Chapter 34
It was cooler in the basement, although the dust in the air was as dry as the earth outside.
Anna turned on the feeble light and crept carefully down the uneven wooden stairs.
Even though the sensible part of her brain knew that there couldn’t be anyone down here because Lucas had just come out, she jittered with nerves.
There was only one bare bulb, washing the space in a dirty yellow light, old cobwebs and dirt stuck to its glass.
She hadn’t been down here since they’d arrived, and there were stacks of unpacked boxes up against the walls and in untidy piles across the floor.
Most of it was Grandma’s stuff she hadn’t wanted to get rid of even though it would probably all rot down here before she ever looked at it again.
There were a few pieces of her furniture too, heavy, dark wood that made Anna feel more spooked out than she did already.
It was furniture as ominous as this house felt at night.
The kind you expected to creak even without anyone touching it.
She could see the window, a horizontal rectangle at the top of the far wall, and she figured it must open out somewhere under the deck at the side of the house.
Maybe the lock had been repaired in the run up to the sale, but she doubted it if the faucets upstairs had been left dripping and various other home repairs were left undone.
She moved a few boxes out of the way and climbed onto one of Grandma’s mahogany chairs to get a closer look.
Long-dead flies and spiders littered dusty webs around the window’s edges, undisturbed.
At least no one had come in this way for a while.
The handle that locked the window was loose, and even though it was technically working, a couple of rattles from the other side would shake it open quickly enough.
There were gaps around it too that maybe even a bobby pin could be pushed through to twist it open.
One thing Grandma hadn’t been short of in her old life was books, and, getting back off the chair, Anna opened some boxes until she found a few heavy ones, densely packed with hardbacks that should have gone to the thrift store.
She took one that looked about the right width and heft, a large plain copy of Huckleberry Finn, the title embossed in gold letters on the spine, the kind they probably printed eighty years or so ago, and got back on the chair.
Ignoring the dead bugs, she wedged the book under the window’s clasp.
She tried wiggling the handle, but it was stuck solid.
There was no way anyone could get in that way.
Or even see through the glass. Satisfied, she got back down.
No pervert or Farmhand would be getting into their house via the basement.
It was only as she moved the boxes back to where they’d been, in case Mom or Grandma thought she’d been rifling through her things, that she saw the stain on the floor, round and dark and the size of a penny. Was that paint? She crouched to look closer, another thought striking her. Or blood?
She shone her cell phone flashlight on it and stared.
It was definitely blood, rust-colored and old.
It looked like it had been there a while, all bright freshness lost. She glanced back at the window.
Maybe from one of the movers or even one of the kids when they broke in.
Cut themselves on the windowsill or something.
It was nothing, but it unsettled her and she was glad to leave the basement behind and get back up to the main house.
In the hall she turned the lamp off and was about to head upstairs but found she couldn’t, frozen on the first stair.
All her bravery had left her. She’d threatened a strange man and he was down the corridor from her bedroom.
She wished she’d told Lucas to get dressed and leave straightaway, leaving her able to go to bed and relax, but right now she couldn’t imagine getting undressed with him in Mom’s room.
She couldn’t go upstairs at all. Not until she was sure he was asleep.
Neither did she want to try to sleep on the sofa.
What if he came back downstairs again? Where else was there?
She looked to her right, into the darkness of the corridor.