Chapter Eight
Livia
I force myself to calm down. I have to think rationally here.
I let my hand fall away from the doorknob, then try again. With a firm grip, I turn the handle slowly, first in one direction, then in the other, and still nothing happens.
Maybe that doorknob is just for decorative purposes. Immediately, my gaze runs over the entire width and length of the door, looking for a latch, button, or anything else that would open the door.
When I find nothing, I start to run my fingers over the wood, hoping that there’s a secret lock somewhere, all while trying not to panic.
I step back and try to reevaluate things. Surely there aren’t any hidden, secret mechanisms that would open the door. It doesn’t go with the setting of the house if I brush aside the fact that it has electricity, but I’m desperate now, so maybe it just means the knob is jammed. That’s all. It’s an old house. It makes sense.
I try the handle again and jiggle the head of the bear. Firm, light, fast, slow. And nothing gives. I swirl around and eye the whimsical home before I face the door again. I’m going to have to find a key.
And then it hits me—the strangeness of it all that’s been hovering at the back of my mind, where the makings of a full panic attack also brew. There is no keyhole through which a key would fit. There are no screws I can undo to remove the whole handle or the whole door.
My heart starts to throb as if a dull knife repeatedly takes a stab at it. Still, I try to think rationally. I have to. There must be a way out. I go to the windows and try to jerk them open, but nothing happens.
A mirthless laugh starts to bubble in my chest. The windows don’t open. The handles don’t move. It’s as if they’ve been painted shut, and no amount of strength that I’m capable of can undo them. I rush through to the kitchen, almost frantic now as I look for a back door and find none.
Okay. Okay. Okay.
I keep whispering that one word to myself.
It’s okay. I’m going to be okay.
But suddenly, I’m no longer enthralled by the whimsy around me. I want to turn everything upside down until I find a way out. My attempts to keep rational and cool slowly give way to alarm and dread.
It may be temporary, but I’m locked inside this house that is deceptively welcoming and it takes me back to memories of my mom, her fingers pointing to the illustrations she drew—the same things I’m seeing in person right now as she held me tight and read to me.
But something’s wrong, and now I’m trapped inside.
I need to find a way out.
I drop my backpack on the floor beside me and shakily retrieve my phone from my pocket. I had a good signal all the way up here, so I should still have a good signal here. But a new dread arises inside me.
The only thing my phone can give me is the time. It’s useless for anything else. I can’t call anyone, not even emergency services. I can’t text; I can’t send an email. That means I’m no longer sending a live location to Faith, and I can’t get a hold of the girls at FFF. Or the police.
Okay.
I initiate a strategic plan to escape. I look for other hidden doors in the living room and the kitchen. I’m no longer worried about trespassing as I hurry my way down the short passage to the bedrooms. I don’t feel as if I’m invading someone’s privacy. My only focus is escaping because I’ve been inadvertently trapped here.
I don’t allow my gaze to dwell on what lies before me. I’m only looking for an escape. I check for doors that actually open. I find none. The windows here are painted shut, too. I open the closet doors, at this point desperate for a secret passage that would see me on the other side of the house.
I waver between moments of thinking I’m eternally trapped inside this house and being determined to find a way out. I remind myself all my reasoning points to one thing. The front door, the only door in the whole house, has somehow become jammed. That’s how I erase any insidiousness from my situation. No one is trying to keep me here deliberately.
But now that I’ve exhausted all other avenues of escape and failed, my only viable option will be to break the door down. In order to do that, I must find some sort of axe to splinter apart the wood. I have to do something.
I search drawer after drawer and come up empty. Literally. There is nothing in any of the drawers. How does the house look so lived in, and yet there is no evidence of anyone actually living there?
Icy droplets of perspiration slither down my back.
Think, Livia. Think, Livia.Think, Livia.
And then I see it. Camouflaged in the pastel-colored wall in the living room is what appears to look like the frame of a door. A secret door that must surely lead outside.
My mind bursts with hope as I start pushing against what I’m certain is now a slab of wood masquerading as a door. Nothing budges until I use whatever brute strength I’m worth and push until I feel lightheaded.
