Dodie poked at the nest in the cupboard with her golf club. “What a mess,” she commented. “They didn’t even get as far as to tear this heap down.” The tarp flapped on the roof with a sharp sound, making her jump. “Hurry up, would you, Vail? I’d like to get out of here. Preferably before this demon house eats us all alive.”
Vail was out of range of my flashlight beam. He had walked through the kitchen as if he lived here every day. I heard something thump in the next room, then a doorknob rattling. The tinkle of glass.
“The carpet’s soaked in the living room,” he called back to us from the dark. “It isn’t just the rain.”
I bent my knees, doing an experimental flex, and I felt the kitchen floor give alarmingly beneath my feet. The wood was rotten. “There’s water below,” I called back. “Under the foundation.”
“It’s why they couldn’t build.” Vail sounded calm. “Why they gave up. They thought they could fix the problem of the water under the house because it makes no sense. We’re not on a high water table in this neighborhood. But it’s as wet in here as if we’re on an underground lake. They likely had a plan to fix the drainage, but had to abandon it.”
“The water problem was here when they originally tried to build the cellar,” I called out to Vail’s disembodied voice. “Why do you—”
“Jackpot.” Vail ignored me. “I found the basement door.” A thump. “It’s locked.”
“There’s abasement?” Lisette said. “It must be soaked.”
Who locked it?I thought but didn’t ask.
There was a crack as Vail hit something with his baseball bat. “I can’t break it,” he called out. “Dodie and Violet, come here.”
We found him around the corner, aiming one of his powerful kicks at the basement door. I handed the flashlight to Lisette and hefted my shovel with both hands. “Vail, get out of the way.”
We took turns—me with the shovel, Dodie with the golf club, and Vail with his boots and Lisette’s hatchet. It took much longer to break than the back door had. The basement door seemed to be made of something stronger, and the lock was tight. I stared at it and felt sudden cold certainty.Sister, I’ve found you.My ribs and kidneys still throbbed with pain where she’d kicked me.
“Should we have called a priest or something?” Lisette asked.
As if in reply, there was a thump in the basement, the sound deep below the house, on the other side of the door. Lisette’s hand grabbed my arm, her fingers digging in.
“No priests,” I said.
“No priests,” Vail agreed. “Some things you have to do yourself if you want to get them right.”
“If she’s going to kill me, could she please get on with it?” Dodie complained. “It would be easier getting into a bank vault.” She gave the door another hard swing with the club.
Finally, the wood frame gave enough for the lock to splinter. Vail kicked the door in. Lisette aimed the flashlight beam into pure, inky darkness. The only thing we could see was a set of rotten wooden stairs descending into blankness, as if the world ended here.
Lisette lowered the beam, and I could see that the stairs didn’t end in a black hole. They were sunk into water at least several feet deep, the surface glassy and still in the beam of light.
My breath fogged as it left my lips.
For the first time in this wild expedition, I hesitated. I did not want to go down there. I didn’t want Vail and Dodie to go downthere. And I definitely didn’t want my daughter going anywhere near that water.
Vail swore, his voice a rasp. He turned to Lisette and handed her the hatchet. “Keep this,” he told her. “I’ll take the bat.”
“You’re goingdown?” Dodie’s voice sounded as panicked as I felt.
Vail didn’t even flinch. “It’s what we’re here for.” He picked up the bat. “I’ll go first.”
I grabbed his arm. “Wait.”
Vail stopped, turning.
“Do you remember Ben’s fourth birthday?” I asked him.
He nodded. “Yeah, I do.”
“We baked him a cake.” I blinked down at the black water at the bottom of the stairs. The cake had been chocolate, the kind from a mix in a box. We’d baked it together in the kitchen. Where were our parents that day? I didn’t remember, and it didn’t matter. The best memories of my life didn’t include our parents.
Had that really been us? Had we been kids, cracking jokes and insults as we baked a cake for our little brother? Kids who weren’t thinking about their nightmares? Kids who didn’t know they would someday end up here, riding waves of anger and grief into the dark?
