Little Secrets (27 page)

Ginny blinked and sat, slowly. The flashlight had dimmed a little. She should have turned it off to conserve the charge. How long had she been sleeping?

“Come. Please.” The girl held out a hand.

This was not the girl in the photos Ginny'd found, though there was something of her in the shape of her face. And this girl was too young. Ginny had never seen this girl, but she knew who it was, just the same. “Caroline.”

The girl said nothing.

“What do you want?” It seemed the right question to ask a ghost who'd at last been brave enough to show her face. “Are you here because I found…I found you?”

The girl stepped forward. The floor creaked. Ginny frowned. Why would the floor creak beneath something that had no weight?

“Come. Please. Please?” The girl held out her hand, the tiny fingers dirty, the nails ragged. She opened her palm, faceup. There was a button there, like the one Ginny had found earlier. It fell from her hand and hit the floor with a clink before rolling under the lounge.

Ginny was up and off the lounge, her arms pinwheeling, as fast as she could move. It wasn't fast at all. Her breath sharp in her lungs, she put the chaise between her and this wraith, this vision, this shade that was no ghost.

Oh God.

It wasn't a ghost.

“Who are you?” Ginny's voice came out high, strained, not like her own voice at all.

“Water.” The girl looked toward the bookcase, which made no sense. Then at Ginny. She pointed down. “Water is down there.”

“In…the basement?”

The girl took another delicate, hesitant step toward Ginny. In the flashlight beam, her skin looked almost translucent, her dark eyes somehow filmed. Ginny was reminded of pictures she'd seen of cave fish and mushrooms, things grown in the dark.

“Down there. It's coming in. It's coming up!” The girl shuddered and jerked. She turned and ran for the cubbyhole door while Ginny stared in stunned silence. “Please come! Please come help!”

“We want to see if the little girl can come and play. The little girl in the basement. I was playing with the little girl.”

Ginny thought of what Kelly and Carson had said. She remembered what they'd called her. She spoke, her voice on the edge of a cough, but loud enough. “Carrie.”

The girl turned. Incredibly, she smiled. Her teeth were black and skewed, but the smile was sweet and shy. She held out her hand. “Please come. Hurry. Come!”

You think your father did something to her, don't you?

I don't think it. I know he did.

She thought about things going missing and being returned. Of a waving silhouette in a window. Food set out in a bowl and being eaten.

She thought of the sound of footsteps in the night.

She thought about the place where the garage had once been, and the basement wall that looked different from all the others.

And then she knew what had happened all those years ago.

Chapter Forty-One

Carrie gestured frantically and ducked into the cubbyhole. Ginny bent to look inside. The rain sounded much louder here, and she shivered at the waft of damp, cold air.

“I can't fit in here, honey.” The endearment slipped naturally from her lips. That was how you addressed a child. “I'm too big. And I don't understand…”

Carrie disappeared. Only for a second, because after that her small head peeked out from a dark place in the corner. Ginny strained to look. It was an air duct.

Not all of it made sense, but this did. Still, she shook her head and waved at the girl to come closer. Carrie's wide eyes blinked when Ginny shone the light too closely on her, and she put up a hand to block it.

“I can't fit in there, honey. Listen, you need to come out here, okay? I'll…I'll call someone. We'll go across the street, or next door.” Ginny hesitated, thinking of the water rushing down the street, as swift and deep as the creek in the back. “I will help you.”

Carrie let out a low, moaning cry of desperation. She wriggled from the air duct and dropped almost soundlessly to the dirty plywood. She moved toward Ginny, who backed up as instinctively as if a raccoon or a rat was coming at her, though the girl had shown no signs of antagonism.

“I'll take care of you,” Ginny whispered.

Another contraction hit her. She groaned at the suddenness, one hand on her belly and the other grabbing at the easel. It tipped, spilling her unfinished canvas.

Carrie cried out and covered her face. A second later she peeked through her fingers and moved closer. She put her small hands on Ginny's belly, and Ginny didn't have the concentration just then to recoil.

