I felt my feet touch the cold tile and froze in the silence of the house, listening to see if my entrance had caused anyone to stir. Everything remained still and quiet. I took a deep breath, wiggling my socked toes on the floor as I waited for my eyes to finish adjusting to the darkness. I glanced around for any tell-tale lights that might indicate a camera or an alarm, but nothing broke the darkness besides the glowing green clocks on the stove and microwave. As the room around me gradually resolved out of the gloom, I studied my surroundings. The kitchen was tidy, with a small breakfast nook in one corner, high-end appliances and several mugs and plates stacked neatly in the drying rack next to the sink. The attached living room had a couple of plush couches, a thick, dark-colored rug, and a wide-screen television that took up most of the back wall. Everything was extremely ordinary. I was almost disappointed, but really, what had I been expecting? Blood on the walls, human body parts in the sink? I chuckled silently at me own absurdity, I was letting my imagination run away with me. It had probably been nothing, this was probably a mistake. I glanced back at the open window, considering whether I should slip back out and just wait outside for Cramer to return. As I did, I heard a soft sound I couldn’t quite identify, but it could have been a whimper or a moan. I turned, searching for the source of the sound, but saw nothing in the area, except an airduct leading down to the basement. I listened for a moment longer but didn’t hear anything more. It could have been a groaning floorboard, or a shift of the structure, I supposed. Fuck it, it’s not like the crime I had already committed by coming in here was going to get much worse if I took a quick peek downstairs. I took a tentative step forward, letting my foot glide along the tile, and continued deeper into the house. The place wasn’t large, but the furnishings seemed expensive. It was also spotless inside, and it had a large, open floorplan, which made things easier for me, because I didn’t have to worry about stumbling across anything unexpected, though I did take corners carefully. Reaching the front hallway, I stood for a moment on the other side of the door I had been knocking on not long ago. The deadbolt was locked, and there were 2 pairs of men’s shoes on the mat next to the door. Nothing unusual. Now I had a choice to make: to the left were stairs leading up to the second floor, and to the right was a door I was guessing led to the basement. I bit my lip; basement first, I decided. That was where I had seen signs that someone might be present, so I might as well start there, and check the 2nd floor after, if I couldn’t find anything.
I opened the door, revealing a yawning darkness stretching down a set of unfinished wooden stairs. On the main floor, there was at least enough light bleeding in from streetlights outside the windows that I could navigate without a light, but that wasn’t going to work going forward. I stepped onto the first stair and pulled out my phone before I closed the door behind me, plunging me into complete darkness, then I thumbed on the flashlight function. It seemed blinding in the tiny stairwell, and I had to pause for a moment before I could see well enough to proceed down into the basement proper. I had to walk lightly to avoid too much creaking on the old stairs. The basement wasn’t finished, the floor was bare concrete with a few rugs thrown down haphazardly, and the walls were unadorned drywall. One side of the room was stacked with storage boxes, nestled a little too close to a washer/dryer set for my comfort. Hopefully nothing in there was too susceptible to water damage. The opposite side featured an old fridge and chest freezer in the back corner, and a cracked, worn leather couch across from a TV that was far smaller and older than the one upstairs. Though nothing down here was as fancy as the main floor, it was still neat and orderly, nothing surprising or revealing. There were also small windows on the back wall, similar to the one I had seen from the front door, but oddly they were all bare, even though I was certain I had seen a curtain move. I walked closer to inspect them more carefully, sweeping my flashlight around the room as I did. I should have brought a proper flashlight, the one on my phone didn’t have very good range, which was probably why I didn’t see the door in the back wall until I was nearly on top of it. It was a simple, wooden door that was fairly unassuming, I would probably have thought it was a closet, were it not for the heavy-duty hasp screwed into the frame, allowing the door to be secured from the outside with a padlock. There must be something in there that Cramer wanted to keep secure. I moved closer, running my light along the door and across the walls next to it. There was a small hook on the wall to the right that held a key with the same brand name as the padlock stamped onto it. My stomach dropped. Why lock something up and keep the key so close to the lock? What was the point? The only time I had ever seen someone do something like that, it was to keep raccoons out of their shed. That wasn’t typically a problem people encountered indoors. Which left only one reason I could think of. There was something inside, that Cramer was trying to keep from getting out. Something that could use a doorknob. Well, there was only one way to find out. I reached for the key, slipped it into the lock, the padlock fell open and I tucked it into my pocket, before I opened the hasp. The room now unsecured, I took a deep breath and tucked myself against the wall before I slowly turned the knob and opened the door just enough to peer carefully into the room. The light from my phone reflected off two pairs of eyes that blinked in the sudden glare. I pushed the door open further to reveal two women sitting on mattresses that had been thrown on the floor of the small room, looking back at me with a mixture of fear and confusion. For a moment, I just stared back at them. They were both relatively young, probably mid-twenties, one was blonde, and the other was a brunette and they were wearing matching nightgowns. Crucially, I didn’t recognize either of them. As I looked them over, the light caught a glint of metal, and I saw each of their right ankles were chained to wall.
“Who are you?” the blond woman asked quietly. “What are you doing here?”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Her lower lip shook slightly as she spoke.
