Hunter stared at the refrigerator. Was that all it had been?
A muted laugh turned his head. A blue light flickered on the polished wood floor beyond the kitchen. It was coming from the den.
Air caught in his throat. Hunter grabbed the largest knife in the wood block on the counter and crept toward the sound. Another laugh. And then the muffled sound of a man’s voice came through the wall. Three high-pitched dings, and then the rippling rush of a river running over rocks. As he drew closer, the knife dropped down to his side. The rushing river was studio applause.
The television in the den had been left on.
With a big exhale, Hunter opened the glass french doors and found the remote lying on the coffee table. A rerun of some game show washed the room in flashing colors. Exhausted and embarrassed, Hunter slumped onto the leather couch. The rest of whatever his father had been drinking that night still sat in a little puddle of condensation on the coffee table. Hunter picked up the tumbler and wiped the wood with his hand out of habit. He sniffed it—watered-down scotch—and drank what was left.
“Shit,” he whispered to himself.
“And what has he won, Bob?” the announcer demanded, pointing at a lit scoreboard.
Hunter clicked off the television in disgust and tossed the remote. He carried the tumbler back into the kitchen, again by habit. Not that Margot or Myron would notice in the morning. Setting the glass onto the marble counter, the hairs on his arm stood up before his brain registered why.
The basement door was standing open. It had been shut a few minutes earlier.
Still gripping the knife in his hand, Hunter crept over to it and flipped on the light. “Hello?” he called down the stairs loudly, not caring if he woke his parents. Maybe hoping he would.
He scanned the kitchen again, the two giant islands, the closed door to the newly built mudroom, the archway leading to the foyer, the long hall to the den and the sunroom they never used. Finding nothing, hearing nothing, he finally forced his feet down the open wood stair treads to the basement below.
The lower level of the old house smelled faintly of mice, then bleach with a layer of mildew underneath, and then something sweeter. His mother’s perfume? Custom storage closets lined the wall to his right. The barn-style doors were all shut with rustic wooden peg locks. Clay bricks covered in flaking white paint held up the house on all four sides. Two lines of steel beams and pipe columns held up the middle. A small wine closet sat to his left with custom wine racks for his parents’ growing collection. Its slatted wood door stood shut.
Hunter surveyed the space for movement—old boxes, the new boiler, the iron octopus of the old boiler covered in asbestos insulation, the water heater, gym equipment, pipes, wires, cobwebs. Rusty floor drains dotted the concrete slab. A puddle of brown water sat in the far corner under a utility sink.
The steady drip of the sink’s faucet tapped out the seconds.
Another door sat at the far end. As he drew closer to it, he felt a pleasant rush of fresh air move through the clammy basement. The door’s dusty window looked out into a concrete stairwell leading up to the backyard. A warm breeze whistled softly in through the jambs and a large crack running horizontally through the wood panels below the glass. He tried the handle and found it was locked. A rusted chain and sliding bolt had been added for good measure, but they both hung open. Unlocked.
He pushed against the doorframe, but it wouldn’t budge. Warm air spilled through the empty keyhole as he eyed the lock below the doorknob. After a few more attempts, he gave up and rolled his eyes at himself. What the hell am I doing? His bare feet turned a grimy brown as he padded across the damp concrete floor back toward the kitchen.
At the foot of the steps, he stopped cold. Someone, or something, had closed the door behind him.
23
Hunter stared up at the closed door, his entire face a question. Who’s there?
The bare bulb hanging from a wire over the stairwell went out with a dull click, plunging the steps into darkness. Hunter stopped breathing.
The utility sink behind him dripped, dripped, dripped. An inch-wide sliver of light under the door lit the stairs. Two dark shadows split the pale rectangle beneath the wood. The sight sent a shudder through him. Feet.
The two shadows stepped away from the stairwell, and light footfalls creaked across the diagonal planks of the subfloor next to him and then down the kitchen toward the den.
Still not breathing, Hunter began to see spots. A blanket of clammy air settled onto his skin as he stood there frozen. The faint scratch of mouse claws on concrete came from the far end of the basement and then rodent nibbling sounds. I have to get out of here.
Blood cold and teeth chattering, Hunter crept up the stairs, the treads creaking dryly, announcing his presence. Ereek. Ereek. At the top of the steps, he pressed his ear to the door and listened.
After a prolonged silence, he cracked open the door and peered around the corner into the freshly remodeled room. It looked more like a morgue than a kitchen. A bowl of apples sat on one of the island slabs, ready for autopsy.
Hunter padded silent and barefoot across the cold marble, the bare bottoms of his feet now near black with the residue of a hundred years.
The sound of footsteps in the foyer made him shrink back toward the basement. The feet shuffled closer, and Hunter squeezed the knife still in his hand, raising it to his shoulder.
A shock of white fabric and dark hair appeared in the archway. Hunter sucked in a yelp and braced his knife.
The light flipped on.
His father stood startled in the kitchen entrance, grabbing at his chest through silk pajamas as though he’d been shot. “Jesus! Hunter! You scared the shit out of me! What the hell are you doing down here?”
“I, um.” Hunter lowered the blade, feeling suddenly even more exposed than before. “I heard a noise. Someone. Someone, uh . . . left the TV on, I guess.”
“What the hell’s with the knife?” Myron held on to the wall as though caught red-handed himself. He’d woken in the grip of a nightmare, silently screaming, Abigail! His hair was slick with cold sweat. “You okay, son?”
Peaked and trembling, the boy was clearly not okay. “Yeah. I’m fine.” He quickly put the knife back into its wooden block and headed toward the back stairs. “Sorry. About that.”
Myron just stood there anchored to the wall as Hunter loped away with his head down as if he’d broken something.
After a full minute, Myron tried to dismiss whatever thought had paralyzed him and staggered to the whiskey decanter in the den. He grabbed a tumbler and filled it to the halfway point, then stared at the crystal vessel for several beats, calculating. Some liquor was missing. Frowning, he set the decanter down and looked up at the ceiling toward Hunter’s room with a mixture of anger and bemusement as he slumped onto the couch with his drink and clicked on the television. Some woman had just won a new car on a game show.
Myron let his neck go slack against the couch, and the night terrors that had roused him in the first place resurfaced. He shuddered and took another drink. “Abigail,” he whispered as involuntary tears welled up. He set down the tumbler and put his face in his hands. “Please, God. Forgive me . . .”
The shadow of a girl passed behind him in the hallway. Unseen.
Upstairs, Hunter sank down onto his bed, staring at his hands, wishing he’d kept the knife. Seeing his father was no reassurance. He hadn’t missed the sway in the man’s frame as he’d stood there. It wasn’t just sleepiness.