by Tara Brown
“This way.” Finn continued on like this was the underground tour of London.
We followed until he stopped by another ladder. “This is the next room.”
Jake climbed that ladder and did the same as Vincent had, shaking his head. “There’s nothing up here.” He climbed down and we continued on our tour.
The hall led into a wider area with more space and several ceiling hatches. “This is the main area. Those are hallways and this is the secret room.” Finn climbed the ladder in the far corner and lifted the hatch.
When he lifted his cell phone into the space, he paused. His jaw dropped open and nothing came out.
“What?” Lindsey let go of my hand and hurried forward to the steel trapdoor. “What do you see?”
“Stuff.” He looked down. “It wasn’t here before.”
Linds dragged him down and climbed quickly, fumbling with her phone and crawling all the way into the hole.
“Linds!” Vincent hurried after her, crawling up into the hole too.
Finn walked to me, hovering over me with his deadpan face. “I didn’t know she had stuff here.”
“I know.” I always believed him.
“I don’t want you here.”
“I know.”
His eyes lifted to the ceiling where my friends had all vanished into the dark hole. “She’s probably in here. We need to leave and call the police. You could tell them you remember her from before. I could switch her blood for Lindsey’s in their system.”
“I’m going up. I want to see.” I tiptoed in my winter boots and brushed a soft kiss on his cold cheek. “Just wait here and keep watch in case she comes back.”
“As you wish.” He said it but he didn’t mean it.
And I wasn’t certain I was half as brave as I was acting.
I shouldn’t have come.
I should have run when he found her hideout.
And I never should have climbed the ladder.
But I did.
The dark little room above was not what I expected.
The ceiling was low, too low, so the air was similar to the cell. I shuddered and looked around, seeing my friends gazing about in the dark. I forced myself into the little room as the hatch closed behind me, making me jump.
“There’s nothing here.” Lainey sighed.
“It’s like her car.” Lindsey groaned. “Just litter and the odd bit of personal stuff.”
“But we have to assume the personal stuff is garbage. Bait.” Lain flashed her phone over it all, snapping pictures and making me feel like I was about to have a seizure. I closed my eyes and tried not to let the flashing lights from the cell phones put me into a panic in the small space. Seeing the creepy space with flashlights was one thing but through camera flashes was another.
When I opened them again Jake was in my face. “I have to get out of here.” His eyes were wide and frightened. I suspected they mimicked my own.
“Me too.”
“You’re standing in front of the hatch.”
“Oh.” I stepped to the side so he could climb down the ladder.
“I’ll meet you guys on the beach.” He stumbled getting down and thumped to the concrete below.
“I’ll go make sure he’s okay.” Vincent walked toward the ladder. “Don’t leave here.” He pointed at Linds.
“I won’t.” She sounded like she was talking to her dad. In fact, he sounded like her dad.
When Vince got to the bottom and hurried down the hall away from the hatch, Finn looked up into the hole. “You okay?”
“No.”
“Which way is upstairs?” Jake shouted, echoing off the walls.
Finn sighed. “I’ll be right back. Don’t move.” He hurried down the hall and the entryway got dark. The hallway below the hatch was black. Lights danced around the small space as Lain took photos and picked through debris.
The guys’ voices rang off the cell-like walls, making the illusion it was all smaller than it was. My heart raced and my hands sweat. But my mouth was dry, like I needed water.
“I have to get down.” I coughed a little.
“Okay. Call Finn,” Lain muttered.
“I can’t. I have to get down. Now!” I wanted to move but the black space below me told me not to. It tricked me into seeing things, movements and shadows that weren’t there. My common sense brain told me they weren’t.
“I’ll go with you.” Lain moved closer to me, taking my sweaty hand in hers. “Linds, wait here. I’m not done.”
“Roger that.” Linds waved from the pile of wrappers and sweaters she was bent over.
Lain looked at me like she expected me to get down, but I couldn’t move my feet. “Oh, I’ll go first.” She stepped onto the ladder and climbed down, shining the light in the hallway. I followed her, my legs and hands shaking like I was in an earthquake.
We walked slowly, stopping at the ladder to the hallways.
“They said they were going to the beach.” Lain looked confused, shining her bright light up the ladder hole.
“No. Then Jake asked where the hallway was to the top.”
We both looked down the hall and back up to the open hatch.
“Want me to go first?” Lain asked.
I contemplated. Did I want to be up there alone or down here? “No.” I stepped onto the ladder, my flashlight moving with the shaking of my fingers. I scanned the empty hallway when I got my head up.
“Hurry up. It’s creepy down here.” She pushed on my legs.
I hurried up onto the floor above and then she climbed like a bear was chasing her. Her scrambling was crazy noisy and then silent again when she got up with me. We were still as we stared around the completely dark space, looking at everything and nothing.
“Which way?” Lain asked softly.
“I don’t know.”
We walked forward to the doorway which was open. It brought us to a hallway.
“This is the hallway we were in when Linds found the file on Hailey.” She walked to another door and opened it. “This is the room.” She shined a flashlight in there and we both jumped. On a cot lay a girl with dark hair. Her back was to us.
