Chapter 28 #2
“Wait,” Brom whispers, and he runs over to the desk, coming back with the key brandished in his hand, the one that had been left behind with the dead snake. “We might need this.”
“Good thinking,” I tell him.
I poke my head out and look.
There’s the trail of blood as usual, going past my door, and then the sight of Vivienne’s feet being dragged around the corner.
“Oh my goodness,” Kat gasps, her head below mine. “That’s really…that’s a ghost.”
I step out into the hall, only then realizing I disturbed the line of salt I put around the room to keep the horseman contained.
“Do I need to keep you in chains?” I say to Brom.
He stares down at the salt and shakes his head. “He won’t be a problem.”
“You know I’m trusting you with our lives,” I tell him grimly.
He swallows and gives me a single nod as he holds my gaze. “I know.”
I believe him. I truly do.
But I don’t trust the horseman.
I’ll just have to keep a close eye on him. Part of me wants to run back into the room and grab the gun, but I’m afraid that will hurt Brom’s own trust in me. So I don’t.
I lock the door behind us, and then the three of us walk down the hall after the ghost, following the trail of blood.
My heart is already racing and from the shallow, anxious breaths that Kat is taking, I know she’s feeling the same.
I reach down and grab her hand while I hold the candlestick with the other, perhaps more for my comfort than hers.
But this time the trail of blood doesn’t lead to the women’s wing.
Instead it goes down the stairs to the first floor.
And with a horribly uneasy feeling that makes my scalp prickle, I’m getting the sense that I’ve done this before.
We slowly go down the stairs, careful not to slip on the blood, and then follow the trail and the faint thumps as they go down a wing that holds a few classrooms.
One of the doors is wide open, the crimson path leading inside it.
“Where does that door go?” Kat whispers. “I thought that was just a closet. For the custodian.”
I stop moving, the two of them running into my back.
“What is it?” Brom growls.
I shake my head, closing my eyes as I try to remember something.
“I think I’ve been here before,” I say faintly. “I think I’ve done this before.”
Was it a dream? Did I imagine it? Or did it actually happen?
“Well, if you did, nothing obviously happened to you,” Kat says. “I think we should follow her.”
I open my eyes and glance down at her in surprise. “If I didn’t know any better, Kat, I’d think you were trying to paint me as a coward.”
“It’s just a ghost,” she says with a frown, nodding toward the closet. “Come on.”
“Gets haunted once, now she thinks she’s an expert,” I mutter to Brom, but he’s already following Kat as they go after the bloody trail.
I exhale noisily and hurry after them.
They’ve stopped inside the barren closet, looking down a set of narrow stone stairs, the red glistening under the candlelight.
Yes. I have been here before.
I put my arm out, pushing them both behind me, the candlestick shaking slightly in my grasp, and I carefully make my way down the steps, with Kat behind me and Brom bringing up the rear. By now I don’t hear any more thumps from Ms. Henry, and I can’t tell whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing.
The staircase seems to twist and turn for a while, the air getting colder and more damp the farther we go down, the smell of sulfur and decaying vegetation and sage filling my nose, until finally my boots meet a floor made of hard-packed dirt.
“What is this?” Kat says as she and Brom fan out beside me.
We’re in a tunnel, the candlelight casting flickering shadows on the dirt walls. They seem to glow red, as if soaked in blood, and the tunnel curves ahead, leading somewhere else.
I swallow uneasily.
“Yes,” I say softly. “I’ve been here. There’s a door around the corner.”
“A door?” Brom asks, holding out the key. “Then Vivienne brought us here for a reason. What else do you remember?”
“I don’t know. I never went in the door,” I tell him. There’s something else there too, but it’s hidden somewhere in my mind.
“You didn’t have the key,” Brom says. “But you do now.”
I nod, gathering up my courage, and start walking down the hall.
It’s narrow enough that the two of them follow me single file, and we round the corner to see a large iron door at the end.
The dirt on the ground at the front of the door has been disturbed, indicating it opens outward, and perhaps recently, but it’s hard to tell.
If Vivienne came this way, her blood has already been absorbed by the ground.
I pause and press my ear to the cold metal, the stench of sulfur growing stronger. I feel like I had heard something when I was here before, someone inside wailing, crying out for me, but now I don’t hear anything at all. I suppose that’s a good thing.
Brom holds out the key and I take it from him.
Slip it into the old lock.
And turn.
With a heavy click, the key finds purchase, and the door unlocks.
“It worked,” Kat gasps.
I was kind of hoping it wouldn’t.
I leave the key in the hole and pull open the door. It’s heavy, and it takes all my strength, plus Brom helping, for me to pull it open, the hinges groaning loudly.
The scent of decay wafts out of the darkness, causing all of us to cough.
“It smells like death,” I manage to say, my eyes watering as I cover my nose with my forearm. “Let me guess, you still want to go inside?”
“Yes,” Kat says, but her voice trembles.
Brom grabs the candle from me and steps forward.
Kat and I follow and look around.
The light doesn’t go very far, but it doesn’t need to.
I’ve seen enough.
We’re in a long, oval-shaped room. Giant spiderwebs cover the walls, coming down from the ceiling and anchoring to the middle of the room. Though each web is empty, the strands look thick enough, and the webs are large enough, to support a spider the size of a pony.
And though there isn’t much else in the room, there remain a few bones stuck to the strands. A rib here, a pelvis there, a shattered femur, a broken clavicle.
All human.
Dear God.
“What is this place?” Kat whispers.
I put my hand on her back in a vain attempt to comfort her, but I have no answers.
“I think we should leave,” I say. “Right now. Before that door closes on us and locks us in here and whatever it is that is kept in this room comes out.”
This time, no one wants to be the hero. All three of us turn and hurry out of the room and into the damp air of the tunnel. Brom and I push against the door until it closes, and I quickly lock it, shoving the key into my pocket.
Then, without wasting any time, we leave the tunnel, go up the stairs, out of the custodian’s closet and back into the hall, hoping the nightmare stays in the basement.