Caroline?”
“He had a key. Always a key. It was shaped like a…” Caroline’s mouth worked, her expression momentarily blank before her eyes focused again, “…a T. It was shaped like a T and that’s how he opened the door. There is no other door.”
“Of course not.” If they’d been able to get out through that door, wouldn’t they have done it long ago? “Carrie. She was small enough to fit through the ducts—”
Before Ginny could speak again, a swift and hot gush of fluid ran down her legs. She clutched her belly and held out the phone, blindly, hoping someone would take it from her before she dropped it. Someone did, and she put both her hands between her legs, terrified she’d feel a baby’s head bulging against her giant cotton panties.
“The baby,” she said, and a groan took the place of any words she might’ve said next.
“Your baby is coming,” Caroline said flatly. “Here and now? Don’t worry. Don’t worry.”
Worry was not the name for this vast and roaring terror, this overwhelming fury of anxiety and fear. Ginny gasped as the contraction peaked. She breathed with it, incapable of embarrassment though she’d bent over to put her hands on her knees and was panting like a dog on the street in August. Everything inside her pressed down, down. Only the rising water kept her from squatting right there, because she would not, could not push her baby out into that filthy wetness.
She became aware of Caroline on one side of her, the oldest daughter on the other. They walked Ginny in mincing crab steps, the largest she could take, through the doorway and into a smaller room the size of a closet. The light from her phone shone over their shoulders, illuminating a full-size bed and a dresser. As the light slanted crazily along the walls, Ginny saw they’d been hung with countless childish drawings like the one that had been left on her easel. The stick figures seemed to dance, and, nauseated, she closed her eyes while they took her to the bed.
She put both her hands on the damp mattress and bent forward. She breathed. And finally the contraction passed.
“My water broke. I’m having contractions,” she said without opening her eyes. “The baby is coming, yes. Here and now.”
Tears came, shaking her. A firm hand squeezed her shoulder. She looked up to see Caroline.
“I will help you. Linna will help you. We know…we know about babies, lady.”
“My name is Ginny.”
“Ginny,” Caroline said, and smiled. “Ginny, we’ll help you. It’s going to be all right.”
Nothing could be all right about this. Water up to their thighs, the stink overpowering everything else. Her baby born in this hovel? No. No. Ginny shook her head, but another contraction ripped its way through her, and there was nothing but pain to think about just then.
It passed.
There was something amazing about how much it hurt and how suddenly the pain ceased, and she’d have been able to think about it more if only the world would stop spinning. It was because she wasn’t breathing, Ginny knew, and braced herself to take a long, stinking gulp of fetid air. It helped only a little.
“You need to get on the bed. Lie back. Lift your dress, and let us look
.” Caroline gestured. “Deke. The light.”
Ginny’d prepared herself mentally for knowing that in the hospital it was likely she’d have a whole slew of strangers staring at her vagina while she pushed this kid out. In no realm of her imagination had one of those staff been a teenage boy. There was no shielding of her body, though, no way even for her to protest, because she was too busy bearing down against the sudden pressure in her womb.
Hands helped her back onto the disgusting mattress, propped her with pillows. Hands lifted her nightgown and pulled her panties off. Ginny wept, not from pain or shame, but from knowing there was no way her baby could survive this filthy place.
“Mine did,” Caroline told her, and Ginny realized she’d spoken aloud. “The ones who got born alive, they all made it. Yours will too.”
Ginny opened her eyes. “My phone. I have to see if…there’s a signal.”
Deke handed over her phone without argument. Ginny thumbed the screen, with no luck. She tried anyway, first with a call that wouldn’t even send and then a text. After that, another. Each time, a small, angry red exclamation mark showed up next to her message, proving it didn’t go through. Her fingers tightened on the phone with the next contraction, and Caroline gently pried it from her hand.
“Let Deke hold the light, Ginny.”
Ginny panted and gasped, then gave in to a shriek. This embarrassed her more than anything else had, but Caroline patted her shoulder.
“It’s okay to scream,” she said. “Nobody can hear you down here.”
“You…all…can.”
Caroline gave another rusty laugh, as cutting as knuckles on a grater. “Screams don’t bother us.”
The pain faded. Ginny drew a breath. She shifted on the bed, against the pillows, and tried to see the floor. “The water?”
“Still coming in.” Caroline turned her head and coughed, then spit.
The chain on her wrist jangled. She didn’t use that arm at all, Ginny saw. The fingers of that hand looked curled and useless. Caroline saw her looking and gave her a smile that showed straight, even teeth that could only be the product of expensive orthodontia.