“But why the hell did he do it?” Elsie asks.
“Because he wanted to be the best,” Beverley answers. The walls of the room are all leaning in. “He was frustrated at not being promoted after Henry’s arrest. He wanted to be the one to solve the case of the decade, so he created it himself.”
“Jesus—” Elsie whispers, but she is cut off by the sound of barking.
Forty-Six
Margot’s head whipsup, and she runs out of the room, followed by Elsie and, eventually, Beverley, who staggers down the hallway behind them.
Margot finds Duke in the kitchen, scratching at the bottom of a door. The dog whines, sticking his nose to the crack.
“Is it a pantry?” Elsie asks.
Margot pulls the dog away by the collar and tries the handle. “It’s locked,” she says, turning to Elsie and Beverley. Duke immediately returns to the gap and recommences his whining.
“No,” Beverley says, the realization a storm cloud tearing open. “It’s a basement.”
She stumbles to it, beating her fist on the white-painted wood.
“Hello!” she shouts. “Hello?” Louder. “Is there anybody down there? Enid?” Her fists leave bloody curls on the paint. The other women join in, pounding their fists and leaning their weight against the door, trying to force it open.
“What if there are others?” Margot asks breathlessly. “What if there are bodies?”
“Someone needs to break it down.” Elsie pummels. “Not you,” she adds quickly, casting a glance at Beverley, who is now bent double, clutching her abdomen.
“How the hell are we supposed to break down a door?” Margot cries.
“Can’t we pick the lock?” As Beverley cranes her eyes upward, her friends look blurry, shimmering.
Suddenly Elsie raises her foot and kicks.
Beverley grits her teeth against the pain as she watches her quiet, determined friend raise her foot again and again, slamming it against the wood, trying to loosen the lock. Elsie sweeps the hair back from her face, her eyes darting, the exertion emblazoning her cheeks with crimson. “I think, if we all tried, we could get it,” she urges.
The three women step back, positioning themselves in line with one another, left shoulders pointed forward, eyes fixed firmly on the door. Briefly, Elsie clasps Beverley’s fingers, and does the same to Margot’s.
“Ready?” Elsie says. “One, two…”
On three, they charge, their bodies smashing against the door in unison.
Pain sears through Beverley’s entire body.
But it works.
The door springs open and reverberates on its hinges, slowly creaking wider to reveal a dark set of stairs leading down to a place of absolute black.
“Holy crap.” Margot peers through the gloom.
“Enid!” Beverley cries as more pain daggers across her stomach. She feels her eyes begin to roll back, her body wracked, as she falls to her knees at the top of the stairs.
“Bev! We need to get her an ambulance,” Elsie urges Margot, but Beverley shakes her head fiercely, gesturing down the stairs. They have to see if there is anyone down there, to see if there is anyone they can save from this.
“I’ll go,” Margot says, shoving Duke aside and placing a foot on the first step.
“Jeez.” She buries her nose in her elbow. There is a stench rising from down below—not like death, or what Beverley imagines death might smell like, but like bodies, like cattle squashed together in their muck.
Margot continues down the steps, with Elsie close behind her. Slowly, Beverley pulls herself upright, sees their heads disappearing down below and makes a decision. She will not give up now. She will not be left bleeding on this kitchen floor, so close to the finishing point. So, with a trembling body, and in a pink dress soaked through with blood, she lurches forward and begins to descend slowly.
The temperature drops as the women move belowground, and the rancid smell intensifies. Beverley’s senses are on high alert, her nerves strung tight; she is a prey animal moving through the forest at night. There is afeelingdown here, a sense of something inhabiting the space even though they cannot see it.