“Water, coming up. Down there.” Carrie pointed again to the floor, to her bare feet, to something Ginny couldn't see. “Mama says, come get help.”

Ginny choked. Everything inside her seemed to be tensing, and the sharp ache inside her intensified. She counted the seconds—one, two, three, four—before everything eased. Her fingers had gouged the inside of her palms. She swallowed, hard.

“Your mama is down there?”

Carrie nodded and tugged at Ginny's sleeve. “Please come. Mama says, the lady is nice. I tell her, the lady is nice. She says, you help us.”

Carrie looked pleading, then terrified. She shook so hard her teeth chattered and looked around the room, though there didn't seem to be anything to see. She looked back at Ginny.

“Mama says, he is gone!”

“Who? Who's… Oh God, oh God,” Ginny muttered. She managed to stand up straight. “Your mama and you in the basement. And he…yes, honey. He's gone. And I'm going to help you. But I can't get into that air duct, I have to call someone. We'll call, okay?”

But her cell phone still wouldn't pick up a signal, and the power was out, and though she knew there was a landline phone somewhere around, she didn't know where it was or even if it would work if she plugged it in.

“How high is the water, Carrie? How far up?”

Carrie hesitated, then ducked low to the ground and held her hand to just above Ginny's ankle. Then she put it higher. Higher. To Ginny's thigh.

Surely it couldn't be that high, could it? If the basement was flooding that much, it would come into the first floor, wouldn't it? Ginny didn't know. All she could think of was a foundation where there'd once been a garage and the concrete wall in the basement below it.

“You come.” Carrie tugged her sleeve, pulling Ginny toward the bookcase to the right of the fireplace.

All the pieces were falling into place. The figure she'd seen in the window upstairs—not the one by the easel, but another window on the other side of the fireplace, one that she'd assumed was built for symmetry. The one behind the bookcase.

Carrie reached along the molding and pressed something with her small fingers. The bookcase creaked. It shifted.

It moved.

Ginny cried out, not so much in surprise as a twisted sense of victory. She was not crazy. She was not crazy. And this house was not haunted, at least not by a ghost.

Carrie grunted, shoving at the bookcase until Ginny hooked her fingers into the now-open slot and pulled. Even with the weight of the books, the case moved smoothly, on oiled tracks like a sliding glass door. It was an ingenious design, but the space behind it proved even more so.

There was a window here, identical to its sister on the other side of the fireplace, though this one was hung with a cloak of spiderwebs, the sill decorated with a multitude of dead flies. The narrow space between the outside wall and the back of the bookcases was just wide enough for Ginny to stand in, though even without the baby bulk, she'd have brushed both sides with her shoulders. Directly to the left of the opening was the brick side of the chimney, while about four feet to the right was an opening in the floor.

Just a hole, no safety railing or anything to keep an unwary stumbler from falling into it. But then, Ginny thought, anyone entering this space would've had to know exactly where they were going. Carrie ducked around her and leaped toward the hole, too fast for Ginny to catch her.

Ginny, imagining the girl plummeting into an empty space, cried out.

Carrie looked over her shoulder and stepped into the darkness. She didn't fall. She gestured for Ginny to come closer.

It was a metal spiral staircase, the first step a few inches below floor level. It circled into darkness, though when she hung the light into the opening, Ginny could see that the stairs continued without a break down to a small landing.

She'd never have thought she could fit into it, but she could. And did. There wasn't enough room for her to fall either forward or back, so even without a railing to grab she could put one foot at a time down on each step. She couldn't see Carrie below her, but she could hear her. When Ginny got to the landing, there wasn't much more room. She held the flashlight as high as she could to look around the narrow column of space.

She was behind the pantry that should've been an extra foot or two wider, but wasn't. “Oh God. He did this. He built all of this…”

She didn't have time to break down or dwell on the sickness that had led George Miller to build this house with a prison inside it, though that was what she was sure she'd find. Ginny gave herself a shake that set her head spinning. She braced for another contraction. Everything about her pelvis felt loose and wobbly, like her hips weren't hinged quite right. A contraction eased and passed, and she drew in a few shaky breaths.

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.