Blood.
David was pale, his jaw moving like he was chewing gum. I pushed the door open with my foot, expecting to see a horrific murder scene, a body.
It was an empty bathroom.
I exhaled with relief. But then I saw that the basin and the tap handles were smeared red, as if someone had had blood all over their hands and attempted half-heartedly to wash it off. There were spatters of it all over the floor, mixed with dried soap suds. In the bath was a white towel, stained with yet more blood.
David picked it up and turned to me, anguish on his face. He mouthed his son’s name. Then he said it aloud. ‘Ryan? Ryan? Are you here? Son, are you hurt?’
Silence.
We left the bathroom. There were three more doors. One of them had a small enamel sign that said Darlene’s Room, with flowers around the edge. Presumably it had been there since she was a small child. On the door next to it, a sign that said KEEP OUT. Buddy’s room, presumably.
The third door was closed. There were drops of blood on the carpet directly outside it and, looking closer, I saw a trail of specks leading to the bathroom.
I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to do this. But what choice did I have? I couldn’t call the police. Not yet. Not until I’d seen what was in this room.
I put my hand over my nose and mouth, pushed the handle down and let the door swing open.
Chapter 40
Frankie and Ryan huddled together in the corner, as far from the remains as they could get.
The human remains.
Frankie wasn’t sure if she’d slept. There was no sense of time down here. Minutes felt like hours. Hours seemed like seconds. Her eyes were scratchy and there was a nasty, mossy taste in her mouth. Her bladder was burning too. Shortly after finding the body, she and Ryan had decided to turn off the flashlight, worried the batteries might run out, even though in the pitch-darkness it was easy to imagine the man on the other side of the room slithering towards them, dragging his bones across the floor. Reaching out a decayed hand, his fingers hovering an inch from her foot, preparing to touch her. Every so often, when she became convinced he was moving, she would have to flick on the light to check he was lying still.
Of course he was still. He was dead.
He’d been dead for a long time.
Last night, or whenever it had been, after they had realised they weren’t alone down here, she and Ryan had crawled slowly, very slowly, across the concrete floor. Not wanting to see but needing to see.
There had still been a part of Frankie that believed she was mistaken. That it was a mannequin or a pile of clothes. Down here in the dark, it would be easy to see things; for the imagination to run riot. She wanted it to be a dummy. She wanted to be able to laugh about how stupid she had been. It’s just a pile of old clothes and some rocks! Aren’t we silly?
But then they’d got to within two feet of it and Frankie pointed the flashlight beam. It was unmistakable. It was a body. A skeleton, the flesh and organs long since rotted away. Frankie had tried not to think about rats and insects and all the other creatures that might have feasted on the corpse. Were there still rats down here? She wasn’t particularly scared of rodents, but the thought of one running over her . . . She shuddered. Even worse, what if she and Ryan died down here and suffered the same fate as whoever this was?
She couldn’t let that happen.
Frankie had found herself fixating on the skull. The eye sockets. She fought the fear that this, one day, could be her and Ryan.
And then Ryan had said, ‘Oh my God.’
It seemed like a late reaction but then Frankie realised he was looking at the black garment that was draped across the pile of bones. That he’d noticed something.
‘I know who this is,’ Ryan said.
He inched closer and Frankie did the same. Now she could see what the garment was. A black leather jacket. A biker’s jacket.
There was a design stencilled in white on the back. A large circle with an upside-down crescent on top.
‘The horned god,’ said Ryan.
Beneath the symbol was a single word: Wolfspear.
‘This is Everett Miller.’
Now, on the other side of the room, after Ryan – who had absorbed the whole story from his parents – had filled her in, Frankie speculated about what had happened. Everett Miller had come here to hide and, somehow, got trapped. Looking around with the flashlight, Frankie had found numerous pieces of rock scattered about. There were marks on the ceiling by the hatch. She could picture Everett down here, throwing rocks at the ceiling, trying to capture someone’s attention. Except, of course, there was no one around. Nobody believed this place existed. She wondered if Everett had stumbled across it or if he’d always known; if it had once been common knowledge among the kids in Penance.