Lightbulbs blew all the time.
But as she turned and strained to see in the dark, she couldn’t help wondering how the hell wind was blowing in the kitchen. And why would the light have gone out at the precise moment when the door slammed shut?
She forced herself to think logically.
There was nothing to be afraid of; she was in her own basement. Yes, there was something about the darkness that had always scared humankind, a fear of the unknown. But that didn’t mean that fear had any basis in reality.
She climbed the steps to the door and turned the knob. Or tried to.
Panic did set in then. How could the door be locked? That was certainly well beyond the power of the wind. She pushed against the door, then beat her fists against the unyielding wood. “Hey!” she yelled.
Stupid, stupid, stupid! If someone was in her house, she really shouldn’t be yelling.
She turned around again, desperately trying to see in the darkness, and told herself to get a grip. She had her softball bat. She was only frightened because it was human instinct to be frightened. What she needed to be was angry—angry with herself. Sensible people who discovered skeletons in their houses stayed away. They sent workers in to return things to normal before they thought about making the place their home again. Especially when they owned a perfectly good carriage house.
She groaned, then was surprised to see that a dim light seemed to be seeping into the basement from…somewhere.
She started down the stairs again, intently holding onto the softball bat with both hands, ready to swing.
And then, to her horror, she tripped.
Swearing, she dropped the bat as she reached out in the darkness, trying to find the rail, but it was as if it slipped out from under her hands. She went tumbling down the wooden stairs, continuing to curse herself all the while.
With a thud, she landed at the bottom of the steps, the baseball bat landing at her side.
Stunned and winded, she lay on the cold stone floor of the basement, seeing the light disappear and feeling the darkness press against her like a heavy cloud.
“She’s definitely not in the library—the place is locked up tighter than a drum,” Caroline told Will.
They had walked around the building, but the front gates were locked, as was the fence to the backyard.
“I could scale the fence,” Will said.
“Or we could call Vicky,” Caroline suggested, punching in the number as she spoke.
Vicky answered and told Caroline that Sarah had left the library some time ago, long before she herself had locked up for the night.
“Okay, so she’s not here,” Caroline said. “There are a couple of ways to get to Hunky Harry’s. I’ll take the main streets, and you go around the plaza.”
As she started to walk away, Will shouted, “No!” and hurried to catch up with her.
“What’s the matter?” Caroline asked him.
He took her arm. “I don’t know, exactly, but Caleb sounded anxious. It’s not late, and there are a lot of people walking around, but…I don’t want you going off alone.”
“You’re scaring me, Will,” Caroline said.
“What’s going on is pretty scary.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Caroline asked. “Just a few days ago, I wasn’t afraid at all. I knew Winona Hart had gone missing, but it seemed like an isolated incident, nothing to do with me, and I wasn’t scared. Now…now we’ve connected that other girl, Jennie, with Winona. And then Caleb found that body on the beach….” Her voice trailed off. “Will, I’m frightened, really frightened. We have to find Sarah. Now.”
He took her hand and started walking.
“This isn’t the way to Hunky Harry’s,” she said.
“I know,” he told her, his grip firm on her as he started moving more quickly.
Sarah lay on the floor for several long moments, feeling a dozen pains streak through her. She groaned aloud as she finally tried to move.
She flexed her muscles, moved her arms and legs. Luckily she didn’t seem to have broken anything. She carefully got to her feet and realized she hadn’t even sprained an ankle. She wasn’t injured, just sore.
And still in a very bad place.
Note to self, she thought dryly. Find cell phone and attach to body.
She thought she heard movement nearby, and she spun around, lightning bolts of terror streaking through her once again.
Hello? a voice breathed somewhere in her head.
She gripped her softball bat and inched forward into the dark. She couldn’t see a thing, even though she was young and had very good vision.
If she couldn’t see and someone else was in the basement with her, at least that person couldn’t see, either, she told herself.
She held very still. Nothing happened.
She continued to wait, holding her breath, for what seemed like forever.
As she waited, she realized that those fractured particles of light seemed to be seeping back into the basement. From where?