WITH THE FLASHLIGHT stuffed in her waistband, Tess lowered herself into the basement. Then she took out the flashlight and ventured into the basement.
She knew exactly where she wanted to go. The room with the boxes. She found it easily enough. The basement might be a warren of short halls and interconnected rooms, but she’d mentally mapped it out as she’d considered coming down. Having that map felt like having a plan. Solid and firm.
As she stepped into the room, she held her breath, waiting for…well, she didn’t know what she was waiting for. A vision? A voice? All these years of wishing the visions gone, and now she hoped to conjure one and had no idea if such a thing was possible.
If it was, it didn’t happen on demand. She walked into that room and saw nothing except the four boxes. She sat on one and waited. Long minutes ticked past. She closed her eyes then, or tried to, but that was like closing them on a haunted-house ride, knowing something would jump out at any moment. It didn’t take long for Tess to decide to keep her eyes open.
Another twenty minutes, and not so much as a mouse skittered past. Tess rose and looked around. She opened one box, but as soon as she did, a chill slid down her spine, and she closed it fast. She walked around the room once, weaving in and out of the boxes. Then she headed into the hall.
Tess wandered through the other rooms. She’d read enough about ghosts to know people thought the best way to contact them was to open yourself up to the possibility. To radiate welcome and invitation. Which was probably much easier if your stomach wasn’t tied in knots and part of you wasn’t desperately hoping you wouldn’t see anything.
After about an hour in the basement, though, Tess genuinely began wanting to see something. It was like dreading a test and then finding out it had been postponed, and feeling annoyed because she’d studied for it and she was ready now. With each minute that passed, she grew more frustrated, searched harder, struggled to catch a glimpse of something, anything.
A man walked past the end of the hall as she swung into it. Tess jerked back, jamming her fist into her mouth to keep from crying out. He disappeared through a doorway before she could get a good look.
Tess looked down the hall. The doors were closed…and they’d been open a moment ago. She and Jackson had left them all open as they’d walked through, so they’d know which rooms they’d looked inside.
Then she noticed the hallway now glowed with a sickly yellow light. She looked around. Nothing else in the hall seemed to have changed, but when she glanced down, the floor was clean. Still concrete but scrubbed, the faint lines from a mop still showing.
The man had disappeared into a room down the hall. The door was half closed, and a stronger light emanated from within. Tess tried to peek inside, but the angle wasn’t quite right. She put her fingers against the door. She could feel it, cold and solid, yet when she nudged, nothing happened. She pushed harder. Still nothing.
I’m the invisible one, she thought. Like a ghost in his world. This proves it.
That wasn’t exactly true. It might only prove that she thought she was the ghost, so in her hallucination she behaved as she expected. But she wasn’t letting herself tumble down that rabbit hole. She tried the door once more and then turned sideways and wriggled through the opening, which remained as solid and unyielding as if the door was nailed in place.
Before she went through, she made some noise, testing whether the person inside could hear her. As expected, she seemed as invisible and silent as a ghost, and when she squeezed through the door with a grunt, the occupant never even turned around.
A man of about twenty-five sat at a desk, writing furiously with his back to Tess. He wore a tweed jacket, dress shirt and tie. His clothing looked a little out of date, but not unreasonably so—she’d seen old men in Hope wearing a similar cut of shirt and trousers, as if they hadn’t cleared their closets in a couple of decades.
Tess looked around the room. She vaguely recalled from earlier that there’d been a desk pushed up on its side and two tables. Now the tables were gone and the desk was upright, with a proper chair, and there was a filing cabinet. On the wall hung a chalkboard displaying a hand-drawn chart of names and various codes and numbers.
Tess had no idea what the chart meant. If she had to hazard a guess, she’d say it was a list of patients and their medical data. The names were French. André W., Corrine P., Dorothée J., Jacques K., Stéphanie R.
On another wall was a calendar, turned to December 1946. The year before she was born.
She walked to the man and peered over his shoulder. He was scribbling quickly in a journal. His handwriting would be near-illegible under the best of circumstances. The fact it was in French meant she could only decipher the odd word, meaningless out of context.
