Chapter 15
Mr. Hargrave wanders into the living room just as Theo and I finish painting.
“These look good, son,” he says, turning in a circle to take the whole room in.
Theo’s face lights up with his dad’s praise. “Thanks, Pops.”
“I did my best to thwart his efforts,” I joke.
Theo shakes his head. “Don’t listen to her. She was a perfect middle-of-the-wall painter.”
I roll my eyes. His dad laughs.
“It’s supposed to rain this weekend,” Mr. Hargrave goes on, “so can you bring the wood and other supplies on the back porch down into the basement? Jesse’s coordinating things upstairs and I need to get back to the office, but it should be a one-person job.”
“I’ve got help.” Theo tips his chin at me.
His dad harumphs. “I’m not sure we should be asking the client to do heavy lifting.” His tone has a bit of a serious edge, and Theo stiffens in response.
“I’m happy to help,” I pipe in. “Plus, I’m not the one paying you, so technically my mother is the client.”
He lets out another sigh, but this one’s more good-natured.
“I promise to carry only the light things,” I add.
“Just be careful. Three-hundred-year-old basements are not well made, even if they’re up to code.” He taps his hand against the doorframe as if to say hop to it, the metal of his wedding ring thunking against the wood. Then he ducks back into the dining room.
My mind catches on his ring. Theo rarely talks about his mom, so I figured his parents are divorced as well. But maybe not? My parents stopped wearing their wedding rings long before they separated.
I consider asking him about his mother but stop myself. We haven’t known each other long enough for me to be prying. And why do I want to know so badly?
It’s none of my business. I should not want to make Theo my business.
“Is it weird that I’ve never been in a basement?” Ladies and gentlemen, Amity Callaway, non sequitur–dropper extraordinaire.
He blinks at me. “Yes,” he says, all seriousness.
My proverbial quills bristle. “It’s not a thing they do in California,” I point out defensively.
His face breaks into a big grin. “I know. I’m just giving you shit.”
I shoot him an exaggerated glare that only makes him chuckle. Ferocious I clearly am not.
He angles his head toward the door. “Shall we?”
I follow him outside and around the house to a set of gray metal doors built into a concrete slab that butts up against the house.
“I was wondering what was in here,” I mutter. I first spotted the doors when we were salting the house the other day, but I was too preoccupied by his hand on my arm to ask.
Theo unhooks the latch and grabs the handles. The doors creak loudly as he hauls them open.
Unclipping the flashlight on his belt, he hands it to me. Then he pulls a smaller one out of his pocket. “I doubt there’s lighting down there,” he explains.
I flick my light on. “Swell.”
The open doors resemble a gaping maw, the stairs a throat leading down into darkness. I shudder. “This is the kind of place where serial killers hide bodies.”
Theo nudges me. “Do you want to go first?”
“So I can be the first to die?”
He laughs.
I aim my flashlight back into the basement. “This is also exactly the kind of place Dale likes to hide.”
“Dale?”
“The squirrel who is determined to move into our house. He’s always hanging around.”
This time Theo’s the one who looks skeptical. “You realize that there’s probably like ten squirrels within every square mile in this area.”
“Dale’s missing part of his ear. I know it’s him.”
“Mm-hmm…” He nods the same way I do whenever he talks about his ghosts.
I whack him in the arm with my flashlight. “Dale is real,” I insist. Then I venture toward the basement. I’d rather face whatever is waiting in the dark than listen to Theo continue to suggest that I have an imaginary woodland friend.
I’m not the one hunting fictional creatures.
I keep the light focused on my feet as I navigate the stone steps that lead to the basement. A few rocks crumble under the soles of my Crocs, and plumes of dust blanket my knees and coat my lungs every time I take a breath.
The floor of the basement looks like concrete but feels a little spongier. As I cast the flashlight around the space, it illuminates exposed joists above my head and walls of plastered stone on every side.
A second later, Theo ducks through the doorway to join me.
“I should make this my room,” I joke.
“God, imagine. That may be pushing it, even for me.” He pretends to shudder.
I eye him dubiously. “I assumed you’d love nothing more than to bunk with a bunch of ghosts.”
“I want to prove they exist, not join their crew.”
“Why?” The urge to ask more, to learn more about him, overwhelms me this time.
Though he’s grinning, his brows jut together. “I think I’d have to die to really fit in.”
I stare at him, flabbergasted, until his smile dips, disappearing into the natural downturn of his mouth. “I just…” He shakes his head. “I need to know I wasn’t seeing things.” He gives me his back, shining his flashlight over the space beside the bulkhead doors. “This seems like a good spot.”
It’s like both those doors have slammed closed between us. What happened to him that he is willing to share literally anything else but this?
We spend the next half an hour moving planks of wood and cans of paint and tools into a neat pile in the corner.
When the last of it is stored away, I wipe my hands on the thighs of my sweatpants, ready to get the hell out of here and never, under any circumstances, enter this windowless dust dungeon again.
My skin feels like it has grown a set of permanent goose bumps, and there’s a chill sunk deep into my shoulders.
The number of insects I’ve seen down here is unacceptable.
Why does anything need more than four legs? It’s like Mother Nature is trying to terrify us.
“We have some pretzels upstairs if you want a snack,” I offer as I turn to face him.
Theo stands in front of me holding two devices that look like laser guns. “Ready?”
“For what?”
“You couldn’t possibly think you were getting out of here without checking for ghosts first?”