The door slips open. But I’m met with utter darkness. I search for a light switch on both sides of the walls. The cottage may be more than a few hundred years old, but it had proper plumbing and electricity. But there’s no light switch that I can find.
In my search for tools or an axe, I would have remembered coming across candles or matchsticks, so I have to proceed in the dark. My skin is already crawling with what hides ahead of me.
The eerie feeling that replaces the wonder of finding the cottage where the three bears lived amplifies as I’m forced to take a step into the darkness. I can’t leave what’s on the other side of this door unexplored if it means it”s my only way to get out of this cottage.
I get onto my hands and knees, feeling ahead with my hands before I move forward. I crawl for maybe a minute when my hands no longer feel the floor. I curl my fingers around the part where the floor stops. I lean forward while keeping my knees firmly in place to keep me grounded.
Stairs.
I swallow in fear.
I’m going to have to descend god knows how many steps in order to get to the bottom. But I keep my spirits up and tell myself it’s a secret passage for escape. I just have to persevere.
At the end of the stairs, I’ll find another door that will open onto a brilliantly open sky, and I will be free.
The instant I turn around, with my intention to crawl backward down the steps, a burst of light shines upon me. Above my head is a sconce that is clearly motion-detected.
A flood of relief washes over me. I rise from my hands and knees, face the stairs, and begin my descent, certain that despite the darkness on the landing, a motion-detected light will activate upon reaching the bottom step.
When there are no more steps to descend, I’m thrown into an abyss of darkness again. The light at the entrance of the staircase has shut off.
I remain motionless, trembling uncontrollably, about to blindly confront an even more vast unknown.
But I have to move. I have to do something. I take one step to the side of me, then another, and nothing happens. I do the same on the other side, moving tentatively a step further each time. Dread pounces on me. What if there isn’t any motion-detected light here after all?
The darkness starts to suffocate me. I need air. I need to be outside. In my car. Driving home.
Just when I’m certain I’ll have to brave what’s before me in the dark, a light goes on. Thank god. My eyes take precious moments to adjust before a heavy frown creases my face.
What am I looking at?
As half my brain filters in the sight before me, the other half frantically realizes there is no escape from this part of the cottage.
No matter how hard I blink, my eyes are not deceiving me. This is not an illusion. I’m not imagining things. There are no windows or doors here. Just unforgiving layers of brick, making the area inescapable.
My chest heaves, and terror coats each breath I take. In the white-hot light from the sconce in the center of the ceiling, my gaze drips in horror as I take in the things before me.
The eeriness that followed me from the living areas above to down here is disturbingly reinforced.
On a small table lie three bowls. Three chairs occupy the middle of the room. Toward one end, three beds line up against the side of the wall. Three bowls. Three chairs. Three beds.
I swallow nervously at the irony of it.
The chairs aren’t welcoming or comfortable. They’re not made of down and covered with velvet. There is nothing plush and inviting about them. They’re made of wood and embellished with things that remind me of a black-and-white horror movie. The beds are the same.
I stagger backward now in fear, as I can no longer unsee the things I’m seeing; I can no longer hide them from my mind as a means to protect myself.
There are restraints on the arms and the legs of the chair. On the seat of one of the chairs is a gas mask used in World War I. The seat of the second chair is bare, and so is the third seat.
Two of the beds have restraints as well. Spiked leather cuffs with chains that hang from the posts of the bed. There doesn’t seem to be anything sinister about the bed in the middle, but on a closer look, I realize the floral bedding is plastic, like vinyl.
There is nothing innocuous about what I’m seeing. I’m in danger, and I know it without any doubt.
Adrenaline pumps through me as I turn around, ready to stumble my way back up the stairs. I’m safer up there than down here.
I’m a step away from the stairs then shriek in terror. A metal gate drops down from the ceiling to the foot of the stairs and cordons off my exit.
“Hello, pretty girl.”
A deep, rough, voice shatters the evil silence around me. I whirl around, trying to find the speaker, but I find no one.