My boot shot through the crumbling wood of a broken tread.
I saw the dark void rising up to swallow me and then I was clinging to the broken stair, looking down into blackness, my life split in two. One of us lay here gasping on the stairs, near miss, and the other, small, lay below, reaching up from the dark.
I clutched at the stairs, catching my breath. The black void of my nightmares had always been a metaphor, man. And now it was a real place. Was that good news? Or a bummer?
Worse, now that I had climbed the stairs, I could see that the staircase led, Escher-style, up to the ceiling. A dead end.
What was thepointof all this? House of Horrors wasn’t actually a bad name for this joint. Edith Maxwell couldhavethe place.
But no, I would wipe the smile off that bitch’s smug face. I would see Ned in jail for what he’d done to Joey. And Silent Jim—
If he’d laid a hand on Alex, this cowgirl would see him to hell herself.
I picked myself up gingerly and poked the towel rod at the ceiling. Was that a little bit of give? I could feel a stretch in it, a warp to thin wood. A hesitant answer to my question.
I was aware of my breath blowing against the ceiling as I swept my hand along searching for the thinnest fault line, an edge—
JohnnyCash.
Making sure of my footing, I jammed the sharp edge of the towel bar into the narrow fissure, wedging it as deeply as I could, my hands sweaty on the metal and the taste of dust in my mouth. I leveraged my weight until the wood spoke real words to me: complaining, cracking, splitting.
A hinge I couldn’t see groaned painfully and the barrier above me flung wide. I heard a thud, and pages of slick paper rained down around me and slid past me on the stairs.
I hauled myself out on hands and knees, shaking. Into darkness. Again.
Was it progress?
I felt for the trapdoor and closed it gently—before I fell through it or someone followed me up.
A trapdoor, a basement I had never seen. I’d believed I’d explored every inch of this place over the years. But McPhee’s had secrets. Secrets I had once known, then forgotten.
I stretched my hands out, found a wall, and stood, but not cautiously enough. The crown of my head found the edge of a low ceiling.
I felt something against my cheek and swiped at it wildly. But it was only a thin string. When I pulled on it, I was rewarded with the light of a naked bulb showing the underside of a staircase. Below my feet, a carpet of outdated McPhee’s Tavern menus.
I scuffed at the pile of them with my boot. Below the square toe of my boot was a big, black X.
56
I stood on the X, getting a grip on my breath and mind.
Someone certainly had a sense of humor, but I wasn’t laughing.
I’d burrowed up, Bugs Bunny style, from the basement into the storage locker behind the pub, and, least funny of all, the storage locker was padlocked. From theoutside.
I moved some heavy boxes onto the giant X to weigh down the hatch and sat on the nearest one, exhausted and weak and trying to remember active-shooter training advice I’d picked up over time.
Could I just stay here until Quin had the situation locked down, until I heard the footfalls of cavalry and the ringing voices of authority?
Where were thepolice?
We’re just sitting ducks here.
Right. If Silent Jim and Ned had never come back to the storeroom, Quin and Lumpy Jim could still be stuck in there, waiting for something to kick off. Could Alex still be in the building, leading some kind of scavenger hunt for the record books?
What would Jim and Ned do when they finally realized there was no treasure?
What if Pascal and the group hadn’t made it out but had been shut up somewhere else? The walk-in?
