Free Dollhouse by Anya Allyn

where Henry slept. He snored in a low whistling rhythm. Creeping past, we entered the bathrooms. There were a series of three individual cubicles containing toilets and sinks. The old pipes were cracked and leaking. A bug climbed out of the sink’s drain in the last bathroom we looked at—then shot away under the torch beam.
    “Blech. Let’s go.” Lacey held a hand over her mouth and nose.
    “Yeah. Nothing to do here.” Ethan’s face was drawn.
    We took small steps past Henry’s room and found the passage back to the ballroom. We didn’t dare put our torches on so close to where Henry slept.
    Deep, silvery moonlit fell across us.
    Gaudy plastic flowers adorned an ugly glass vase on a side table on the other side of the stair well. The wall of the stairwell was deeply creviced around a rectangular shape. I pushed at the shape. It budged slightly.
    Ethan rounded my shoulder, pushing against the wood. A door swung open. Steps lead down in blackness. Stepping backwards, I eyed Ethan.
    “I’ll go,” he said.
    I nodded.
    Lacey’s face was somber as she followed Ethan.
    Wrapping my arms around myself, I told myself to
move
,
go down there
. It wasn’t fair that Lacey and Ethan had to do it by themselves.
    My feet stepped stiffly one after the other on the concrete stairs.
    The air was cold, damp—like standing in light rain on a winter’s night, except for the metallic, closed stench of dirt. The temperature was bone-achingly cold down here and I could barely stop my jaw from quivering.
    Ethan moved quickly, studying everything. Our torch beams crisscrossed each other’s as we searched the room. Barrels were lined up loosely on one side of the basement, and a ladder and a big freezer chest on the other. I shone my torch over the ceiling. It was just a ceiling, a few rusted tools hanging from rough-cut exposed beams.
    We checked the barrels next—they were empty.
    Marching across the room, Ethan reached for the freezer lid. He went to open it, then flinched and drew his arm back. A weight dragged through my body. I knew what Ethan feared was in the freezer, and I knew why he didn’t want to open it.
    Lacey cast a sympathetic look in Ethan’s direction. Stepping forward, she placed two hands on the lid, and lifted it. I moved closer, peering inside. Heads, legs and arms—all in pieces. All animal.
    She shut it quickly.
    None of us moved for a moment, and I knew why. The possibility of finding Aisha like that was too much, too grisly.
    We were just kids. We shouldn’t even be here doing this. We shouldn’t be trying to find her. This was reality, with every pretense stripped away.
    On the wall behind Ethan, yellow plastic was wound around a large nail. Stepping over, I unfurled a length of the plastic. Big black letters said,
Police Line Do Not Cross,
repeatedly on the tape.
     “It’s some of the police tape—that barricade stuff.”
     “They must have been down here already,” said Ethan.
    “Guess it makes sense.” I dropped the piece of tape. “If the basement was so easy for me to find in the dark, how easy would it have been for teams of police in daylight?”
    I shone my torchlight around the floor again. If you looked closely, you could see different imprints of shoes on the dirty floor.
    Heading for the stairs, I turned back to see if Ethan and Lacey were following me. I wanted out of here—now.  In my mind, I had a vision of Henry closing the cellar doors on us, locking us in here. My heart rattled in my chest.
     
    * * * *
     
    Lacey stuck a torch in the tent and inspected the sleeping bags. “Snakes can get in sometimes.”
    I wriggled into bed, half-expecting something to strike at my feet. But after a moment, I reclined stiffly, unable to move. The cold had driven so far into my bones I didn’t think it would ever leave me. I knew it wasn’t just the cold—it was the sawing terror of searching for the dead. Tonight we hadn’t even come close to finding Aisha, but we’d come too close