I stepped back, one hand rubbing at the dull ache throbbing its way up my spine, puffing and wheezing. Definitely used to be fitter than this. Condensation from the window made the walking cane’s handle slick against my palm. Cold. Like the dead. ‘You want to know what reason number two is?’
‘Only if it means we can leave before this horrible old house falls into the sea.’
‘Reason number two.’ I slid the head of my walking stick under the edge of the living room rug and flipped it up. The wodge of dusty fabric hinged back, flopping over the corpse of a three-bar electric fire. ‘Abracadabra!’
Alice crept forwards. Frowned down at the floorboards as she swept her phone’s torch across them. ‘I bet Penn and Teller are bricking themselves.’
‘Sod...’ That wasn’t right. ‘Maybe I cleared the wrong bit?’
‘You could get a six-month residency at a swanky Vegas hotel with an act like that.’
The electric fire joined the new pile, as did another bedside cabinet, another mahogany wardrobe, and a bookcase. This time, when I flipped the carpet back, it revealed a trapdoor, with a flush brass handle.
‘Oooh...’ Alice shuffled forward, Henry trotting along at her side. Then her expression soured. ‘Tell me you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.’
‘One way to find out.’ I grabbed the handle and pulled.
4
The wooden steps creaked and groaned as I inched my way down into the blackness. It was dark enough on the ground floor, but here in the basement? My phone’s torch barely made a dent in it. The ancient musty smell of dust and mould thickened the air, along with something rancid and sweaty.
Brick walls on either side of the narrow stairs, the mortar furred and whitened as salt leached out.
Alice’s voice worried down from the living room. ‘Ash, you really, genuinely shouldn’t be doing that. What if something happens? You can’t—’
‘This would go much faster if you helped, you know?’
At the bottom of the stairs, the basement opened out. Hard to tell how big the space was, given the anaemic beam from my phone, but the sound of my voice echoed back to me. So not exactly tiny.
Mounds of dirt and dust littered the small circle of concrete floor currently visible in the torch app’s glow.
I scuffed through them, following the pale light till it pulled another brick wall out of the dark. Inched my way along.
‘Ash? I’m serious, Ash, it’s too dangerous!’
Since when had that ever stopped us?
More salt-furred bricks. Then a screw poked out of the wall at chest height, the head all rusted and swollen. Someone had wrapped string around the thing, tying it off in a lumpy knot, the rest stretching away into the gloom, like a washing line.
‘Ash? Don’t make me get DI Malcolmson to arrest you...’
Five or six feet along was another screw, the string looped around it, another length on the other side.
‘Ash?’
Hmm...
An ancient Polaroid photo was clipped to the string, with one of those tiny clothes pegs people displayed their Christmas cards with in the seventies. It captured a young woman, seventeen or eighteen, all blonde hair and cheesy grin, standing on one leg in a park somewhere, a bandstand in the background. The colours tainted with orange and brown. Another one hung next to it: a different young woman, her short brown hair spiky, dressed in T-shirt and shorts, the curving line of a beach visible behind her. Next: a young man, early twenties, maybe, doing a terrible job of trying to grow a moustache as he posed with a pint of lager in what looked like a beer garden. Then a girl — couldn’t have been much over seventeen — all hunched in as an older man wrapped his arm around her shoulders, the pair of them posed and uncomfortable, in ugly retro sportswear, on a putting course somewhere, with water and hills in the background.
Not exactly your usual basement decorations.
‘Ash? I’m not kidding!’
Next Polaroid along showed a laughing man, head thrown back, beard thick and red, eyes shining, arms thrown wide, in front of the Scott Monument in Edinburgh. Then another young woman, wearing jeans and a T-shirt with Tony Blair’s face on it, grinning as she sat astride a bicycle on a hedgerow-lined lane somewhere...
There were more, making a strange collection of holiday snaps that never had the same person in them twice. The only common thread was they’d all been taken with a Polaroid camera — that familiar square picture in a white rectangular frame. Tainted with mildew.
‘Ash?’
My phone buzzed against a fingertip as I used the sensor on the back to unlock it. Called up the camera, and set it to video. Which instantly killed the torch app, plunging the basement back into blackness.
Damn.
‘ASH, ARE YOU OK? IT’S ALL GONE DARK DOWN THERE...’
‘GET YOUR BACKSIDE DOWN HERE — I NEED HELP.’
‘IT’S NOT SAFE AND—’
‘ALICE!’
‘All right, all right...’
I fiddled with my phone till the torch flickered into barely-there life again. Couldn’t be much battery left by now.
A bright circle of light bloomed at the bottom of the stairs, followed by the thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk of Converse trainers on wooden steps as Alice finally grumped her way down, Henry’s claws clickity-clacking behind her. ‘I want it on the record that I said this is a terrible idea. If we all die, it’s your fault. And what is that horrible smell?’
‘Thank you. Now shine your torch over here.’
She did, making the wall glow, casting rectangular Polaroid-shaped shadows on the bricks. ‘Ash, why does Gordon Smith have other people’s holiday photographs hanging up in his basement?’
‘Go along the line so I can video it.’ The camera killed my torch again, but at least this time I could film as Alice shuffled her way from one Polaroid to the next, illuminating each in turn. ‘Good, now the other side.’
She turned, sweeping the light across another brick wall to... ah.
Henry let loose a whine.
‘Ash?’
There were shackles fixed to the bricks opposite, the chains furry with rust. A mattress on the floor, filthy with brown stains. Heavy-duty stainless-steel hooks, screwed into the beams of the floor above. More brown stains on the concrete floor beneath them.
Another line of Polaroids hung on either side of the shackles. Only in these ones, the people weren’t smiling. In these ones the colours were mostly reds and blacks.
Alice crept forwards, pulling a reluctant Henry with her. ‘What the hell is this place?’
I cleared my throat.
Wasn’t easy.
All those small square photographs in their rectangular white ‘frames’, the greying plastic stained with the dark swirls of bloody fingerprints.
Just like the ones that used to turn up on those birthday cards for Rebecca...
‘Ash?’
I swallowed something bitter. ‘It’s a kill room.’
She inched forwards and stared at one of the photos. ‘Oh God. Ash, they’re—’
A long, low rumble sounded from somewhere far too close. Henry scrabbled round, barking at the end wall, hackles up. Dust drifted down from the joists and floorboards above our heads.
Alice and I turned and stared.
No way that was a good sign.
Then my phone launched into its bland generic ringtone. Vibrating hard against my fingertips. Nearly dropped the damn thing instead of answering it. ‘Hello?’