Night’s Edge (21 page)

“A few of the boards landed on me when the stairs collapsed.”

She pursed her lips, frowning hard. He smiled at her. “It does my ego a world of good to know you care, Kiley.”

“It’s not by choice, Jack.”

The edge he was prying rose up a little. “Here, quick, get your bar over here,” he said. Kiley hurried to his side and jammed her bar underneath, helping him pry the slab of concrete upward. Jack dropped his own bar, gripping the edge with his hands, pushing and lifting. Kiley used her bar to help him, until finally they managed to overturn the slab. It hit the floor and split into several pieces.

Jack looked at Kiley and she licked her lips as if she was nervous before handing him the shovel. He eyed the dirt, began scraping it aside with the shovel blade, felt something underneath. “It’s shallow,” he said.

She nodded. “It’s cold again. Hell, Jack, I can see your breath.” She rubbed her arms. “We must be close.”

He nodded and continued scraping away the soil, revealing a square of metal, two feet by two feet.

“What is it? A box, is it some kind of box, Jack?”

He ran his hands over the thing, tracing its edges. “I feel…hinges.” He lifted his gaze to meet hers. “Jesus, Kiley, I think it’s some kind of a…a door.”

“A door?”

He nodded.

“A door to what?”

Goddamn good question. The word hell popped into his mind, but he decided not to share that with her.

“J
ACK,
I’
M AFRAID.”
For once Kiley didn’t mind admitting it, as she stood there staring down into pitch-black darkness.

“Me, too.”

“I think it’s time we call the police. Don’t you?”

He shrugged. “No proof a crime’s been committed.” He glanced down into the darkness. “Though I’d bet the farm on it.”

She gripped his arm, as if she could convince him by squeezing her words into him. “Let’s at least try. If the police won’t come out here, then we’ll do it ourselves.”

He tipped his head to one side, started to speak, but then seemed to decide against it.

“Come on, Jack. We’ll call the police, we’ll do it right now.”

He nodded, so she tugged him away from that inky maw and toward the shallow concrete steps that led up out of the cellar to an angled hatchway door. She pressed her palms to it, to push it open. But it wouldn’t budge. “Hell, I know it’s not locked. I thought I left it wide open, but—” She pushed again.

Jack said, “I was afraid of something like this.”

She frowned at him, then she understood. “They won’t let us out, will they? Not even if it’s to tell their story?”

“They don’t trust us, Kiley. What’s to stop us from getting out of here and running like hell? Never looking back? God knows that’s what everyone else who’s lived here has done.”

She licked her lips, and turned slowly to face the now-open metal trapdoor in the floor. “I don’t want to go down there, Jack.”

“I know, honey. I know. Neither do I.”

“Do we even have a light?”

“Yeah.” He pulled a flashlight from somewhere. “I remembered about the lights going out before. Brought backup.”

“Good thinking.”

He drew a breath. “Stay up here, kid. As close to the hatchway door as you can.”

She shook her head. “I’m more afraid to be here alone than I am to go down there with you. We do this together.”

“If you’re sure…”

She gave a firm nod.

“Okay, then.” He put her behind him, drawing her hands to his waist just above his hips, and she knew it was because there wasn’t enough room for them to go side by side down the concrete steps that led deep into the earth. “Stay close.”

“No problem there,” she said.

He flicked on the flashlight, holding it in front of them as they moved slowly down the steep, narrow stairs. He kept his free hand over one of hers on his waist. The darkness closed in around them. She knew there was light behind her from the cellar, but without turning she couldn’t see it. And knowing it was there wasn’t nearly reassuring enough. Feeling Jack’s warmth suffusing her hand helped more. But it didn’t dispel the
chill of foreboding that gripped her more thoroughly with every step. It was more than blinding darkness that surrounded her. It was physical, real. It hugged her with cold dampness. She smelled it—dank and sour. She tasted its bitter, stale, putrid air. She even heard it, containing and muffling every sound.

“God, there’s a smell.”

“I know.”

At the bottom of the stairs, the floor leveled off. Concrete, perfectly rectangular, just tall enough for an adult to walk upright, and only wide enough for one to pass through. Jack’s shoulders brushed the walls if he leaned even slightly to one side or the other. It was a concrete tunnel, with only the occasional cobweb blocking the way.