I looked at Lain, shaking my head but she didn’t listen. She walked forward, leaving me in the hallway alone. I couldn’t stop watching as she got closer to the girl, but the girl didn’t roll over. She stayed lying perfectly still. I entered the room too. I didn’t want to be alone in the hall. I couldn’t watch both sides of the hallway and my back.
We crept closer.
Beads of sweat formed on my forehead as I recognized the cell.
“It’s a dummy.” Lain said it as the door behind us swung shut, slamming loudly. The girl, the one I would never forget the sound of, laughed loudly.
“Shit.” I scanned the entire room for what could be with us, but there was nothing but us and the mannequin with the dark hair on the cot. The very cot I had once been tied to while the evil little bitch burned and cut me.
“They slit her wrists. Did you know that? In this very room where I slit yours,” the girl with the dark hair whispered into the crack of the doorframe. Lain and I stepped closer to each other, gripping one another. “They said she tried to kill herself, but she’d taken so many pills that the blood flow slowed to nothing.” She laughed again and then she was quiet. Her footsteps scuffed along the concrete floor, getting quieter and quieter.
“Is she walking away?” Lain leaned forward, listening.
“I don’t know.” My flashlight made a bright spot on the floor as I pondered the fact she’d lured us back here and trapped me in another cell. My torture cell.
At least I wasn’t alone this time.
Chapter Thirty-One
The Thirteenth Floor
I leaned my head against the wall and listened with Lain. Nothing had made a sound in seventeen minutes.
“Did you hear that?” Lain whispered, asking again.
“That was me.” I scuffed my boot along the floor again.
&nbs
p; “Oh.” She sighed and leaned back into me just as I heard something out in the hall. “Was that you?”
“No.” I shook my head. “That was outside.”
“She’s coming.” The whispered words stabbed at me, making my arms seem weaker and my legs react as if they were weighed down with concrete boots.
“Where do we run?” I whispered back, hoping Lainey had an idea. Her mind worked faster than a race car.
“I don’t know.”
It wasn’t the answer I expected.
“Then we fight?” I said it as more of a question before I really searched myself for the ability to follow through with the thought. Being the queen of bark but no bite was hard, but when you were backed into a corner and forced to find that inner biter, you did it.
“Okay.” Lainey stood up from the shadow where she was hiding and looked around. She passed me a two-foot-long, thin rusted pole she had pulled from the underneath of the old cot along with one for herself. “If we get into the hall, we fight back to back, in case she comes the other way or has help. Slap her with the pole and then stab hard. The edges aren’t crazy sharp.”
“What if she has a gun?” I asked as I gripped the cold piece of metal.
“I don’t know.” Lainey’s voice was raspy. “Maybe they’ll find us before she does. Is your signal still dead?”
“Yeah. This basement is bullshit. No phone signal at all.”
The noise got louder and my heart raced faster.
I took a deep breath and readied myself to hit another person with a steel pole. It was crazy this was where we were, forced to fight some nutty bitch to the death in a mental hospital my dad now owned.
As the noise got to the door I could hear the footsteps. I didn’t think they were hers but I was ready. When the door opened, I sighed seeing the flashlight in our faces.
“What are you doing?” Finn sounded angry. It was a welcome change. “I told you NOT to move. Specifically, not to move. This is a friggin’ maze underground. Do you want to die? Are you happy you saw this room? Happy to be back in here?” He grabbed my arm and pulled me into him, shaking me slightly. “Are you trying to kill me?” His breath was labored and his heart was racing like mine. I could hear it through his jacket, or maybe that was mine.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you.” He trembled a little as he pulled me back. “We’re leaving, now. This is a game for her. I’m done playing.” He turned to walk out of the room when someone rushed past him, shoving him back in and into me and Lain. She giggled and laughed psychotically.
Her evil laugh echoed off the walls, reverberating off my skull.
And Finn was gone. He bolted, running hard for her. I ran after them with Lain hot on my trail. Our clunky footsteps and ragged breath bounced around, making the abandoned basement sound noisy and full.
In the maze of rooms and hallways, I lost them.
Doors slammed and lights vanished and eventually it was just me and Lain. We hurried for the stairs, listening as we ran. When we got to the top floor we started shouting.
“FINN!”
“FINN!”
“JAKE!”
We walked down the long corridor where the billowy curtains had once greeted me. We passed my old cell. I ducked my head in there, hating the smell but listening for anyone shouting.
No one was here.
We hurried to the cafeteria and there she was.
In all her glory.
The girl with the dark hair.
My tormentor.
“Do you want to hear the story, Sierra? Do you want to know how this all happened? And why you?” She stood at the door to the back deck and glanced back at me, almost daring me to run at her.
And I did.
The shocked look on her face suggested she hadn’t expected it.
I hadn’t.
But I ran, screaming.
She hurried down the deck stairs, taking them several at a time and slipping on the icy ones. I did the same. Lain chased after me.
All our feet on the wooden decking clunked and pounded.
When she hit the rocky beach she picked up speed, like she had practiced running on the rocks.
