“We were able to endure things together that we might not have been able to endure apart,” she says. “She couldn’t protect me but she never abandoned me—”
“We can leave,” I tell her. “You don’t need to put yourself through this—”
“I haven’t shown you yet,” she says.
Albion leads me around to the exposed section of basement, to a place where a minor cave-in has created a series of earthen steps.
“I can’t go down there with you,” she says.
I scramble down into one of the chambers—a minuscule room, only about six feet to a side, if that. There’s a concrete slab—maybe a bench, or maybe it was supposed to be a bed. Jesus. I find my footing along what would have been the connecting hallway to a doorway veiled by wisteria—through the flowers, a hole leads underground. I glance back at Albion—she’s watching from the edge of the precipice. She helped bring people here, she and Peyton—whatever else happened in their lives, they recruited women to come here, they helped fill these cells. By the end of the city they lived in their own apartments, playing dress-up with each other and modeling, pursuing fashion design and art, Raven + Honeybear while women suffered here. This is hell. I’m walking into hell.
I pull aside the flowers and vines, plunge through the hole into the dark of the basement. This place smells like soil and rot, the sweet rancidity of things that grow in death. I have the flashlight—click it on, sweep it over the room. This place is preserved. A worktable with tools. Hammer, lathe. Circular blades hung on pegboard. A washing machine, a dryer. Sooty floors and sweeps of ash that must have blown in through the weeds. Above me, the ceiling boards moan and crack with every gust of wind like a cave-in is imminent—run, I should run from here—but whatever Albion wants me to see is down here somewhere. Other cells sprout off this main section of the basement, hidden behind wooden doors. One of the doors is painted with a stencil of a woman walking two other women on leashes like they’re dogs. There.
The door’s stuck, but jerks open once I pull with my weight. Musty, cold. Another concrete slab for a bench or bed. There are bones in the corner. There are human bones lying intertwined in the corner. Two skulls, like whoever these people were held each other as they died—or maybe the bodies were just stacked here, somewhere out of the way. Losing myself, feeling the need to vomit—but what pours from me is a scream, a harrowing, sorrowful scream. I collapse to the bench, and when I do, a stream launches in my Adware. The stream’s swift, sweeping past anti-malware and firewalls. Mook. This is one of Mook’s geocached installations—the stream triggered when my Adware synced with the right coordinates. This basement, this cell, this bench.
My eyes fill with recorded memory: I’m still here in this basement room, but someone flicks on a light and Timothy and Waverly are here, bathed in greasy orange from a naked bulb. There are others here, too, three others—one of them, the youngest, is just a teenager, lanky and pale with feminine eyes and long black hair. Rory. This must be Rory, the one I pushed into the path of traffic, but he’s so young here—a camo Pussy Hounds jersey and boots worn without laces. I’ve never seen the other two, but they must be Waverly’s brother, Gregor, and the other son, Cormac—Cormac’s the one Albion said was a family man, the one she remembered showed pictures of his daughters—he’s broad shouldered with a barrel belly, midtwenties here or probably older, his sloping chin covered in a reddish scruff of beard. Gregor Waverly stands apart from the others, his posture stiff, like he’s wearing a brace or some sort of body cast, arms hanging limp at his sides. His natural expression’s a horrific pout, the purple underside of his thick lower lip curling outward and down. His hair’s bone white, close-cropped, his ears like meaty, ragged flaps.
Timothy grips me by my hair, forcing me to stay close to him—all that crimson hair spilling over my shoulders, he’s looped it around his wrists and holds me by it. Albion—this is Albion’s memory, recorded through her eyes.
“You don’t have to suffer,” says Waverly.
Timothy pushes me farther into the cell and I see her: Hannah Massey. She’s imprisoned here. Gaunt, naked—only a specter of the young woman I’d tracked through the Archive, case #14502. She’s kneeling on the bench, gazing up through the ceiling at—what? Is she praying? Her eyes are like dead eyes, distant. Her ribs and breasts are striated violet with bruises. Rory and Cormac, the brothers, pull her from the corner and stretch her out between them. I realize, now: by leading me here, Albion is showing me how Hannah Massey will die.
The men take turns with her, Waverly first. Rory and his brother. Gregor. I scream—or is it Albion who screams? My innards turn to water and I slump, my legs buckle. Hannah doesn’t struggle—she’s endured this before and endures this now like her body’s already dead. Her head falls to the side and she looks through me. When our eyes meet, her eyes tremble. “Please,” she says, “please, please, please—”
I want to help her, but can’t because Albion can’t help her. All Albion offers are her screams, and so I scream.
“Why are you screaming?” says Waverly. “Albion, why are you screaming? What is causing this fear in you?”
“You’ll kill her,” Albion says—I say.
“And what if she were to die?” says Waverly. “Look at her—all of you, look at her. What do you see? You see a body—but what is a body? A body is flesh. A body is not the spirit. Don’t weep for this woman’s body. When you look at her, remember that you’re looking at nothing more holy than roadkill is holy. What you see is not her spirit—her spirit is immortal. You can’t see her spirit. When you see her, see the beasts you’ve seen dead on the side of the road. Roadkill, that’s all she is. Remember, there is a God above God—”
Timothy’s young here, thinner—I recognize him from the newspaper photographs I’d researched, when he went by Timothy Billingsley or Timothy Filt. His beard’s just a stringy strip outlining his chin, his arms reedy, his paunch a soft sag.
“You can save her,” says Timothy to me—to Albion. “I’ll forfeit my turn with her if you take her place—”
Albion’s hyperventilating. Hannah turns away. Albion says nothing.
I think of Twiggy. I think of Timothy’s wives. I think of Albion and Peyton. I think of the farm in Alabama and these basement cells, of the countless, faceless others as Timothy takes his place between Hannah’s knees. He strips off his clothes and the two bodies are absurdly white in the dim cellar room. He takes his turn with Hannah, or tries to take her. His movements aren’t the bludgeoning of the other men but a frantic, vicious scrabble until he yells, “I can’t, I can’t,” and strikes her in the stomach. Hannah groans, doubles up, but Cormac and Rory pry her legs apart and brace her between them. Timothy’s father hands him a chisel from the basement workbench. Timothy doesn’t finish until he stabs Hannah through her breasts, his arm pumping, gashing quickly, pulverizing her. Timothy moans at the eruption of Hannah’s blood. He’s whimpering, spent.
Albion’s memory ends, resets to the beginning.
Jesus. Oh, Jesus Christ, please, oh Jesus, please.
It’s the closest I’ve come to prayer.
I don’t know how long I stay hidden in this darkness, but I exhaust myself crying, hoping for comfort in this utter black but finding none. I reload the stream and record everything I witness. I send the file to Gavril’s drop site with a message: Do not open or view. Save for me, please.
Deep twilight when I emerge from the basement. The rain’s cleared out for the time being—the stars are thicker here, without the pollution of city light. I climb from the pit, walk the perimeter of the house, around farther back to lush weeds. Albion’s sleeping on a bed of grass. No—she’s not sleeping. Her eyes are flickering, almost like she’s dreaming—but she’s not dreaming, she’s not asleep. I lay with her, load the Archive, find her.