The Night Sister (25 page)

“I am not a chickenshit,” Piper said, her whole body rigid as she stood before the open door to the tower.

“So—let's go,” Amy said, sweeping her arm grandly toward the entrance in a you-first gesture. “We've got a dungeon to find.”

Piper's shin throbbed out a warning, a Morse-code message of pain, as she remembered falling through the floorboards. She didn't want to go in there. Didn't want to go prying at the edges of floorboards, shining the flashlight Amy had taken from the kitchen drawer into the shadows, like some wannabe teen sleuth. If there really was a dungeon down there (Surely there couldn't be? Why on earth would Amy's grandfather have built a dungeon?), she sure as hell didn't want to see it. She didn't think Margot should, either.

“Maybe you should go home,” she said to her sister, who was marching along with purpose, looking more like a little adult than a ten-year-old kid walking into a death trap.

“I'm not scared.”

Maybe you should be. Maybe we should all be.

“Yeah, come
on,
Piper,” Amy groaned. “Take a hint from Little Sis here. Let's go.”

Piper followed Amy into the tower. She walked slowly, testing the boards beneath her feet with each careful step. They felt springy, flimsy. How had she not noticed this the other day?

Margot stood in the doorway, eyes wide as she watched.

Amy was walking without care, stomping down on the boards, trying to pry up the edges of them with her fingernails. “I don't see anything that looks like a trapdoor,” she said.

“Remember upstairs,” Margot said. “There were two layers. The actual floor, and then the boards below for the ceiling.”

“Right,” Amy said. “So maybe the door isn't right here. Maybe it's just a couple of loose boards. Come on, Piper. You start at that side; I'll start over here. Check every board to see if it's loose. We'll keep going until we meet in the middle.”

Piper nodded. “Margot, you stay outside and watch. If we fall through or anything happens, you run up to the house and get Amy's grandma, okay?”

Amy laughed. “If you go get Gram, you better make sure we're dead first. Because we totally will be if she finds out we've been in the tower.”

“Just be careful,” Margot said, hovering in the doorway.

Piper thought it was way too late for that.

She got down on her hands and knees on the wide knotty-pine planks that made up the floor. She imagined Clarence Slater, a young man then, having the boards milled, laying them down himself, pounding nails, building his wife her own Tower of London.

A tower with a secret dungeon.

“Doesn't the real Tower of London—you know, in England?—have a dungeon and a torture chamber and stuff?” Piper asked.

“I think so. I dunno,” Amy said, thumping and prying at the floorboards.

“So maybe he just added one to this tower to make it more like a real replica, you know? To be authentic.”

“Maybe,” Amy said. “But why keep it a secret, then?”

Piper had begun at the door, following that board to its end on either side, checking the boards that butted up against it. Row by row, she studied the floorboards, working her fingers into cracks, trying to pry them up, but the old rusty nails held fast. Across the tower, Amy did the same on her side, scuttling crouched-over, pinching at the boards like a crab in flip-flops.

They moved closer to the middle. Amy groaned in frustration. “It's got to be here,” she said.

“Maybe there is no trapdoor, no oboe—whatever,” Piper said, trying not to sound too hopeful.

“You guys sure about this?” Margot called from the doorway.

Amy was staring at the ladder in the center of the room. “Of course!” she said, leaping to her feet so hard and fast that Piper could see the boards sinking beneath her.

“Watch it!” Piper warned.

You'll fall straight through the floor and end up in hell.

“The ladder,” Amy said. “It's not attached, right? It's just kind of held in place by little stoppers at the bottom.”

Amy grabbed both sides of the ladder and lifted; the whole thing moved. It wasn't all that sturdy: only a couple of two-by-fours making up the side rails, with short pieces of the same lumber cut for rungs. It rested on the floorboards, held in place by two sets of cleats made from strips of wood. Amy heaved the ladder up and clear of the cleats.

“I could use a little help here,” she grunted. Piper stepped forward and grabbed the right side. Together, they lifted it up, then angled it sideways, brought it down awkwardly, and laid it on the floor.

“Be careful,” Margot warned.

Amy crouched down, fit her fingers along the edge of the board the ladder had been resting on, and gave it a yank; it wiggled like a loose tooth.

“Come give me a hand,” she called to Piper. They both began to pry up the board that had been under the ladder, and soon discovered that it was attached to the board just behind it—these came up together in one solid piece.

“They're nailed together,” Amy said, as they flipped the piece over, setting it to the side. On the underside, four strips of wood were nailed crosswise, holding the boards together. “They acted like one big piece. And with the ladder on top, none of it moved. No one would know they were even loose unless you got the ladder out of the way!”

