Chapter Fifty-Nine. Riley, Present Day
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
RILEY, PRESENT DAY
I run to the living room window and see Sam Trimble standing beside Betty as the sisters’ car pulls away from the curb. Betty’s talking, fluttering her hands through the air as if describing something. Whatever Sam did with the sisters certainly didn’t take long.
I ease the front door shut, sealing myself in silence.
Betty is doing her part; she alerted me to Sam’s presence by yelling out “Hello!” when he approached, and now she’s stalling him. All I need to do is slip out the back door off the kitchen.
But when I twist the handle and pull, it doesn’t budge. The deadbolt is engaged, and there’s no key in it. I sweep my fingertips over the top of the frame, but they only touch dust. I move aside stacks of mail and look beneath dishes. It isn’t anywhere.
I don’t have much time. Betty was going to ask Sam for directions to a street just around the corner, pretending she’s visiting a friend.
I’m taking my first step out of the kitchen to find a window to climb through when I hear the front door open. I stop moving and hold my breath.
“Thank you again!” I hear Betty call.
“My pleasure,” Sam replies, his voice much closer to me than hers.
I duck back into the kitchen. There’s nowhere for me to hide except the basement.
I can’t risk flicking on a light, so I use my phone’s flashlight as I ease down the wooden stairs, wincing as the second one creaks. The air feels thin and drafty. It’s much colder down here beneath the house.
The basement is unfinished, with exposed pipes and a cement floor. But the long, rectangular space isn’t empty.
Bookshelves are stuffed with volumes, and boxes are everywhere.
I move closer to a bookshelf and read the titles: They’re old parapsychology journals from Marquis and other universities.
Next to the bins is an ancient armchair, covered in dust. The cushions are dented from the weight of someone who must have rested in it long ago.
Voices erupt just over my head. I duck down, then realize Sam has blasted the television.
I move toward an antique-looking desk that holds strange objects beneath a clear plastic dome: a notepad filled with tight, blocky letters, the ink faded to gray. A deck of cards. And a strange pair of goggles made out of halves of Ping-Pong balls.
A framed photo on one corner of the desk draws my eye. It’s of four young women lying on a row of cots in a shadowy space. They look asleep—or unconscious. Written on the bottom of the photograph in the same faded gray handwriting is Girls 1–4.
If I hadn’t seen her wedding picture, I might not have recognized her at that age. Betty is on one of the cots.
This entire basement is an homage to Dr. Trimble’s experiments. It’s more than creepy. It’s next-level obsession.
Goosebumps prickle my skin. This environment seems steeped in an aura of evil.
I look around for an exit. There’s one high window, but even if it were big enough for me to squeeze through, I can’t. It’s covered by security bars and a spider has woven its gauzy web through them.
My chest constricts. I need to get out of here.
I do the only thing I can think of: I pull out my phone and call the one person I know who lives relatively nearby—Sandra. I get her voicemail so I leave a quick, desperate message, asking her to pick up Betty and come up with an excuse to get Sam out of the house so I can escape.
I feel weak, but there’s no way I’m going to sit down in what I’m sure is Dr. Trimble’s old chair.
Instead, I kneel on the floor, hiding behind a stack of boxes, and I wait.