“Gregory?”
A soft voice spoke his name. For a moment, he couldn’t identify who spoke, and when they spoke to him from. Now. Then. Long ago.
“Gregory? Are you all right?”
Warmth on his shoulder again. A hand. Hanna. He glanced over his shoulder to see her concerned face, brow furrowed and lips pursed into a worried frown. In his eyes, for the span of a heartbeat, she seemed brighter than her surroundings. A reassuring presence in the face of danger, much as the sight of a firefighter in front of a blazing inferno. In her, he saw place of shelter as certain and safe as he had ever known, and he found his voice again.
“Yeah,” he lied. “Yeah. I’m fine. Just got winded on the steps. Let’s get our boxes and get the hell out of here.”
He turned around again to descend into the darkness before he could see if she believed him.
* * *
When he looked backat her, she saw he had turned white. All the blood had drained from his face, leaving the specter of the man she’d spent the day with. His pupils had dilated to broad, black pools that left no room for color in his irises, and a fine sheen of sweat glistened from his upper lip.
Hanna had seen fear before, but never like this. And she hoped he didn’t see it in her, too, because she felt as bloodless as he looked.
Screaming. All around her, echoing up the stairs from below. Screams of bleakest fear, of hopelessness, of pain. Woven into the screams as a discordant harmony were whimpers, broken pleas, the primal sounds of children scared and hurt beyond words. From nearer came the cries of an infant, squalling its outrage at having unmet needs. Beneath the cacophony of misery, the screams and sobs of a woman begging for mercy.
Covering her ears wouldn’t help. The only thing that would silence these cries was the release of the spirits who screamed into the emptiness of a time long passed.How many are trapped here? Why haven’t they moved on? No wonder no one comes down here. The place is already full of the dead.
She didn’t know what they would find at the base of the stairs. Didn’t know, and didn’t want to. Yet the stairs led inexorably down, and neither of them would break enough to turn and bolt up to the main floor again. The relief at finding a dusty, cobweb-strewn cellar with the usual oddments in storage embarrassed her.Hanna. Most of the dead can’t hurt you. They probably don’t even know you’re here.
Then she remembered the bathtub, and the hairs on her arms and neck stood up. The skin at the top of her spine tingled in inked lines that ached like skin held too close to a flame.
Gregory shined his flashlight into a corner, where a number of old, saggy boxes sat in a loose pile. “There. Those are the ones. Let’s haul them upstairs and get the hell out of this basement.”
“Agreed. There’s a lot of dust,” she added, to give them both an excuse for wanting out. It wasn’t a lie. Dust motes caught in the beam of her flashlight as she shone it around, irrationally assuring herself they had the basement to themselves.
In the far corner, almost hidden by the architecture and flotsam, stood a door. She held her light on it. “What’s that door?”
“They told me it was a wine cellar,” Gregory said, and handed her his light so he could cart the boxes toward the base of the stairs. “We don’t keep any wine in it. The cook prefers to keep it in another room. He said he wants nothing to do with that one.”
“I don’t blame him,” Hanna said softly.No. I don’t blame him at all. I wish I didn’t wonder what was behind that door. And if it didn’t need wards like Athena’s cellar.
* * *
Neither of themhad wanted to open the boxes. Gregory’s color improved once they left the basement, but she could still see the remnants of fear behind his eyes. Once they emerged from the basement, he begged her leave to go check on work and party matters, and she knew their evening had ended before it began.
That suited Hanna, even though she wished their beautiful afternoon had a nicer conclusion. It gave her time to call the only person who would believe her.
Athena answered the video call with a pair of chopsticks in one hand and a bowl of ramen in the other.“This is a surprise. Ah. You look terrible. Did your date go badly?”
“Thank you, Athena,” Hanna said with a laugh. “I’d be offended, except I know you’re right. I look terrible. The date wasn’t a date, though that’s– The short version is, Vivian has offered to take over my employment contract. Through a lawyer, so it’s all on the up-and-up.”
“Take up your employment contract so you and Gregory could date with wild abandon without the whiff of impropriety?”Athena asked, as she fished a chunk of soft-boiled egg out of her soup.
“That’s the idea, yes. And yes, I’m blushing.”
“I wasn’t going to say a word.”
“Liar. We talked about it today, then we went to see the doctor. Who is going to bring us her grandfather’s journals to look through. Seems he never talked about his time up here.”
“Fancy that.”
“Mm-hmm. She mentioned her grandfather had left some records in Greenhill during the war. Saving them from the bombings. She’s going to come over on Sunday with the journals. Gregory knew where the boxes were, so we went to the basement to pull them out.”
“Are there any more ominous words in the English language than ‘we went to the basement’?”Athena stuffed noodles into her mouth and slurped delicately.