I lost my footing several times, almost falling when I hit the pebbles. But I never gave up my pace. I gained on her.
Her voice mocking and humiliating me was the soundtrack I ran to. Her dark hair bounced on her shoulders as she ran for the dock.
She started walking when she reached the end, squaring off and laughing as she pulled a gun from her pants. “This ends here, you selfish bitch.”
I didn’t pause.
I didn’t fear the gun. Or maybe I didn’t really have time to give it consideration.
I bolted for her, not slowing at all. I leapt as she tried to point the gun at me, taking us both off the end of the dock.
Shock and terror hit at the same time for us both. We screamed as we came up from the icy depths. Her attempts to swim away and mine to still come for her made us go in circles for a moment.
I kicked off my boots and pushed hard, swimming with my piece of metal.
“Get away from me!” She tried to swim away, but my mind was focused hard on catching her. I was stuck on autopilot in the freezing and frenzy of the insane moment.
I grabbed for her jacket, pulling her toward me when I finally clutched the parka.
She laughed as I pushed her down, her laugh becoming a gargled choke. Her arms and hands flailed, grabbing at me, but I kicked at her abdomen and shoved her back under the water.
She was tiny and feisty but she was no match for me.
The red fury had been unleashed.
I screamed and cried at the same time as I became bewildered in the void that happened when I snapped.
After what seemed like forever there came a peaceful moment when she stopped fighting me.
The metal rod from the cot was slowly sinking below, the limited sunlight glinting off it. Her dark-blue eyes were wide, brighter than they’d ever been. Her nose and mouth gave off the smallest bubbles, like the last of her air was seeping from her.
She gripped me, drawing blood that tinted the water around her face, but I never lessoned my hold on her throat.
After what seemed like a lifetime I let her go. She sank, her arms stretched out.
“Sierra!” Lain screamed at me from the dock, jolting my head to the right.
It seemed so far away.
“You’re going to freeze to death. Get back here.”
I turned my back on the crazy girl and swam for the dock.
My body burned from the cold but I didn’t feel it, not completely.
There was still the shock of it all.
I climbed up with numb hands and feet and let Lain wrap her body around mine as we sat and stared at the ocean.
Whimpers and sobs escaped my lips for several moments.
A scream filled the air. It was my name.
We looked back at Linds running down the docks. “Did you see what happened?” She was crying. I didn’t want to ask what it could be now. The horrific act I’d committed started to sting inside me as my thawing body lost all its numbing.
“They took Finn. There were men—men in a white van. They took Finn. He was unconscious. I got the license plate but that’s it. I called 9-1-1.” She was out of breath as she ran across the beach to us.
I turned back to the ocean. I had to make sure the girl didn’t come back up. Then I could worry about Finn.
I stared into the choppy gray sea, mystified by the last six minutes.
“Did she come back up?” Lainey whispered, ignoring Linds too.
“No. I don’t know. Maybe somewhere else.” I shook my head, but I couldn't force my eyes away from the place where she had gone under.
“Do you think she swam?” She spun around on the dock, staring at all the places the girl might have gone. “What if she got away?”
“She didn't.” The words were forceful and rigid,
how I felt. A tremor shuddered through me as I finally took my eyes away from the sea. “She has to be dead. It’s the only way.”
“What about under the dock?” Lainey stared at the cracks under us. My eyes followed hers, dragging my face down. I didn't mess around or try to get a better angle. I dropped to my knees to get close—so close I could taste the ocean and see my own eye staring back at me from the reflection in the dark water.
I had to be sure.
“There’s nothing here.” I wasn't positive though. I couldn't be sure. Not without going into the cold Atlantic again. A small part of me wanted to. I wanted to be that certain. “How long does exposure take?” I appeared to be asking the dock or whispering to the sea.
“She won't make it longer than twenty minutes. The water’s forty degrees. Twenty minutes is the longest before her muscles stop working. She should already be in agony if she’s still in the water and not drowned.” Lainey shivered when she said it, as if the words made her colder.
“It’s been seven minutes. We can wait the rest.” I got up and looked back at the ocean.
Neither of us moved. We both knew we would be standing in the cold, staring at the seawater, until we were sure she was dead.
“What are you doing?” Linds snapped as she got closer. “Did you hear me? Finn’s gone. Why are you wet?”
“She’s in there,” Lain muttered. “Sierra—” She didn’t say it so I did.
“I killed her.” I wasn’t even sorry.
All along I’d wondered what I was capable of.
Now I knew.
I wasn’t all bark. I was all crazy.
But my brain whispered she made me that way. I was Frankenstein for real, killing my master.
“We have to watch and make sure she’s dead.” I nodded at the sea.
That might take forever and we might end up as statues, but there was no way to be certain she was dead otherwise.
She’d been hunting us, systematically picking us off, one by one.
And now she was in the water, likely dead.
At least I was praying she was dead.
And I never prayed, ever.
My lips hurt from where she’d hit me in the water. The cold made them sting more instead of numbing them.
Two of my friends were dead. Another one was a murderer. It was a mess.