“That’s not an FM radio,” I say, pointing at his hand.
“Nope. It’s an infrared thermometer. To detect cold spots.”
“Theo, my entire house is a cold spot. We’ve got the AC blasting twenty-four seven to make up for the fact that there still isn’t glass in all the windows upstairs.”
“I’m not talking about being a little bit chilly. We’re looking for concentrated cold spots, like the one in the kitchen—”
“Which is caused by the AC vent above it.”
He opens his mouth, clearly ready for another one of our back-and-forths, but then his lips press together. “Humor me?” His voice is soft enough to seep into my bones.
I’m already taking the device from his hands before I realize I’m doing it. “What now?” I ask.
“Here.” He readjusts the thermometer so I’m holding it in my hand like a gun.
To avoid paying attention to how my skin erupts with heat every time it meets his, I focus on how absurd this is.
A ghost hunting gun. That shoots lasers.
And yet he keeps insisting Ghostbusters is fiction.
“It’s already set to Fahrenheit. Just point wherever you want to test the temperature and hit the trigger. ”
“Like this?” I aim my flashlight and the thermometer at the stairs to the bulkhead and depress the black button under my index finger.
A red laser shoots out toward the third step. After a second, the meter on the back of the device reads seventy degrees.
“What does it say?” Theo’s almost breathless.
“Seventy degrees.”
His eyes widen. “That’s low for the summer.”
“Dude.” I extract my phone from my pocket and flash the home screen at him. “It’s literally seventy-two outside.”
Theo’s brow furrows for a second, but then he shrugs. “No ghost is going to hang out that close to the door anyway.” His eyes glitter with excitement. “Time to really explore this place.”
“Yippee?” I side-eye him.
His moss-colored gaze sweeps over me, intense enough to feel like an X-ray machine exposing all my insides. “One day I am going to change your mind, Amity Callaway.”
Something in the way he says it knocks my knees out of whack. I stumble, then push by him at a jog to try to hide it. “Good luck, Theo Hargrave,” I say as I pass. “I’ll go this way.” I point in the direction I’m already headed.
“You think it’s a good idea to split up?”
For a moment, I actually hesitate. I have seen a million horror movies, and in all of them, splitting up results in everyone’s gruesome deaths.
But then I glance back at him to see he’s pressing the flashlight beneath his chin like a goofball, and I remember that nothing is truly scary when Theo’s around.
He’s too charming. Too adorable. Too good.
“Basements are the most haunted part of any haunted house,” he reminds me.
“I’m fine.” I cock an eyebrow. “Unless you’re afraid.”
He grins. “Fear? I don’t know her.”
I resist the urge to argue that if fear were gendered, it would absolutely be a cis guy. Let’s see one of them give birth. Or even have a bad cramps day.
The basement stretches the entire length of the house, so by the time I get to the other end, I can’t see Theo anymore. But I can hear his thumping footsteps, and his eager voice calling out perfectly normal temperature readings for a basement as if they’re solid evidence of a paranormal presence.
Blowing out a breath, I aim the thermometer at a random corner and press the trigger.
Even though no one is here to witness it, I feel completely ridiculous.
I don’t want to think about how much crap Taylor would be giving me right now.
But if I don’t participate, Theo will start in about our deal again, and despite the fact that our house still looks like a hardware store threw up in it, the Hargraves have made a ton of progress on it.
And all of it has stuck. Plus, Mom keeps going on and on about the reasonable price and the excellent craftsmanship, and she hasn’t looked this happy in months.
Theo did that for me.
I can do this for him. Begrudgingly. But I can do it.
The meter lights up, and I don’t have time to stop myself from making a noise of surprise.
Fifty-five degrees. That actually seems statistically significant.
Crap.
Theo’s footsteps are already headed toward me. “What?”
“It’s just…cooler over here.” There could be a crack in the foundation or maybe a gap between the floorboards above us. I raise my hand, searching for a gust of air.
When he reaches me, Theo takes his own reading with the same result.
“Holy shit.” His eyes widen. “This is the first real temperature differential I’ve ever seen.” He’s tapping the flashlight against his leg, creating a light show at our feet.
My mind searches for the remnants of my sophomore-year geometry skills to determine what part of the house we are under. “I think we’re below the AC in the living room.” That could definitely account for the drop in temperature.
Right?
His lips purse. “Let’s try over here, then.”
There are no windows in the basement, and the light from the open bulkhead only stretches so far into the space. The deeper Theo ventures into the dark, the harder it is to see, even with our flashlights.
Sweat stipples my forehead from the muggy air, and strands of my hair keep getting stuck in it. I raise my hand to swipe at them.
My wrist catches in something gossamer. I cry out, and my heart bangs against my chest. In my hurry to brush it off, I drop my flashlight and the thermometer.
We’re in a dank old basement, so it’s obviously just a cobweb, but that does nothing to ease my panic.
Now all I can think about is spiders crawling up my arms and nesting in my ears or hair.
I flail, frantic, and it feels like more cobwebs weave around me.
“You okay?”
I stumble forward at the same time as Theo turns his flashlight on me.
Something grabs my ankle, and I hit the ground hard on my chest and stomach. Dust and dirt fill my mouth and whatever has my leg won’t let go, though I yank and yank and yank to pull it free. My heart drums so hard my stomach sours.
In all the commotion, I knock against my fallen flashlight and it rolls away. When it finally stops, its beam casts a spotlight over a severed baby’s head.
And that’s about all I can take.
I scream.