I’d already scrolled through my phone and watched half a sitcom and the start of a true crime doc. None of it made me tired. It just passed the time.
Daniel slept beside me, breathing deep and steady, his chest rising and falling like he didn’t have a care in the world. He had no reason to suspect I was awake. I hadn’t told him that I might stop the meds. They usually knocked me out cold.
Mochi was sleeping soundly in the cage.
My hand clenched my phone as I slipped out of bed and stepped into the hallway. The air was cooler out here. The floor felt cold under my bare feet. Moonlight poured through the tall windows, casting silver light across the floor and turning the walls into something soft and unreal.
Before I knew it, I was on the stairs, moving slowly and carefully so I didn’t trip.
That tiny bit of doubt about the woman in the basement—I could finally put it to rest. If the opening in the stone wall was missing like it had been when the cop came, then that would mean the meds were working. That I really was psychotic that day.
But if the door was back? If it opened again? I could record it. Recordher. And tomorrow morning, I’d show it to Daniel.
I passed the kitchen, then paused. I thought about grabbing a knife, but how would that look? Me walking in with a knife again? If she wanted me dead, she’d already had plenty of chances.
I kept going, pushing the wooden connector door to the basement.
Then I stopped like I’d hit a wall.
The yellow door.
It had more locks now, stacked up like someone wanted to make damn sure no one got through. But that wasn’t the part that made me freeze.
All of them—even the new ones—were unlocked.
Slowly and quietly, I reached for the handle. The yellow door swung open as if it were any other door.
The basement string lights were on.
I stood at the top of the stairs, staring down, confused. My ears strained for sound, for movement. Nothing. Just the soft hum of the lights and my own breath.
One step, then another. Every second stair gave a familiar groan under my weight, the same pattern as before. The sound echoed faintly through the basement, bouncing off stone walls.
At the bottom, the air felt moist and thick. No one was in sight. No movement whatsoever.
The hallway stretched ahead, darker than I remembered. My arms prickled from the cold.
At the fork, a woman’s scream—sharp and raw—ripped through the air. It was followed by the crash of glass.
Without thinking, I bolted into the darkness of the right tunnel and ran. The soft glow faded behind me until the dark had swallowed everything.
I pressed myself against the stone, my breath shallow, my heart thudding so hard that it pulsed in my throat. Up ahead,something moved—just a flicker of a shadow at the far end of the other tunnel, right where the woman’s door had been.
And then I saw it.
The glow.
Same as before.
That warm light spilling from an opening in the stone wall, like the entrance to a place no one was meant to find.
It was too far away for me to make out details, but I saw a figure step out of it. The figure had broad shoulders and made slow, steady movements.
It might have been Hudson.
Hard to say, but it wasn’t a wild guess.
The figure moved through the tunnel, then turned at the fork and headed down the hallway lined with those dim bulbs.
