Down here I wasn’t sure.
But would Father Mathew have put them in the areas that had light and were actually used from time to time?
I turned around and headed back, shutting switches off as I went. At the entry junction I stopped, staring ahead. I said Rachel’s name again and heard something deeper in the darkness.
A subtle shift of clothing. A soft exhale.
I moved forward slowly, dragging fingertips against the wall, searching for a light switch.
My hand met empty air. I’d come to a new room.
No switches, only rough concrete. I dug my cell free and turned its flashlight on. As bright as it had always seemed before, it was dismal down here. Shadows danced out of the beam’s meager reach. Leaving the touch of the wall felt like stepping from dry land into a drop-off. I was adrift in the semidark.
One step.
Two.
Something brushed against my face.
I let out a choked cry and batted whatever it was away. It came right back, bumping my forehead. A string hanging in the air.
I found its swaying length and tugged it. The light it was attached to came on.
The room was oblong and held stacks of shelving and a row of bookcases along with a painting of the crucifixion. Christ’s eyes gazed upward, searching for salvation, as his blood rained down on a soldier stabbing him in the side with a spear.
Another doorway yawned across the room, looking like it had been cut from black cloth.
“Rachel?” I said.
No answer.
Inside the next room the wall was smooth, and I guessed this was some of the oldest construction. No switches here, just interspersed lights with pull chains hanging down. Quaint.
Easing into the space with only the glow of my cell to go by, my foot struck something, and it rolled away. A low cart of some kind. As it stopped, a muted scraping sound came from a few steps away, and I froze, searching the darkness.
Something long and low was draped by a tarp in the far corner. I imagined a cage under there, well constructed and large enough to hold a woman and two children.
That same confidence overcame me as when I’d talked to Spanner. I knew Rachel and the boys were under that tarp.
Three steps and I was there. Finding the edge and yanking it back. Pulling. Dragging. Already saying her name. Hearing her weak reply.
It took several seconds for my eyes to register what lay beneath the tarp. A few more for my mind to accept it.
An old pool table, felt scuffed and torn. The one that had been in the activity room upstairs years and years ago.
No cage. No Rachel. No boys.
I backed away from it and stood there dumbly, wondering what I’d been hearing in the dark.
Hurried footsteps came out of the next room toward me. Fast.
No time to turn or dodge, just blindsiding pain, then I was airborne, landing hard on the concrete. Rolling.
As I tried pushing myself up, something struck my temple. Neon stars shifted at the edges of my vision, pulsing and blending with shadows. As they burned themselves out, a shape loomed over me.
There was a click and a light came on.
29
Father Mathew in all his glory.
Gown billowing, brow red and sweaty, fists clenched.
We stayed that way for a beat, me lying prone, head swimming and ears ringing from the kick he’d delivered, him standing above me, breathing hard. We could’ve been another painting like the one of Christ in the next room.
Then he leaped into motion and kicked me again.
Low in the stomach, his sharp-toed shoe digging in like a blunt dagger. Reflexively I caught hold of his leg as he tried yanking away, but I held fast, and he started to hop as I climbed to my knees and grabbed him around the waist.
His fist crashed down on the back of my neck like the fury of God himself, and I went flat again. Amid the waves of pain, I rolled away, knowing another kick was coming. It was, and when it landed, it glanced off my lower back instead of my stomach.
Dust flew up, invading my nostrils, and one of my palms abraded on the cement. Father Mathew’s shoes scuffed in the half-light, and his hands latched on to my shirt collar as I made it to my feet.
He ran me across the room, all his weight and strength from workouts evident as I slammed into a heavy table and slid across its top. A band of fire bloomed on my thighs where they’d met the table’s edge, but it was quickly overshadowed by my head and right shoulder taking the brunt of my weight as I landed on the floor.
He’s going to kill me, I thought absently. I was right about him and his involvement, and this man of the cloth was going to end me down here in the basement where I’d known real fear for the first time.
For some reason the thought angered me. It wasn’t just the poetic injustice of it—it was everything.