I peered out through splayed fingers at the steps leading up to the basement door.
The steps were tall and narrow. Bare timber painted white.
Looking at them, I was engulfed by a powerful sensation of vertigo, but in reverse, as if I was falling endlessly backwards.
As if I’d never stop.
I put my hands out at my sides and clasped the unfinished brickwork around me, deathly cold against my skin.
I was breathing too fast and too shallowly.
The room was starting to spin.
I could still hear the click from the bolt on the outside of the door. It seemed to echo against the basement walls, repeating in my mind.
I realized I was picking at the brickwork with my nail.
Strange.
There was something familiar about my instinct to do that. An odd kind of muscle memory.
My exhaled breath seemed to chill the air in front of me as I looked at where my hands were placed.
In the stark lighting of the basement I could see other scratches on the brickwork. They were faint but they were there. Tiny stripe marks scored into the paint.
Exactly where I was scratching right now.
My heart jackhammered.
There was a choking blockage in my throat.
Then a sob funnelled up inside me and burst out.
An involuntary burp of horror and fear.
Sam pushed you down these steps.
Sam locked the door.
And then a new thought, cascading on from the others.
Sam didn’t call the police.
What if the reason Sam didn’t call the police wasn’t because he didn’t believe you?
What if it was because he didn’t want the police to come?