TESS WOKE TO complete darkness. Her arms shot out, heart pounding, certain she would flail against the sides of a wooden box and hear the skitter of dirt. But when she leaped up, nothing stopped her. Nothing except a screaming pain in her head that forced her to her knees as she doubled over, heaving and gagging. She lifted one hand to her head and gingerly prodded a rising bump.
Knocked out. She’d been knocked out and thrown into…
She inhaled the stink of mustiness and felt the dirt beneath her fingers.
A basement. She’d been knocked unconscious and thrown into a basement.
There’d been a man. She remembered running though the woods, trees lashing at her, vines catching her feet. Then a cry. A fall.
She’d fallen? No…She squeezed her eyes shut and focused on the memory. He’d fallen. Then she’d escaped, and there’d been a house.
A house…
A house and a broken window and a ladder. Books. Falling. Rotted floor.
No one had thrown her in the basement. She’d fallen.
Tess exhaled so suddenly that her stomach heaved again. She gagged. Then she sat back on her haunches and kept breathing deeply, getting her bearings.
Not kidnapped. Not knocked out. Well, yes, knocked out, but only by her own stupidity. All she had to do was find the stairs and get back to the main floor.
She needed the flashlight. And her purse. The first, though, would help find the second, so she searched on the dirt floor. The flashlight was light gray, which should have made it easier to find than the dark purse, but she spotted the bag first, lying in a heap not far from where she’d fallen. She took it and blinked hard, trying to see better. A little light seeped through the hole in the floor overhead. Very little, given that it was only moonlight shining through the library windows.
Tess looked up at the hole…and saw the flashlight teetering on the edge.
She took a deep breath. No matter. She could fix this.
Tess felt around on the floor and picked up a chunk of fallen wood. She positioned herself under the hole and pitched the wood up at the flashlight. Her aim was perfect. The wood hit the flashlight…and knocked it backward out of sight.
Tess responded with every swear word she knew. While she was certain Mrs. Hazelton would disagree, there seemed a time and a place for profanity. A purpose too. It certainly made her feel better.
She squared her shoulders and marched forward…only to stumble over a piece of debris. All right then. Less confidence, more caution. She walked slowly, each foot sweeping the way before touching down. She kept her hands outstretched too, and after no more than five steps she felt concrete. A wall. See, that was easy. All she had to do was walk—carefully—along the wall until her fingers found the door.
She was at the first corner when she heard scratching. She froze. Silence. She lifted a foot. Another scratch, long and deliberate. Then another. Tess’s mind fell back into that nightmare place, trapped in the box, oxygen almost gone, her fingers bloody and raw, the final slow scratches against the wooden—
She shook herself hard. It was a rat. Maybe even just a mouse, but she would accept the possibility of rats. She’d helped Billy when a few got into the storage shed where his parents kept their flour. One swift kick had sent them scattering so Billy could lay out the traps. Rats, she’d realized, were much more frightening in fiction than in reality.
She tilted her head and listened to the scratching. It came from the other side of the wall. Good enough. Forewarned was forearmed. Just find the door. Find the stairs. Get out.
As she felt her way along the next wall, the scratching stopped. A sob echoed through the room. Every hair on Tess’s body shot up, and she strained to hear, telling herself she’d misheard, she must have misheard…
Another sob, so clear now that it sounded as if it came from directly behind her. She wheeled, turning her back to the wall. A sniffle. Then crying. Quiet, muffled crying. From the very room where she stood.
“H-hello?”
No one replied. Did she expect an answer? Did she want one? No. For the first time in her life, she heard a voice in the dark and prayed it was her imagination. Her madness. Because the alternative…
“Aidez-moi.” Help me.
No. No, no, no…Tess rubbed her arms as hard as she could. Pain blazed when she touched her skinned elbow, but she didn’t care.
“Aidez-moi,” the voice whispered. “S’il vous plaît.” Help me, please.
Tess wasn’t alone down here, and if she wasn’t alone, then that meant…
She thought of the branch covering the broken window. Of the flashlight stored there. Of the blanket and pop bottles inside. Of the smell of smoke from the fireplace, and the footprints, all from one set of shoes. It wasn’t a group of kids having a bonfire. It was one person.
A man living above. A woman down here.
Every lurid article from every lurid magazine that Tess wasn’t supposed to read flooded back to her now. Tales of women held hostage by crazed killers. Those stories always frightened her more than any monster novel, because monsters weren’t real. Not the ones with fur and fangs. Human monsters? They were real, and she’d only needed to read a couple of these stories to know they were not her idea of entertainment.
Was it the man from the truck? Surely two men in the same village could not be kidnapping women. Somehow, in escaping him, she’d come straight to his lair. She had no idea how that was possible, but there seemed no other explanation.
“Hello?” she said. Then, “Où êtes-vous?” Where are you? A silly thing to ask, but she did anyway.
“Aidez-moi.”
“I will. Just…say something else.” Tess started forward, her feet sweeping again. She repeated the words in French—or as near an approximation to them as she could manage.
“Aidez-moi.”
Tess followed the sound of the voice as she told the woman to keep talking.
“Je suis désolée.” I am sorry.
The voice came from near floor level, right in front of Tess. She crouched and reached out. The woman started crying again…behind her.
Tess went still. “Où êtes-vous?”
Soft crying answered…from her left now.
“Je suis désolée. Je suis désolée. Je suis désolée.”
Each time, the voice came from another direction. Tess rose, her eyes wide and heart pounding as she backed up until she hit the wall.
“Aidez-moi, s’il vous plaît. Je suis désolée.” Help me, please. I am sorry.
The words repeated from every corner of the room, getting louder each time, until Tess shrank, crouching, with her hands over her ears.
“Not real. Not real. Not real.”
The voice stopped. Tess straightened slowly, one hand clutching her purse strap as if she could use it as a weapon.
A weapon against phantasms? Against her imagination? Against madness?
She gritted her teeth and resumed her methodical circuit around the room. When the crying started again, her fingers shook, but she kept going. One wall, two walls, three walls…four? She’d reached the fourth corner, which meant she’d gone all the way around and failed to find a door.
That wasn’t possible. Simply wasn’t. Not all rooms were quadrilaterals. She kept going. Fifth wall. Sixth? Seventh? No, that couldn’t be. Then her foot struck the same board she’d encountered on the third wall, and she realized she was going around a second time.
Four walls. No exit.
Impossible. She moved more slowly now, her hands reaching down for cubbyholes and up for hatches. There would be something. There had to be.
No door. No cubby. No hatch.
“Aidez-moi, s’il vous plaît. Je suis désolée.”
Tess clapped her hands over her ears. No doors? Fine. There was a hole in the ceiling, wasn’t there? And debris below. If she could pile it and climb—
Footsteps sounded on the floor overhead. Slow, heavy footsteps.