Zwierek dropped his hand briefly to his bag, fingers brushing against the zipper like a habit, like reassurance, and then he stepped aside just enough for me to move in. No words; wedidn’t need them. I tested the handle first. Locked, of course. I adjusted my grip. Every movement was intentional in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time, like everything in me had finally narrowed down into something focused and usable instead of scattered and useless. The lock gave quicker than I expected. A soft click, barely anything, but it sounded louder than the engine had earlier. We froze, both of us, just for a second. Listening.
Nothing.
Just the faint, distant hum of a television somewhere deeper inside the house. I pushed the door open slowly, careful not to let it creak. The hinges complained anyway, just a little, just enough to make my jaw tighten, but it wasn’t enough to draw attention. We slipped inside. The kitchen smelled warm, used. There was something on the counter, food maybe, half prepared or half forgotten, I didn’t look closely enough to tell.
The television was clearer now. Muffled voices, laughter. Something light, something stupid. The kind of noise people let fill their homes when they don’t expect anything to interrupt it. Zwierek glanced at me, just a flick of his eyes, then down the hallway, then back. A question without asking it. I answered without speaking. A small tilt of my head toward the door off to the side.
The one that didn’t seem to belong in a kitchen unless you knew what it led to. He followed my gaze, and for a second, that smile touched his mouth again.
We moved, and the floor didn’t betray us, thank fuck. My hand found the handle before I realized I’d reached for it. I tightened my grip, held it there like I needed that anchor before everything shifted again. Then I turned it.
The door opened easy and quiet, like it wanted to. Like it had been waiting. Stairs dropping down into the darkness below. Cooler air rising up, brushing against my face in a way that felt colder than the rest of the house. We stepped inside.Closed the door behind us, slow and careful, until the kitchen and everything in it was cut off. The steps creaked less than I expected. Still enough to make me aware of every inch of my weight, every shift, every breath that felt too loud in my own chest.
Halfway down, I could already smell it.
That basement smell.
Concrete, dust. Faint and old. At the bottom, there it was, mounted on the wall. A small box, plain, easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it, but I was. I stared at it for a second, long enough for something to settle into place in my head. I stepped forward, reached out, and flipped it. The house above us died, just like that. The television cut mid sound, mid laugh, mid whatever the fuck it was saying, and the silence dropped hard.
We didn’t move; we just stood there in it. Letting it settle, letting it become real. Then, simultaneously, we pulled the balaclavas on.
Fabric sliding over skin, tight and comforting. We moved under the stairs, pressed into the space just enough to disappear into the dark, and we waited. You feel that, little Ghost?
That moment where time starts dragging in a way that makes you feel sick? Yeah, stay in that feeling a little longer, don’t rush it.
The sound came first. Upstairs, a chair scraping lightly against the floor. Footsteps, slow and unaware. Then, the door. The one we had just come through. It opened, light spilled down the staircase in a thin, trembling line. Her voice followed, soft and a little confused, talking to someone.
“... the power just went out, I don’t, no, no, it’s fine. I’ll check the breaker…”
Her footsteps shifted, coming closer down the stairs.
“I’ll call you back in a second, okay?”
A short pause, then a soft exhale, and the click of the call ending.
The light from her phone appeared next. A narrow beam, shaking slightly as it moved. Catching the edges of the walls, the railing, the steps as she started down. One step, then another. The light flickered over the stairs above us, too close, too fucking close. Her foot hit the last step, and the light steadied, right at our level. The light hit my chest first, not my face, my chest. Like she was aiming lower, like instinct told her not to look too high too fast, like if she kept it there she could pretend it was nothing. Just a fuse, just a switch, just something normal she could fix and go back upstairs and keep living whatever normal life she had before we stepped into it. I moved before I really thought about it. Not fast, that’s the thing. It wasn’t a lunge or anything violent, just a step forward out of the dark, enough for her to see me properly, enough for the outline of me to show up in front of her instead of staying something half-hidden and deniable.
And then, she saw me.
Her whole body just… stopped, like a deer caught in headlights.
The light from her phone lifted, slowly, like it didn’t belong to her anymore, like her hand wasn’t fully under her control, until it found my face. Or what it could see of it anyway. And her eyes, they didn’t widen, didn’t dart around. They locked, right into mine. I didn’t expect that. I thought she’d look away, look past me, look for a way out. But she didn’t. She stayed there, staring. Trying to understand what she was looking at, like if she just held on long enough, it would make sense. And I froze.
Not because I was scared, it was something else. Something… off. Like stepping wrong on a stair you thought was there and realizing mid-motion that it isn’t. That drop in your stomach. That moment where your body doesn’t know whether to keep going or pull back. She looked… normal. That’s a stupid thing to notice, I know, but it’s what hit me.
Hair slightly messy like she’d been sitting down for a while, clothes soft and worn in the way people wear things at home,not expecting anyone to see them. There was nothing about her that fit into what we were doing. Nothing that made it make sense. Her lips parted, like she was trying to say something. Or maybe scream, I don’t know. It happened behind her so quickly I barely processed it before something slammed into the side of her head.
Her body went slack right in front of my eyes. The phone slipped from her hand, light spinning across the wall as it fell, and she folded in on herself in a way that didn’t look natural, like something had been cut loose inside her all at once. She didn’t make a sound, just a small, broken exhale as she hit the ground. For a second, everything felt wrong in a completely different way. Like something that should have happened slower had been ripped past. I looked at him, too stunned to say anything.
Zwierek stood there, something heavy still in his hand, a piece of concrete, I think, or a brick, I didn’t look long enough to register it properly, and he just met my stare like he’d been expecting it.
“Well,”he said, almost conversational, like we weren’t standing over a dead body on a basement floor. Like this was just some minor inconvenience we’d dealt with.“That was going nowhere, wasn’t it?”
My jaw tightened, muscles pulling in a way that made my teeth ache.
“You’re welcome, by the way,”he added after a beat, tilting his head, that edge creeping into his voice again.“You handled that beautifully.”
That tone. The one that dug into my skin and further into my veins. I exhaled through my nose, slowly, but it didn’t do anything to bleed the heat out of my chest.