And at its end, the darkness widened.

Jack paused, shining the flashlight’s beam around. “It’s a room, I think.” He traced three walls, then examined the fourth, the one with the doorway in which they stood. “I don’t see any other exits. This is the only way in.”

“Or out,” she whispered. “Jack, do you feel that? We’re not alone.”

He pulled her up beside him, now that there was room to stand two abreast, sliding an arm around her and holding her close, even as he moved the flashlight beam around the room again, lower this time, tracing the floor from end to end. The light beam stopped when it hit the body.

Kiley yelped and turned her head into Jack’s chest. But then she forced herself to look again. Trembling, straining against her own will to turn her head once more, she looked.

The darkly stained bones and leatherlike flesh slumped against the wall. Tangled blond hair clung in patches to the skull.

“There are chains,” Jack said. “Look.”

She followed the beam of light to the manacles on the wrists and the chains mounted to the walls behind. “This is a nightmare.”

“It was for her,” Jack said.

And suddenly, the gut-wrenching, bone-numbing fear she had been feeling vanished—replaced by a wave of grief as it hit her that this scary, smelly, partially decomposed body had been a person. A woman, or even a girl. Brought down here, chained up and…

“Oh, God, there are more,” Jack said.

She opened her eyes and saw the light moving around the floor, illuminating another corpse, and then another, and another. “Sweet Jesus,” she whispered. Tears were welling in her eyes. “It’s over, I promise you. God, no wonder you can’t rest. No wonder. I promise you, all of this is coming to light. Now.”

No.

The word was spoken, she heard it, and yet it felt as if it were not a word at all, but a feeling. A powerful emotion. She heard the trapdoor slam down, behind and above them.

“The spirits of this place aren’t ready to let us leave,” Jack whispered.

“Maybe they never will be,” Kiley said.

Jack touched her shoulders. “Don’t think that way.”

“How can I not? God, Jack, we could be trapped down here. We could die the same horrible way they did.” Pulling away from him, she started back along the tunnel, hurrying through the darkness to the stairway, and seeing just what she had expected to see. The closed door at the top. She went up, pushed at it, but nothing.

Jack was behind her, his arms around her, and she
turned into them, let him hold her. Eventually she calmed enough to sink onto a step, and he handed her the flashlight and tried to open the door himself, but it was no use.

Sighing, he sank down beside her. “It’s going to be all right. Chris knows we’re here, he knows we were planning to dig.”

“You think anyone will find us if these ghosts don’t want them to?”

He sighed. “I think they do want us to be found. Just as they wanted to be found themselves. We just have to wait until they’re ready.”

“Why the delay? What could they hope to gain?”

He pulled her closer, held her beside him. They sat there on the second step from the bottom, the terrible stench of death permeating the air. And slowly, Kiley realized that Jack was shivering. At first it was just a mild ripple, but then it seemed to grow until his entire body vibrated with it. Kiley pulled free of his embrace to look at him. She lifted the flashlight and he shielded his eyes, averted his face.

“What is it, Jack? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t…know.”

Kiley swallowed hard. He’d been shaking earlier, during the seance, too. Just like this. No, not this bad. “What should I do?”

The shaking stopped suddenly, and Jack went very still. His head fell forward, and the rest of his body tried to follow. Kiley gripped his shoulders and kept him from toppling to the floor. She eased him backward instead, lowering his head carefully until it rested on a stair, wishing for a pillow. “Jack? Jack, can you hear me?”

His eyes flashed open then. So suddenly, with such an unnatural look in them that she jerked away from him.

Blinking, calming herself, she leaned closer again. “Jack?”

She was dizzy as she studied his face. He wasn’t responding, but at least he’d stopped shaking. God, she had to sit down. She sank onto the step again, let her head fall forward. If she could just rest her eyes for a moment.

But when she lifted her head again she wasn’t in the basement anymore. She was upstairs, running herself a hot bath, alone again, and sad at being always so alone.

Her husband was always going on business trips, and he must think she was pretty stupid if he thought she didn’t realize something more than business was going on. She felt tears hot on her cheeks and glanced into the mirror.

