The air is thick and stale, profoundly dark. There is a ticking sound, like the working of pipes, and then something else, a scrabbling noise, a scratching, like rodents squabbling—or, Beverley realizes, like something trapped trying to get out.
“Did anyone bring a flashlight?”
“Maybe there’s a light pull somewhere…”
“Where do these steps end?”
A strained, bestial sound comes from somewhere in the basement.
The women freeze at the bottom of the steps.
It comes again.
“Shit. Somebody find a light.”
The women frantically search in the darkness, hands scouring clammy walls, finding nothing but infuriating smoothness until Beverley reaches across something hard and metallic. She runs her fingers over it, searching for a switch or a button.
Light suddenly fills the basement space.
It is stark, artificial, yellow. Margot stands with her hand still grasping the bottom of the light pull, but each of the women is staring at the same thing, for a split second when there is only silence and horror and held breath.
At the center of the room, a large pipe runs down into the floor. Attached to that pipe by the wrists is Enid.
She has been tied with her arms above her head. Her mouth is gagged and her head lolls in exhaustion, but her eyes…her eyes are wide and animal and frantic.
Then the silence breaks.
Beverley reaches her first, tugging uselessly at the cable ties around her wrists.
Elsie bends, pulls the gag down from Enid’s mouth, asks her again and again if she’s hurt, if she can breathe. She orders Margot to go and fetch water from upstairs.
With the gag removed, Enid’s wail is vulpine, an inhuman distress call, a sound of sheer terror.
“It’s all right. It’s all right,” Elsie coos in the soothing tones of a mother. “We’ve got you. We’re here now. You’re safe.” She turns quickly to Beverley. “Find something to cut these cable ties.”
Beverley drags herself into action, grateful to have someone tell her what to do, order her own delirious thoughts for her. She stumbles around the cluttered basement. Among the household storage and the tins and the boxes are signs that Enid has been here for a long time.There are two buckets, one of them the source of the stench, in which she has clearly been forced to perform her daily functions, and another with water and a sponge, presumably used when she has been allowed to clean herself. There’s a pile of newspapers and a chair, which has been positioned directly in front of the pipe. Briefly, she imagines Roger sitting there, chin in his hands. Would he watch Enid as she suffered? Did he taunt her?
She continues searching for something that might cut the cable ties. She did have a knife, she thinks helplessly. She’d brought one but foolishly left it in her bag, on the front seat of the car. She realizes that there are ropes and wrenches scattered about, and a hammer on top of a cabinet, stained with something sticky and black.
Suddenly she feels light, too light, and her knees crumple beneath her. She is forced to cling to the cabinet to stay upright. A very bright star lodges itself in a corner of her vision. The sounds of the room—Elsie’s muttering, Enid’s ragged breathing—start to seem as if they are very far away.
She moves her hand to her stomach and feels that the blood has started to dry out. Perhaps that means she has stopped bleeding. Or perhaps it means she has no blood left to shed.
She can hear Margot moving about upstairs, running the taps. Then, suddenly, she sees them—a pair of garden shears propped up against a wall. She grabs them and staggers toward Elsie.
“Why did he do this to you?” Elsie is asking. Enid appears skeletal, a grim contrast to the woman in the photographs upstairs. She looks up at them. Beverley flinches as her eyes briefly meet Enid’s. Does she know who Beverley is? Can she tell, just by looking at her, that her husband has had his hands on her?
She is so cold. The shears fall to the floor.
“Bev?”
She wants to find the strength to answer, but she can’t.
“Bev!”
That’s when the sound comes. A car approaching, the crunch of tires on concrete.
Beverley, Elsie and Enid look between one another, hot with panic.