Distant footsteps sounded. The man yanked open a desk drawer and slid the journal under it. When Tess crouched, she could see a leather strap stapled or nailed to the bottom of the drawer, a secret holder for the journal.
The man locked the drawer and walked to the door. He opened it and said, “Ah, Pierre.” Then: “Qu’est-ce qui ne va pas?” What’s wrong?
Another man’s voice answered in French. “Stéphanie won’t go in the box.”
“Can you blame her?” the young man muttered, but under his breath so only Tess heard. Louder, he said, “Perhaps she needs a day off. She’s making excellent progress—”
“Which is why we cannot give her a day off. I’ll need your help restraining her.”
The man in the office shifted his weight. “I did not agree to any use of force with the patients. I was quite clear—”
“Take it up with the doctor. I’m telling you our orders. Get Stéphanie in the box, one way or another.”
The room went dark. Tess jumped, her back going to the wall. She fumbled to turn on the flashlight. When she did, she saw the room as it had been when she’d investigated with Jackson.
She walked over to the desk, on its side again, and pulled on the top drawer. It was locked.
“Aidez-moi…”
The voice seemed to whisper all around her, and every hair on Tess’s body rose. She strained to listen.
“Je suis désolée.”
The voice snaked through the open door. Tess squelched the twitch of relief, the one that said, “Good, she’s out there.” Wasn’t this what she’d come downstairs for? In hopes of hearing something, seeing something?
Tess gripped the flashlight and walked to the door. It opened easily now, meaning she was definitely back in her own world.
“Aidez-moi, s’il vous plaît. Je suis désolée.”
The voice started close and then drifted, drawing her down the hall. Tess followed. The crying began, a soft sniffling. When Tess saw where it led, she rubbed the goose bumps on her arms and forced her feet to keep moving.
Tess shone the flashlight into the room. Across the boxes that looked like caskets, no matter what Jackson said. The crying stopped. Tess exhaled and adjusted her sweaty fingers on the flashlight. She glanced back toward the room with the desk and hidden journal. The drawer lock couldn’t be that hard to break. Or perhaps if she removed the drawer below it…
A noise. She froze. It came again. A slow scratching. Tess swiveled, her gaze tracking the sound to one of the boxes.
No. No, no, no.
She took a slow step backward. She’d seen enough. There could be a journal in the other room. If she got that, she’d have answers. She didn’t need to do this.
If she got that. If the journal was still there now, in the present time. There was a very good chance it was not.
The scratching stopped, and choked sobs began.
“S’il vous plaît. S’il vous plaît. S’il vous plaît.” Please, please, please.
Tess took a slow step into the room. The scratching resumed, harsh now, frantic. Coming from one of the boxes, mingled with cries and sobs, and it didn’t matter that Tess thought she was hearing a ghost, an echo of the past—she heard the frantic scratching turn to pounding, saw one of the boxes shaking, and she threw herself forward. She raced to the moving box, grabbed the lid and wrenched it off, staggering with the effort, the top coming free in her hands and knocking her to the floor. She sat there, stunned, holding the huge, heavy wooden lid. Then she shoved it aside, letting it clatter to the concrete floor as she leaped to her feet and looked into the box.
It was empty.
Tess stood there, heaving breath, as she stared into the dark box. Then she lifted the flashlight and shone it inside. Empty. Completely empty.
Of course it was. She’d known there wasn’t anyone actually trapped inside. Perhaps, though, she’d expected to open it and see the ghost of whoever had been crying and scratching and pounding. But the box lay empty, and the room had gone silent.
Tess turned away. As she did, her flashlight beam flitted across the discarded wooden lid. She briefly saw markings on the underside, like writing. She shone the light at it. Not writing. Brown marks and gouges, like someone had carved initials into the wood.
Carved initials? No. That wasn’t what she was seeing. Not at all.
Tess dropped to her knees beside the lid and touched the gouges. They were exactly the width of her fingernails. Deep, splintered gouges, the edges dulled by time. When she moved the flashlight closer, the brown splotches turned reddish. Dried blood. That’s what she was seeing. Bloodied scratches in the wood.