Piper was only half listening. She was looking down into the hole left in the floor. There, between two heavy floor joists, was a trapdoor on rusted metal hinges. A large, sliding metal bolt was latched on the other side.

“Hand me the flashlight,” Amy said, scooting forward on her belly so that she could reach the latch.

“Wait!” Piper said suddenly. It was clear that the heavy metal bolt had one purpose: to keep whatever was down there from getting out. “Maybe you shouldn't. Maybe we should get your grandma or something?”

“Just get me the damn light, will you?” Amy said, then wiggled the bolt. It slid open with the sickly scraping sound of metal against metal. Piper brought the red flashlight to Amy just as Amy heaved the trapdoor open.

The first thing that hit them was the smell: cavelike, damp, and dusty. It was the smell of lost things, of decay. Amy shone the flashlight down into the hole. The batteries were low, and it cast a dull, orangey glow.

“What's down there?” Margot called from her post outside. She really was a good sister, Piper thought with a pang of something like regret.

“Hard to tell,” Amy said. “I think there's furniture. A bed, maybe?” She leapt up, shaking the floorboards again. “Let's get the ladder. We can use it to go down.”

“Amy,” Piper said, “I
really
don't think—”

“You don't have to come. You can stay up here and hold the ladder.” Amy's words were taunting.
Chickenshit,
they seemed to say.

“Of course I'll come,” Piper said, thinking,
I go where you go.

Together, they got the ladder and carefully lowered it down into the darkness, leaning it against one side of the trapdoor.

“I'll go first,” Amy said. “Hold the ladder.”

She climbed carefully down, testing each step before she put her weight on it.

“Crap,” she called once she was down all the way. “I forgot the light. It's pitch-black down here. Bring it, okay?”

“Okay.” Piper tucked the plastic flashlight into the waistband of her shorts and positioned herself to start climbing.

“Don't go,” Margot said from the doorway.

“It'll be okay,” Piper said, meeting her sister's eyes. “I'll be careful. And I'll be right back. I promise.”

No way was she staying down there long.

Amy held the ladder for her, and, slowly, she made her way down, shin throbbing with each step, until her feet touched the hard cement floor. Amy put her hand on Piper's back, and Piper jumped.

“Got the light?”

“Yeah.” Piper handed it over, without turning it on. Amy would do the honors.

“Ready?” Amy asked.

Piper swallowed.

“Sure.”

The light came on suddenly, illuminating the room with a dim orange-white glow.

“Oh my God,” Amy stammered.

Piper couldn't speak. Couldn't make a sound, even though she felt a silent scream building somewhere deep inside her, coming out through her open mouth in just a sad, moist puff of air.

“What is this place?” Amy's voice was squeaky and strange, totally unfamiliar to Piper. Then she realized: it was the first time Piper had ever seen Amy truly frightened.

“Everything okay?” Margot called from up above. “What's down there?”

Piper looked around, scanning the small circular room from right to left. Just to her right was a pair of heavy chains, their ends embedded in the cement wall. Each chain ended in a rusty shackle.

And Amy was right—there was a bed. It was wooden and covered with leather straps and buckles. A mildewed blanket was balled up at the head of the bed.

It's a torture chamber.
Piper wanted to say the words out loud, but couldn't speak, couldn't even think clearly.
Your grandfather built a torture chamber.

She thought of the serious-faced man she'd seen in all the photos—the army pilot with the Purple Heart medal, father and husband, a man of vision, who had built a motel with a tower.

But the tower had a secret room in the basement.

A secret room for doing terrible things.

Had he taken motel guests down here—salesmen far from home, who would never see home again? She knew there were men who did stuff like that, people like John Wayne Gacy or Ted Bundy. But they were just bogeymen she'd heard about on television, not much more real to her than werewolves or zombies.

Amy gasped sharply, breathed, “Oh, no. Oh, shit.”

Piper wanted to close her eyes and feel her way back to the ladder, up the rungs, and into daylight, to forget all about what she had seen. She certainly did not want to see whatever it was Amy was looking at.

“Look,” Amy said, putting her hand on Piper's arm, tugging, pointing. Piper reluctantly turned and saw what the flashlight's dim beam was illuminating.

On the opposite side of the room lay what looked like a pile of clothes. Then she saw the yellow-white gleam of a skull, dried strands of wispy hair, empty black eye sockets.

“It's Sylvie,” Amy said, voice shaking. “We've found her.”