Free The Special Ones by Em Bailey

young, very small.
    ‘It won’t be for long,’ Harry reassures her. I hand him a jug of water from the side table and he in turn holds it out to her.
    I keep waiting for Lucille to wake from her strange, trance-like state and start yelling that we’re crazy if we think she’s going down there. I almost want her to. But Lucille just nods and takes the jug. Then, daintily lifting her skirts, she descends obediently into the cellar.
    The trapdoor slams down over her and Harry fixes the catch in place. He makes an odd noise and I think at first it’s from the effort of manoeuvring the door, which is heavy and awkward. But then I glance at his face.
    ‘Harry?’ I whisper. ‘Are you all right?’
    ‘I had to do it,’ he mutters. His voice is so strange suddenly, so fierce! ‘Going down there is her only hope now. And ours, too.’
    I’m not sure I understand exactly what Harry means, but I recognise the emotion. The survival urge forces us to do things we don’t want to do. Sometimes terrible things.
    I nod slowly. ‘We had no choice,’ I murmur.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    The cellar punishment can only end when he sends a message to Harry. Usually no more than a single day passes before it arrives, but this time a whole two days go by without a word. I start to get concerned. Lucille is meant to move into the main part of the house with us in the next couple of days. As I walk around doing my chores I imagine her below me, alone, without food and with nothing but spiders for company. I spent a day and a night in the cellar once, for forgetting to leave the tonic out on the kitchen table. It felt like I’d been there for a year when the trapdoor finally opened and I was released. Time goes very slowly in the pitch-black.
    Another day passes and my thoughts become darker. How long could Lucille last down there with that single jug of water? How much longer will the punishment last? Has he forgotten about her? Then something truly terrible occurs to me. Maybe she’s being abandoned down there. Left to die. The more I think, the more certain I am that this is what’s happening. I’m not sure what to do. Pull up the trapdoor and let her out? Smuggle some food and water down to her? Or leave her to her fate to protect myself? I’ll wait one more day, I think, hating myself for being such a coward.
    And then, after breakfast the following day, Harry comes up to me and says, ‘It’s time to let her out.’
    ‘Really?’ For a moment I’m trembly with relief, but almost immediately fear clutches at me again. For the first two days I had heard the occasional noise from below the floor, which I assumed must have been Lucille moving around. But there were hardly any sounds yesterday and nothing at all so far this morning. I’m terrified of what we might find when we open the trapdoor.
    Felicity wants to watch but there is no way I’m letting her see what might be down there. I shoo her off to collect the eggs.
    Harry and I roll back the rug again and then he pulls open the trapdoor. I peer into the blackness, hoping that Lucille will stampede up the stairs. There’s no sound from down there.
    ‘Maybe she’s dead,’ I whisper. Dead from dehydration or hunger. Dead from a spider bite – or one from a snake. Dead from loneliness and fear.
    Harry shakes his head. ‘ He wouldn’t let that happen.’ Does he really believe it? I can’t tell.
    I lean over the dark square, plunge my head into it. ‘Lucille?’ I call. ‘You can come out now.’
    There’s silence. Nothing.
    ‘I’ll go down and look for her,’ says Harry, his face grim despite his mild tone. ‘Maybe she’s asleep.’ But suddenly there is the sound of footsteps – very, very slow ones – and I glimpse a flash of white in the darkness.
    My heart stops as a figure floats from the gloom. Of course it’s Lucille , I tell myself. And it is, but she’s different. A layer of dust and dirt has settled on her, fading her hair, covering the colour in her skin.