“Yay, Shaun! You did it.”
Becky clapped her hands and watched Shaun’s face light up as he looked at the finished puzzle before him.
“Yay!” Shaun said.
“You did great. Okay, what’s next? Should we have a snack?”
He slapped his hands down on the table and grinned.
“Oh, be careful not to hurt yourself. I’ll get us a snack.”
Becky rose from the kitchen table and moved to the fridge, her gaze wandering to the gray light outside. The clouds hadn’t released a single drop of rain, but they hadn’t abated either. If anything, they looked darker. With a quick glance into the living room, she continued toward the refrigerator.
The house didn’t seem so spooky after being in it a while. She’d almost turned back before getting to the island, her childhood fears becoming more pronounced as the boat pushed her closer and closer to the Fin. As kids, she and her friends had floated near the island on inner tubes and rafts, daring one another to set foot on land. There had been a running wager: fifty dollars to whoever actually did it. No one ever collected on the bet, and now she couldn’t remember who, if anyone, had held the money.
Shaking her head and smiling a little at the memory, Becky picked up a cereal bar from the counter then pulled the fridge door open and scanned the contents. She grabbed a juice box for Shaun, then paused, her hand hovering over a half gallon of chocolate milk.
No, that’s why Greg isn’t with you anymore, remember?
She sighed and settled for a low fat yogurt instead.
A gloom, which had nothing to do with the weather or her location at the moment, descended over her as they ate at the table. She stabbed her spoon into the yogurt as though it were the culprit of her unhappiness.
“Men are shallow, Shaun. Don’t grow up to be shallow, okay?”
Shaun swallowed his bite of cereal bar, his eyes large. “’Kay.”
“You’re such a sweetie, you know that?”
He smiled, his teeth covered with bits of the bar. Becky laughed and helped him with a sip of juice.
A dog whined behind the basement door.
Becky froze, her hand trembling enough that the straw pulled away from his lips.
“More?” Shaun asked, signing the word too.
“Shhh, hold on,” Becky said.
She stared at the door for almost a minute, sure that she’d been mistaken about what she heard. The Tormers didn’t have a dog—at least, Evan hadn’t mentioned it.
“Do you have a dog?” she asked, her eyes still on the door.
“Da,” Shaun said, pointing at the dog in the puzzle.
“Yep, that’s right. Do you have one? Downstairs?”
Shaun’s brow furrowed, and he looked at the puzzle. “Da?”
The whine came again, this time farther away from the door. It filtered up through the floorboards beneath their feet. The keen of it raised the hairs on Becky’s arms, bringing to mind images of an animal hurt or dying. Was that why Evan said she wouldn’t need to go downstairs? Because he had a mistreated dog down there?
She stood, the sound of her chair sliding across the floor akin to the wailing below. A part of her wanted to stay upstairs, but another part, larger and kinder, couldn’t stand the sound of an animal in pain.
“I’m going to be right back, okay?” Becky said, placing a hand on Shaun’s shoulder.
Thoughts of what she would do if she found a beaten or abused pet cascaded through her mind. She would have to call someone, that much she was sure of. She would never turn a blind eye to a child being neglected, and she couldn’t ignore a pet in the same situation.
Shaun made an agitated noise behind her, but she didn’t turn. Her hand already lay on the doorknob, which was cold. She wrenched the door open, waiting for an injured dog to come racing past her and into the kitchen, but the stairs stood empty. Darkness clung to the steps, and she could barely make out a platform farther down. Her hand found a switch inside the stairway, but when she flicked it upward, no light bloomed below. At that moment she nearly shut the door. She hadn’t heard anything really, and Evan seemed like a nice man who loved his son, not the kind that would lock away a tortured dog.
As she began to shut the door, the dog whined again down in the dark. The sound was so full of anguish her heart ached. She could already feel its fur beneath her fingers and its grateful tongue licking her face.
Becky stopped on the landing, only then realizing she’d traveled down the stairs to get there. The black of the basement looked like swirling ink before her eyes. She’d never encountered darkness so thick. Not even when her cousins locked her in a closet when she was six. The gap beneath the door had let a little light in, enough to spur hope of getting out.
But now, her breath was trapped in her chest. She stepped forward, finding the next stair with her outstretched foot. Her hands groped before her, and she imagined what she would do if something reached out and touched her fingers. She would die, she knew it in her heart. There would be no scream, or even time to register the pure terror; she would simply drop, dead as a swatted fly.
Instead of the slimy touch of something unimaginable, her hand brushed a wooden post. Following it down, mostly for support, she felt the edges of an electrical box, and after an excruciating beat, the switch flipped up, coating the basement with dim light.
Becky stood motionless on the steps, her fingers pressing the switch up as though it might snap down on its own. A doll stood near the bottom of the stairs, its lifeless blue eyes gazing across the room. If they’d been trained on her, she might’ve screamed, losing all will to venture further. A few boxes and an old desk sat to her right, but the object at the far end of the space was what held her attention.