The face of a beautiful woman looked back at her. Buttery blond hair, piercing, sad eyes. “He doesn’t love me anymore,” Sharon Miller whispered through Kiley’s lips. “He never touches me. Something’s terribly wrong. There’s a coldness in his eyes that wasn’t there before.”

She turned at the sound of an engine in the driveway. Phil was home early. He would expect her to be asleep, not up weeping. But she had to confront him, now, tonight, before she lost her courage.

She padded downstairs in her nightgown. Only—he didn’t come inside. Why wasn’t he coming inside?

She moved to the window to peer out at his car in the driveway, and then she noticed that the hatchway door was open. “What is he doing in the cellar?” she asked herself.

Turning from the window, Sharon went down into the basement. There was a trapdoor in the floor. One she never knew was there. Oh, God, she could hear a woman crying. Distant, echoing.

Sharon’s heart was beating fast. Somewhere deep inside, Kiley was begging her not to go down there. But she went. She knew she was Kiley, not Sharon, and she knew this was something like being trapped in someone else’s nightmare. But she couldn’t wake up and she couldn’t make it stop.

Turning, she walked the length of the tunnel, ending in the room of horror, where the young wife of long ago had no doubt ended up. And then Kiley saw them, through Sharon’s eyes, or was it Sharon reliving it through Kiley’s? Women, beautiful young women, chained to the walls. They were dirty, their hair in tangles. They were naked. One hung limply, dead or close to it, but the others were alive and terrified. And her husband, the man she had loved, was forcing the new one to her knees, fastening the chains around her wrists, hitting her when she whimpered and pleaded. “God, what is this?”

Jack—no, not Jack—Phil spun around and saw her there.

“Help me,” the girl he’d been chaining up begged. “Please, get out and help me!”

Sharon turned to run, but Phil was too fast for her. He caught her before she made it out, flung her to the floor.

She was frightened. God, she had never been frightened like this. She couldn’t believe this was her husband.

He bent over her, clutched her head between his palms. “You have to understand, Sharon. I have needs. Dirty, secret needs. You’re too fine a woman for me. I could never use you the way I can these filthy sluts.”

“Phillip, they’re girls! They’re only girls!”

“Whores. I pick them up in the city, bring them here to satisfy my needs. No one misses them, Sharon. It’s just as well I take them out of the world.”

“You…kill them?”

“They don’t last well, those whores. Get sickly, weak. Eventually they die on their own, or I take mercy on them, put them out of their misery.”

She clutched her stomach, doubling over and fighting the urge to vomit. When she got it under control, she tried to straighten again. “How—m-many?” Tears were flowing from her eyes now, she could barely see, despite the lights he had strung through the place, trouble lights like they used on construction sites.

He smiled slowly. “Oh, many. Lots and lots of them.” He drew a breath, sighed. “Come on, my love. I promise, nothing so unpleasant is going to happen to you.”

He slid his arm around her shoulders. She shivered, wondering what he would do to her now.

“I…won’t tell your secret, darling. I would wish things were different. I would ask that you stop this and let them go, but I would never betray you.”

“No, of course you wouldn’t. Not to your mother, nor your priest. Good Christian that you are. You’ll stay with me, continue loving me, though you think me a rapist and murderer.”

The trapdoor was open as he led her up the stairs. Somewhere down deep inside her, Kiley thought that was odd. It had been closed before. Somehow, she was aware that she and Jack were being used as puppets, as the play unfurled again. And she wondered how far it would go.

But then the other overtook her again. Behind her she could hear the moans and weeping, pleading voices. “Get away from him. Run. Tell someone!”

Ahead of her, she saw light. Her husband yanked the plug from the wall, and the trouble lights went black. The women sobbed, growing hysterical as they were
plunged into darkness, but he didn’t care. He slammed the steel door down again, never releasing the death grip he had on her arm.

“You’re hurting me.”

“Not for much longer, love. I promise. Come along now.” He took her up the stairs. She felt his grip on her arm relax and she pulled free, racing as fast as she could through the house, toward the door. But he beat her there, blocking her escape. Turning, her heart pounding in her chest, she ran upstairs, seeking the safety of a room with a door she could bolt against him, and a telephone. She went into the bedroom, pushing the door shut.

He slammed into it, but she braced with all her strength, then slid the bolt home. Slowly, she backed away. But he was pounding the door, howling with rage. Bang! Bang! Bang!