“Are you the one that knocked?” the brunette added.
“I saw you in the window, didn’t I?” I looked behind her at the curtain hanging above her mattress.
She nodded,
“Don’t tell Drew, I’m not supposed to look outside, but I was worried that something was wrong. People don’t usually knock so late at night. Why are you here? You didn’t hurt Drew, did you?” her voice trembled.
They seemed specifically afraid of me, and concerned for Drew, even though he had, presumably, chained them up down here. It was probably better to just placate them for now, until I figured out exactly what was going on.
“No, I wouldn’t hurt Drew. I am a friend of his. Do you know where he is?”
They both shook their heads,
“We only see him when he comes down here. We can’t be in the main part of the house because someone might see us, and then we could be in danger. We have to stay down here, where we are safe.”
“How long have you been down here?”
“Uh, m-maybe 2 weeks?” the brunette seemed to have to really focus to recall that. “Lena, you were here first, do you remember?”
Her pupils seemed oddly dilated, and she was strangely trusting of the stranger who had wandered into her room, despite her fear, so I wondered how much ‘Drew’ had messed with her mind in the last two weeks. As we had seen with the Immune, there was still a lot that was unknown about the long-term effects of manipulation by ubarae. We were mostly used to dealing with momentary infatuation, but after weeks with him, who could say what exactly the effect was.
“You got here a couple of weeks after Ashley, so, yeah, two weeks seems about right, Kate…” Lena spoke so quietly I could barely hear her.
“Ashley?” I asked. “Where is she?”
“She left,” Lena replied flatly, seemingly uninclined to elaborate.
“Right. Speaking of that,” I pulled up Mia’s picture on my phone. “Have either of you seen this woman?”
Kate looked at me strangely,
“Of course, Mia is right back there,” she gestured into the corner of the room, where a third mattress was draped in the shadow cast by the open door.
Raising my head, I looked back at the mattress, but I didn’t see anyone. I walked further into the room, moving closer until I saw my light reflect off of another chain attached to the wall. Following it outward, I saw it terminate in the tangled blankets on top of the mattress. Pushing the blankets aside, I finally saw the woman I had come here searching for. Mia was lying on her side, curled into a fetal position, with her hands wrapped tightly around her stomach. I touched her shoulder,
“Mia?” I said softly.
She groaned, a sound I was certain was the same as the one I had heard earlier, and thrashed weakly, but she didn’t open her eyes.
I touched her cheek; it was flushed, and her breathing was rapid. When her exhalations hit my face, I noted that they were strangely sweet smelling.
“How long has she been like this?” I asked the others.
“I don’t know,” Kate replied. “She was sick all day, throwing up and complaining about a headache. But a couple of hours ago she said she was tired and lay down. We thought she was just sleeping.”
I was no doctor, but even I could tell that this was not good. I took a couple of steps back and raised my phone to take a picture of the small room and everyone in it. It would get the message across faster than words. I texted the image to Simon with the caption: Ambulance. Gail. Now. He would figure it out from there. That done, I knelt next to Kate and Lena.
“Ok, look, I need you both to come with me and I will get you somewhere safe, OK?”
A look of panic flashed across Kate’s face,
“Drew said it wasn’t safe to leave, we can’t.”
I chewed my lower lip, trying to decide the best way to approach this. Whatever Cramer had done to them, it seemed to have left them very… credulous. They accepted most of the things I had said with no questions, they didn’t even seem that curious why I was in their room in the middle of the night. So, I took a chance that a confident lie was the way to go here, at least to get them out, then Gail could handle the rest.
“Don’t worry, I told you that I am a friend of Drew’s. He says this place isn’t safe anymore, so he wants me to take you somewhere secure, and he will meet you there, ok?”
Kate and Lena thought about this for a moment, then Lena nodded.
“If that is what Drew thinks is best,” Kate agreed.
“Fantastic. Now, just give me a minute to get these chains off, and we’ll go.”
I knelt down and retrieved a locksmith tool from my pocket. The lock on these chains seemed pretty simple, so it shouldn’t take too long to get it open.
“Where did you meet Drew?” I asked as I worked.
Kate smiled broadly at the thought,
“We met at Synergy,” she gasped and covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Don’t worry, I know about Synergy,” I reassured her. “I was just there earlier tonight.”
“Oh, good. I was worried I had screwed up. But yes, we met there, and it was love at first sight. I have never felt that way about anyone before. He told me he had enemies, and that if we wanted to be together, I would have to hide, so that they couldn’t find me and hurt him through me. I understood, and I agreed, because I would do anything to be with him.”
“That makes sense,” I tried for a neutral tone. Now was not the time to challenge whatever story he had fed her.
I felt the lock click open and looked up just in time to see her gazing over my shoulder. Kate’s pupils dilated slightly, and a slow smile spread over her face. I snapped the cuff back onto her ankle and flattened myself to the ground just in time to hear something connect with the wall where my head had been. I rolled to my feet, backing further into the room as I did. Andrew Cramer pulled his bat free from the drywall and I felt an itch blossom at the base of my skull as he turned his full attention on me, anger flaring in his eyes.
“Who are you, and what, exactly, are you doing in my house?”