?
“I don’t know where you’re taking me, but this gloomy basement takes my mind elsewhere.”
The truth is that it is darker than I remember. The lights are way dimmer. There are dense spiderwebs everywhere youlook. When we reach the door I was interested in, its broken lock catches my eye. That and the fact that it is open.
“This is not a good sign,” Lucas says, and I agree with him.
I take the courage from inside of me and try to put myself into the skin of the characters from my books, who always succeeded in escaping danger through magical miracles. Maybe this is not the case for magic, but I feel like I need the heroes’ state of mind to fight the reality that overwhelms me. Even if I have to borrow it from fictional worlds.
I push the door with a horrible creak, and I am praying in my mind not to wake up a sleepy spirit. I don’t wish for my life to become a horror movie. Everything already seems like a piece of a thriller, and that’s enough.
Inside is the same pale light, maybe even darker. Lucas takes my hand and squeezes it a little, giving me a piece of his strength. I walk beside him after closing the door as quietly as we can, trying not to make so much noise because of its rusty hinges.
Our steps take us through the dark tunnel. I then stop when I hear a strange noise capturing the atmosphere. The hand from Lucas’s hold tightens due to the panic.
I hope I just imagined that sound, and I won’t see in front of me a madman with an axe in one hand, ready to kill us.
That sound is getting closer, and I tremble right when a goddamn rat runs by us. I silently swear and let his hand breathe, the hand that did some miracles…
Okay, now it’s neither the time nor the place to think about the fact that he satisfied me with the hand I was holding, so I push aside my memories and concentrate on walking.
After one turn, I see the shadow of a squatted person, who looks in pain while trying to get up. We exchange gazes, thinking about the same things, and we fasten our steps towards that person.
Unfortunately, but also fortunately, our presumptions were true.
“Oh my God, Blake,” I whisper, dropping on my knees beside him.
His eyes are more scared than I expected them to be, and as lost as they were ten years ago. He moves his gaze to Lucas, looking at him with far more terror. He starts to shake, one hand on his abdomen, where I then see too much blood seeping through his fingers.
“She’s not safe,” he tells Lucas, and I watch him lose his conscience.
We both get his body right before it can hit the ground.
Chapter 12
Cathal
“Don’t leave any trace of blood, Anmara,” Lucas whispers to me.
“What do you think I’m doing?” I whisper back in a higher note while wiping the blood trail with the shirt I removed from me, and while Lucas is carrying him through the dark corridor.
Lucas had his t-shirt taken off him and put on Blake’s wound, but he couldn’t press it there and carry him, so the red liquid also reached the ground. And what else could I do besides remaining only in my bra to not undress Lucas to wipe the blood stains from behind us?
We were lucky that the entire tunnel was made of stone and there was no carpet. I don’t know what I would’ve done if it were. I mean, there remain some stains, but only a few knew about this tunnel’s existence. Also, I don’t think the people who acknowledged it would say anything or notice them, given the rest of the stains along the way.
You could only reach the basement with a special key that not many people had. I know that I found it while searching for aperfume in Marshall’s stuff, and I tossed and turned every stone of this hotel to find out its purpose.
To use the lift, you needed a card, but a normal one wouldn’t have let you go to the basement. Moreover, you couldn’t even open the door to the stairs going down here without it, because it is always locked. The special key also had a chip inside that acted like a hotel card, letting you discover hidden places.
So yeah, I don’t think many people know about it, given how deeply it was buried under the hotel owner’s possessions and then hidden by me. He most probably forgot about it. I hope he didn’t have a backup, and what I found in the chest weren’t acts committed here.
I am still scared of whoever else had it, especially after the state we found Blake in.
Going back to the present, we reach the creaky door, which I carefully open and let Lucas go first to the elevator.
We are also lucky that it is parquet flooring here, not carpets. Ironically, given that rugs cover most of the superior floors.
We enter the lift, put the key over the card reader and press the button for my floor, with no other place in our minds. I am praying in my head that the door won’t open on any other floor. I don’t know how I could explain such a situation. I am probably also doing it out loud, because Lucas turns his gaze to mine, after looking in all of the elevator’s corners for a camera.
