When Noel returned, he was holding not a flashlight but a hexagonal-shaped object made of bright, hard plastic mesh.
‘Battery-operated LED road flare,’ he said. ‘Four settings. Unless you want strobe lights, I suggest using this one.’ He pressed the button twice. A bright-orange emergency light began to spin lazily across the floors and wall, making her feel as though she had boarded some dark carnival ride. ‘If you don’t want to use this, I can grab a candle from the kitchen.’
‘This’ll work,’ Darby said.
This was their first time working together, so she needed to lay down some ground rules. ‘Only one person should go down. It’ll lessen the chance of disturbing any potential evidence.’
‘I’ve done this before, you know.’
‘But not with me. I need to think, and I can’t do that if you’re behind me or hovering near me, asking me questions, giving me a running commentary.’
‘I’ll be standing right here. Holler if you need anything.’
The heels and hard soles of her leather harness boots clanged off each metal step. Darby took them one by one. It would have been easier – and quicker – if she had held on to the curved metal banister, but she didn’t want to disturb any potential fingerprints in case this place turned into a crime scene.
Darby held the battery-operated flare in her left hand, up by her shoulder, the revolving orange light splashing across the insulated walls as she slowly made her way down and down. She felt a bit like one of the characters she’d seen in the old black-and-white Gothic horror movies she’d watched on a TV with rabbit ears when she was young: the damsel in distress dressed in a white gown and barefoot and terrified as she wound her way down one dusty corridor after another inside a large castle, heading to an antechamber where she would suddenly come face to face with the supernatural creature that had been hunting her.
Her heart pounded with anticipation. Dread. The day had been long, and she felt emotionally drained, and her thoughts skidded with exhaustion inside her head. She didn’t have the energy to push them aside. There was one thought she couldn’t escape: the feeling that Coop had not only discovered this hidden chamber but had walked down these very same steps, looking at the exact same things and most likely thinking the exact same thoughts.
The stairs ended and she found herself in a tight, claustrophobic space. The area directly off the stairs was a bit longer, maybe six feet wide, large enough to accommodate the small refrigerator and, next to it, a small plastic bucket, the kind used in a home office or in a bathroom. The black bucket was stocked with empty soda cans and tiny candy wrappers from the chocolates people usually handed out for Halloween: Three Musketeers, Baby Ruth, Butterfinger and Mr Goodbar, which had somehow survived for over a century, although she had never seen anyone eating one in her entire life. Odd, the things that occur to you when you’re full of dread, she thought.
And she had good reason to be: directly in front of her and flush against the bottom wall was a 6 × 6 steel door. It was locked with not one but three eight-inch-long slide bolts.
The refrigerator sat to the left of the door, but it wasn’t humming. She looked in the back and found that it wasn’t plugged in. Kneeling, she opened the fridge door.
The shelves were empty.
Darby got back to her feet. She could feel Noel above her, hovering, watching. The air was cool and smelled of insulation and wood.
To her left, she found lanes between the walls like the one she’d seen above. There was just enough room for her to shuffle her way sideways through them. She quickly explored each one now, thinking about what Noel had said earlier – that whoever had built this house had specifically designed this space between the walls as … what?
What sort of a person – or persons, she didn’t know yet – would want to spy on his or her family? And what was waiting for her behind the small steel door off the bottom steps?
Another thought occurred to her: did this home belong to the Red Ryder? Had he built it and lived here? If so, how had Karen found it – and why in God’s name would she willingly decide to move in here?
No, Darby thought. That doesn’t make any sense. If Karen had somehow discovered this house belonged to the Red Ryder – that he had built it and raised a family here, or maybe had been raised here – Karen wouldn’t have deliberately moved into it.
Or would she?
Another question: had Karen even known this space existed?
The narrow lanes between the walls on the bottom floor had beige plastic crucifixes glued next to peepholes, just like the one she had seen on the plywood back of the bookcase. The downstairs bathroom had the same sort of glass as the upstairs – a two-way allowing the viewer to watch someone undetected. Darby’s stomach roiled at the thought.
‘Everything okay down there?’
Noel’s voice from above, and it felt like a razor blade against her skin.
‘I’m fine,’ Darby said, agitated. ‘If I need anything, I’ll let you know.’
She returned to the bottom of the spiral staircase, the orange LED lights revolving back and forth across the walls and floor and glaring at her from the steel door, like a warning. She got down on her knee, her heart kicking inside her chest, and she was gripped with terror, as if she were about to open the door on a secret she didn’t want to know – something that, once discovered, would not only change the way she viewed herself but also the people she loved the most.
Those three people were dead. Two were already buried, the other one waiting to be found, God willing, and given a decent burial.
Darby slid one bolt. A scrape and then a dull boom echoed inside the walls.
What the hell could be in there?
She slid back the second bolt.
Did Coop see this place? What was in here?
The final bolt.
Scrape and boom and she thought: Is that why he was killed? Because he found this secret place?