Little Secrets Read online

  Carrie had already gone down the first few steps of the other spiral staircase, moving without fear or pause into the inky blackness that reached beyond the dimming glow from Ginny’s flashlight. She spoke over her shoulder, “Come.”

  Ginny followed, slowly and carefully. Her hand shook, which sent the light tipping back and forth. Shadows, light and dark. She eased down, step-by-step. The air smelled damp, thick with must that wanted to make her cough, if only she could draw a breath deep enough.

  “Wait,” Ginny whispered. Then louder, “Carrie. Wait for me.”

  The narrow corridor bent at a right angle and ran along what must’ve been the back of the house. The exterior concrete wall was black with wet, and water was actually trickling in fast streams down from the ceiling. Water on the floor too, a couple inches that got deeper the farther she went, as though the passage was on a downward slope.

  Ginny put one hand on the inside wall, also of concrete. George Miller had really done his work well. There was no sign from the basement that this section was two feet shorter than it should’ve been. She shuddered, stopping, her gorge rising. Her muscles tensed again as she leaned against the wall to let the contraction pass. Ginny swallowed bitter saliva, trying not to puke. Still, no pain. Just discomfort. Yet there was no denying it—she was in labor.

  “Carrie. Wait.” The spasm passed, Ginny straightened and pulled out her phone again. Upstairs she’d fluctuated between one and two bars. Down here, with multiple layers of concrete and earth between her and the sky, there was nothing.

  The water had risen another inch while she stopped. Carrie danced in it, impatient and frantic, while Ginny slogged toward her, grateful for her slippers. Even heavy and soaked, they were protection against whatever might be on the floor under the water.

  The flashlight dimmed drastically before rallying and returning at half its former brightness.

  Ginny shook it, knowing even as she did the effort was silly. It didn’t have batteries the way old flashlights did. You couldn’t rattle it into another burst of energy. Instead, the beam of light shook around and went even dimmer.

  “Shit,” she breathed.

  What the hell was she doing? Nine and a half months pregnant, no power, no phone, a faulty light, following some feral child into a basement that was flooding. She didn’t even have a weapon. It was the classic stupid move from every horror movie, and suddenly she was choking with laughter. Bent with it, shoulders heaving as the flashlight swung dangerously close to the water and she fought the grip of another contraction.

  No, no. Don’t fight. Don’t fight it.

  Ginny tried to breathe through it the way the classes taught, but the laughter wouldn’t let her. All of this, so ridiculous. So surreal. She’d have gone to her knees right there in the water if the passage weren’t so narrow there wasn’t room for her to fall.

  The laughter and the contraction passed. Ginny wiped her face—tears or sweat, she couldn’t tell. Carrie had moved even farther down the passageway, around another corner. Ginny followed with the lamp, the light now the strength of a guttering candle, held high.

  The corridor came to a dead end. Not a concrete wall here, but something shiny. Metal? Shit, the wall was metal, smudged with handprints and splashed with water where Carrie must have kicked. The girl turned as Ginny rounded the corner. She gestured.

  “Come. Please.” She tugged at a metal handle and the wall moved the way the bookcase had, sliding like a pocket door into a recess in the wall. Carrie put her back to the door and braced her feet against the wall on the other side. She grunted with the effort.

  Ginny sloshed closer. The flashlight swung in her hand, back and forth. Dark and light. She could see nothing beyond the sliding metal door.

  “Honey, I won’t be able to get through there. There’s not enough room.”

  Carrie pushed harder, forcing the metal door farther into the recess. Her legs shook, and she bit on her lower lip. There was still no way Ginny could step over Carrie’s legs and shove her bulk through the opening. Ginny put a hand on the door just above Carrie’s head. She could feel it threatening to move the moment the little girl ceased her counterpressure.

  Ginny wedged herself into the space as far as she could, her breasts and belly crowding against the girl. “I got it. Go.”

  Carrie moved at once, slipping from the space and letting the door move against Ginny’s weight. Ginny had a vision of an elevator door slamming shut on an unwary passenger—but somehow she guessed this door wouldn’t spring open. It would cut your fucking fingers off instead.

  The door sprang shut behind her the instant she left off the pressure, but she wasn’t all the way through. It would’ve snapped her ankle had she not shoved the flashlight between the door and the wall just long enough to get her foot out. That was the end of the flashlight, which cracked with a snap and plunged them into perfect darkness.

  Ginny closed her eyes and tried to catch her breath. Sounds became magnified without sight to counter them, she knew that. She heard the soft swish of Carrie’s feet in the water and felt the push of it against her calves. Carrie’s chilly fingers slipped into hers and squeezed. She probably could see much better than Ginny could, but even cats needed some amount of light in order to see in the dark. Carrie was still human.

  Wasn’t she?

  Ginny grabbed her phone from her pocket and pressed the Home button to bring up the menu. Instant bright-white light. She slid her thumb along the screen to unlock it and tapped quickly, looking for a flashlight app. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before.”

  She found it. More bright light, using her phone’s LED flash set to a permanent glare. It lit the corridor, even narrower on this side of the door, and threw giant shadows on the walls. The ceiling was lower, hung with shiny ductwork and wires that cast weird patterns of shadow. Ginny ran her hand along the door. This side had no handle. Nothing but smooth, cold metal reflecting the light from her phone.

  Then, up near the top, higher than a child could reach, higher than Ginny herself could reach, she saw a small dark circle. She stretched to touch it, and her fingertip felt a rough edge before dipping just barely inside. A hole. Probably for some sort of key, which she did not have.

  She was trapped down here.

  But she would not be afraid. She would not let herself give in to terror. All the creepy, scary things that had happened since moving into this house had not sent her gibbering, and neither would this, especially since she knew the cause was nothing supernatural. She would not be afraid.

  She was a liar.

  She followed Carrie down the corridor and the ceiling got lower and lower. The light from her phone was eye-achingly bright and far-reaching, yet like the high beams of a car, limited in scope. They’d only gone about four feet when the corridor jogged again, this time to the right.

  The smell hit her first, hard as a fist, thick like smoke. The musty, earthy smell of the water had been nose-tickling but normal. Natural. This stench, of unwashed bodies and rotten teeth, of food left to spoil…of human waste… Ginny retched, turning her head and certain she was going to vomit. She hadn’t eaten anything in hours. Nothing came up but bile she spit into the water that was now up to her knees. She heaved again, then stood to shine the light.

  The room was no larger than her bedroom and built on a cant that left her thinking of those haunted house rooms with the strobe lights, usually painted black and white, the kind with tilted floors to screw up your perspective. The ceiling was so low she had to bend her head, and the light showed her there were at least two slanted fun-house doorways. A small, domed refrigerator took up space in one corner, with what looked like a tiny two-burner stove next to it and a spindle-legged sink. Beside that, a child-sized wooden table perfect for tea parties in which every cup was poisoned. The furniture wasn’t all she saw in this nightmare room.

  There was some