When my hands palmed a pair of shoulders, I reached up and felt the face.
Mush and bones.
The lantern illuminated the room.
We gasped in unison.
There were probably a dozen of them, hanging by chains from the ceiling, in various stages of decay, their feet just inches off the floor, so they appeared to stand of their own volition.
The ones I’d bumbled into were still swinging as I pushed my way through them back out into the passageway.
The lantern shook in Vi’s hand. We both trembled now.
'This is hell,' she said. 'We’re in hell, Andy.'
I thought I heard distant cackling somewhere in the basement.
'They want us to hang them up like the others?' she asked. 'Is that it?'
'I think so.'
'I can’t do it.'
'Just come hold the lantern for me.'
'Andy—'
'Vi, I’m about to lose it, too. Let’s just do this and get the fuck out of here.'
I dragged the young woman into the room. In a far corner, a chain hung from the ceiling. Thank God she was small. Standing her up, I wrapped the chain under her arms and cinched it tight enough so she could dangle.
When I’d finished, I couldn’t help but glance at her nearest neighbor—scorched blacker than a roasted marshmallow, its eyes shone like boiled eggs.
Horace Boone was watching me.
I dragged Steve inside, but my skin crawled, and I’d lost the composure to hang him up. So I left him sitting in the corner behind his wife and rushed back out into the passageway.
I took the lantern from Vi and turned up the flame. We walked together back down the corridor, the way we’d come, Vi grasping my arm, still trembling. We turned a corner, and the passageway split. I couldn’t remember which way to go, so I took the corridor that branched right.
The lantern provided just enough illumination to see a few steps ahead. Beyond the ellipse of firelight, the darkness gaped with a silence that seemed to hum, though I knew that sound was only the blood between my ears.
The corridor abruptly terminated. I imagined some failed convert stumbling blindly into this wall, hearing Rufus or Luther, maybe even Maxine coming for them through the darkness.
Returning to the intersection with the wider corridor, we veered into the left-hand passageway, soon passing through the cramped room with the old chair and bed frame. I felt reasonably sure I could get us to the staircase now, but after a series of turns, we arrived at another dead end.
We wandered through the dark tunnels for another twenty minutes, growing increasingly unnerved at our inability to find our way out. At one point, we heard distant shouting, though I couldn’t tell if it came from upstairs or somewhere in the basement.
We were walking through a particularly narrow passageway when Vi stopped and pointed ahead.
'Light,' she whispered.
The passageway ended, and we emerged from the labyrinth on the opposite side of the staircase from which we’d all entered just an hour ago. The screening room and those stone rooms where we’d agonized in pitch-black isolation loomed just ahead.
An ax leaned against the wall.
We swung around the staircase and there, perfectly still, stood the Kite family—Luther, Rufus, Maxine. The old woman held baby Max in her arms, his tiny head resting on her shoulder, snoozing.
'Thought we might have to come find you,' Rufus said.
'Yeah, we got turned around in there,' I said.
I glanced at Vi. She eyed her baby.
'How’d you kids like the trophy case?' Maxine asked.
None of them had moved.
'Charming little room,' I answered, mustering a sarcastic smile.
'Heard y’all hollering,' Maxine said. 'Funny stuff.'
As Luther stared a hole through me, Vi stepped forward. I pulled her back.
'What is it, young lady?' Rufus asked.
'Give him back to me.'
Rufus sighed. 'Violet, I’m afraid I’ve got a piece of bad news.'
'What?'
'Have a seat against the wall. Max, give her the baby.'
Maxine walked over and presented the baby to its mother. Vi sat down with him, crying now, and it was a full minute before she tore her eyes away from her sleeping son.
The old man and his wife towered over Vi. She gazed up at them, tears plowing through the dirt on her cheeks.
'Here’s the thing,' Rufus said. 'We think you were terrific today. Really. Hell, you drew first blood. Unflinching. Brutal. Lovely. But I think Andy has a lot more in the way of potential. He was icy out there. Calm. And he’s a thinker. More than I can say for my own son.'
'I don’t understand,' Vi said, stroking the nape of her son’s neck. 'I don’t—'
'Andy needs our full attention, Violet. It’s just not fair to him to keep you around.'
'But I did what you wanted.'
'Kiss your son goodbye and hand him back to Maxine.'
'You lied.'
'Rufus, just a—'
'Andy, don’t make this worse.'
Maxine reached down and grabbed little Max under his arms.
'No!' Vi screamed. 'Get away from him!'
The baby awoke, emitting a tender cry.
'There, there,' Maxine cooed. 'Let’s not—'
Vi cocked her right arm and cracked the old woman’s jaw with the back of her fist.
Maxine roared and wrangled the baby away from its mother.
Vi started to rise, but Rufus stamped his boot into her chest and pinned her back against the wall.
'Now you’ve pissed her off,' he said.
Maxine wiped blood from the corner of her mouth. Then she took hold of the baby’s ankles and held it upside down, little Max now screaming and flailing.
Vi wailed, too, as Maxine began to spin around, swinging the baby faster and faster.
'Now we start inching toward the wall!' she called out, her faded house dress twirling, her snowy hair whipping around like a shock of white cotton candy. 'And after this, we’ll all play hide and seek! See, the fun never ends!'
I lunged for Maxine, but Rufus caught me on the chin with an elbow and my knees buckled.
I hit the ground, Vi screaming, the room spinning, expecting at any moment to hear the fracture of the tiny skull meeting the stone.
Luther caught the baby in his hands and snatched it away from his mother.
In shock, Maxine steadied herself, leveling her gaze on her son.
'Boy, are you loony?'
She grabbed Luther’s earlobe, so short she could only yank down.
'I dare you to hold onto that baby two more seconds,' she seethed.
Rufus was in stitches.
As I struggled to my feet, Luther set the infant in the dirt.
When Maxine stooped for the baby, Luther lifted his mother off the ground and slammed her flush into the rock wall. There was a hollow
