He was happy because he’d spent the day with Hanna. She’d agreed his grandmother might take over her official employment, protecting them both from awkwardness and inappropriate power differential of an employee involved with the one who signed her paychecks. Which meant more days like today, further excursions with their fingers twined together and her laughter in his ears. Perhaps it meant further nights curled on the couch, the scent of her filling his senses and her warmth against his skin. And perhaps it meant…
That way, embarrassing trouser issues lie. You have to stand up in a minute. Let’s keep a lid on that.
Gregory shut off the motor and opened the car door. “You up for one more little adventure tonight?”
Hanna opened her door to step out as well. “The basement? I thought you might want to put that off until Sunday morning, what with the party tomorrow.”
“Tonight is probably better. We pull the boxes out and take them upstairs. Then, if you want, you can dust them off and go through them while I entertain tomorrow night.” He grinned over the top of the car at her. “We could even do some of that after supper, if you wanted. Bring the popcorn, I’ll put on a movie, and we can look at old medical records.”
“I like that,” Hanna said, returning his grin with one of her own.
“Great. Let’s put on clothes we don’t mind getting dirty, then we can run down and grab those boxes. If they’re where I think they are, we shouldn’t have to look too hard.”
They didn’t see anyone as they went inside together. Gregory pointed towards the kitchen. “The stairs to the basement start in there. Meet me in fifteen minutes?”
“Sounds good.” Hanna touched his hand, then started up the stairs.
Gregory lingered a moment longer to appreciate what the steps and relative elevation did for his view of her curves. She glanced back, realized what he was up to, blushed, and continued up. He would have sworn she walked slower, with an exaggerated sway to her hips.And right on cue, there’s my embarrassing trouser issue.
He ducked off towards his bedroom to change before she noticed.Except Martin says women have always noticed by the time we think of it. We’re not as sneaky as we think we are. Great.
Fifteen minutes later, he found her in the kitchen with a purloined piece of Swiss cheese he suspected came from the party stores. She had the grace to look guilty. “I love cheese,” she said.
“I’m only offended that you didn’t steal me a piece, too,” he told her.
Another guilty look, and she produced a second wedge from behind her back.
He couldn’t help but laugh at her. “All right. I’m appeased. Eat your cheese and grab that flashlight. I’ll take this one. The lights down there aren’t always the best.”
“They’re in a basement. It’s required that the lights don’t work and cut out at the worst times when they do.” Hanna picked up the baton-style flashlight from its hook just inside the door to the cellar. “I guess I should have realized this place had a basement, but I didn’t give it any thought.”
“No reason to. None of us go down there. I saw it when I inspected the place before I bought it, but I barely left the stairs.”
He turned the flashlight on. The beam illuminated the first five rough, wooden steps before the gloom devoured the light.And that was in full daylight, though that shouldn’t matter. There’s no windows down here. I guess I just don’t remember it being so dark.
Every step they took creaked, loud sounds in an otherwise breathless hush. Gregory’s mouth ran dry, even as his palms began to sweat.What the hell is with me. I’m a thirty-three-year-old man afraid of going to the basement. This is stupid.
A hand touched his shoulder. He jumped and panicked before he realized who it was. “Jesus. Sorry, Hanna.”
“It’s all right. This place is kind of creepy,” she said from just behind him. Her light shone around him but didn’t help drive off the shadows.
“Kind of.” He fought to keep the strain out of his voice.
Strain he couldn’t place. Anxiety, yes, he had that in droves just now. Fear, he had to admit to as well. Neither explained the weight that pressed harder on his chest with each step. He had felt the constricting bands of panic before, the sense that an unknown force wrapped around his torso and squeezed so he couldn’t take a full breath.
This was different, this weight that settled onto him with an ever-increasing heaviness. He fought to breathe in full inhalations, because the weight prevented the rise of his chest. His arms felt heavy, as if they held a great but fragile burden he did not know how to put down.
He could ignore it at first. Dismiss it as unfounded fear, leverage his pride to brush it off. But with each step he descended, the weight grew.I can’t be having a heart attack. I’m too young. I don’t show any other signs. I’ve just seen a doctor a few months ago. God, I don’t want to go down there.
His heart beat harder against the weight. As his pulse spun up, a keening rose in his ears. He thought his high heart rate had spurred a bout of tinnitus, at first, until it grew in volume.
Screaming. It sounded like screaming. Screaming, and the too-familiar cry of a baby. One he’d heard in a dream of darkness, a darkness he’d wished would swallow him.
He did not wish this darkness would swallow him. He wanted to run from it, up the stairs until he reached the safety of his grandmother’s room. If he could hide in her closet as he had when he was a child, the screaming would stop. The crying would stop.
His stomach dropped at the thought. He never wanted that crying to stop, but he never wanted to hear it again.
Did he not have a flashlight in his hand, were his free hand not balled into a painful fist, he would have pressed his palms to his ears to block out the sounds around him. Then he could figure out if the screaming, the crying came from the basement itself, gusts of wind through the cracks in the walls, or from the blank, dark places in his mind where the shadows whispered secrets he never wanted to hear.