“Okay!” Curt called, and Dana saw the doorknob fall still as he let go. Holden took a quick look down into the barely-lit blackness, sat on the edge and tipped forward, holding the floor and flipping himself over to land on his feet. For a moment Dana was left alone in his room, Mother halfway through the jagged mirror and forcing herself past the remaining spears of glass, and Matthew shoving at the bed, its metal frame scoring the timber floor as it shifted with each impact.
Then Holden called to her and she sat at the trapdoor’s edge, easing herself down into his arms.
It was suddenly quiet in that dark part of the basement, as if the noise from above was meant only for the bedroom. She heard Holden’s breathing and felt his thumping heart next to her own, and he was holding her tight even though her feet were on the floor. She was glad. And then she looked around and saw why he was holding her, and knew they had made a terrible mistake.
The only light was from the lamp still dangling to their left, and it was barely bright enough to illuminate the whole room. But it showed them enough.
It was a torture chamber. A chair stood against one wall, fixed with rough metal clamps to the wall and floor. Thick leather straps protruded stiffly from the arms and legs. Chains and shackles hung from metal rings in the floor joists that made up the low ceiling. Several chains ended in cruel hooks, and others bore manacles, some of them set swinging by the sudden invasion of this place. The chair’s seat seemed stained dark, though that might have been the light. Against one wall stood a table, and on the table was a vast array of terrible, brutal tools and implements of pain. Saws, hammers, hooks, knives, chains, wooden stakes, pliers, branding irons, axes, cleavers, nails, bolts. A fine film of dust lay over everything, blunting the knives and dulling the intended use of some instruments, yet the small underground room seemed to echo with the horrors it had seen.
“This is the Black Room,” Dana whispered. “What?” Holden asked.
“From the diary. Remember? This is where he killed them.” She was shaking now, not cold but terrified, because everything was coming together. Guilt made her feel sick, and the fear of what was to come strove to empty her of hope. “This is where he kills us.”
“What are you talking about?” Holden asked. “This is just some sicko’s—”
“I brought us here,” she whispered, and the weight of responsibility was crushing. She could hardly breathe, thinking of Jules’s head in her hands. Her vision swam as she replayed Marty’s screams. “I found the diary, read from it, conjured them, and… you’re all gonna die because of me.”
Holden grabbed her upper arms and shook slightly until she looked at him. So strong, so solid, so there, even behind his fear she saw determination and strength. For a second she almost let it make her feel better.
“Nobody did this,” he said. “Okay, it’s bad luck. Horrible fucking luck. But I’m not gonna die and neither are you. We just gotta find the door.” “There isn’t one,” she whispered, and even though she hadn’t looked she knew she was right. This wasn’t part of the basement. It was a different place, and the distance between here and Holden’s bedroom above seemed endless.
He glanced around, and Dana watched him searching for the door. Bet he wishes he’d never tagged along now, she thought, but she couldn’t even smile. He turned back to her and nodded.
“Yeah. Nothing obvious. But there must be something in the wall. Just look.”
His optimism shook her a little, and she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
Maybe he’s right, she thought. Maybe we can’t just give in. And she moved to the table. She didn’t want to spend too long looking at the tools and dwelling on their uses, so she picked up something that looked like a small crowbar and started running it along the walls, tapping. She listed to the sounds it made to see if they changed—anything that might indicate an alternative material in the construction could mean something different beyond.
She tapped and tapped, but found nothing.
“Curt?” she shouted. If he’d made it down into the basement by now, perhaps he was on the other side of one of these walls. She concentrated, trying to position herself in relation to the outside wall of the cabin, but the geography of the room above them had become confused.
One or both of them will be down here soon, she thought, and the seconds seemed to tick away like memories of her life.
“Anything?” Holden asked.
Dana shook her head.
“No.”
He crossed the room toward her. He’d been tapping, too, and she saw a shadow fall over his face even though he tried to fight away his own desperation. He’s doing it for me, she realized. He’ll never say it’s hopeless.
“Hidden rooms were a staple of post-civil war architecture,” Holden said. “There’s gotta be a—” And when he was directly below the trapdoor a shadow swung in, a spiked metal smile on the end of a long chain, catching him beneath the left arm and across the back of his shoulder.
Holden’s eyes went wide and he screamed.
Dana reached for him as the slack chain tightened and he was lifted from the floor. He swung a little as his feet left the dirt and knocked her back, and she clasped his hands and pulled. Above and behind him she saw up through the trapdoor where Matthew’s huge shadow loomed, shoulders flexing and arms working as he pulled. The rusted teeth of the bear trap were embedded, it was only going to take a couple of seconds to haul Holden from the basement room, and then…
And then there’ll just be me, Dana thought. She did not want to die alone.
She tugged at Holden’s hands, knowing that each movement would be jarring those cruel metal teeth gripped within his flesh. But if she let the zombie drag him up and out he was finished, and Holden knew this as well.
Teeth gritted and bared he jerked his shoulders, stretching forward to help Dana each time she tugged. On their third try the shadow above them slipped and fell forward, and Holden dropped to the floor.
Matthew’s girth lodged him in the trapdoor, his upper body hanging in the basement, hands still reaching for Holden where he’d fallen. The lamp swung wildly beside him, and the shifting light danced shadows across his face, almost as if he had expression. But there was no expression there. He moaned slightly, but that was the only sign of effort as he twisted and turned, futilely reaching for his prey.
Holden had managed to tug the broken bear trap away from his back, dropping it to the floor and slumping over weakly, when one of Matthew’s questing hands snagged a fold of his ripped pullover. Holden’s eyes went wide as he was snatched backward, and Matthew hissed in triumph.
“You like pain?” Dana asked. She stepped around Holden and stabbed hard with the crowbar. It punctured Matthew’s face amidst the remains of his nose, driving him against the wall and pinning him there. Dana screamed into his face, “How’s that work for ya?”
Holden fell free.
Matthew’s hands grasped at the bar and started pulling, and Dana heard the sound of metal scraping against bone.
He’s not dead, she thought, bar through his head and he’s not dead, not yet, not dead, not yet—
She plucked a long carving knife from the torture table and stabbed at Matthew’s chest, neck, throat, face, head, hacking at him a dozen times, shaking with rage. She went for his heart, not knowing for sure that it beat; his brain, uncertain of whether he even thought in the normal sense. His hands finally swung down and he hung limp, but she kept stabbing anyway. She was furious at his lack of blood. If he’d bled, perhaps she would have felt… happier?