Samantha couldn't see anything in the cellar. It certainly didn't smell like the cellars in Eternity, though. The cellars in the village smelled like the ripe vegetables kept down there: potatoes and carrots for the most part. Pryde's cellar to her surprise had more of a floral scent, as if he'd left bundles of flowers down here. That didn't fit with the Mr. Pryde she knew.
She groped around to find some kind of light. Her hand finally brushed against a small square of cardboard. Though she couldn't see, she was fairly certain it was a matchbook. Not the wooden matches they had in the village, but the cheap cardboard ones they had on the mainland.
She confirmed her suspicions when she flicked the cover of the matchbook open. She fumbled around until she managed to rip one match off. Getting it to light took four tries. Finally the match flared to life with an orange flame. That flame didn't last long, but it was enough for her to see a lantern hanging on the wall.
Samantha had to light another match to examine the lantern. Unlike those in Eternity, the lantern didn't use oil. From the heaviness of the lantern's base and the switch on it, she knew it was electric, run by batteries. She flicked the lantern's switch before the match burned her fingers. The lantern came to life with a white-blue light almost like the moon.
She swept the lantern around the room and gasped. Pryde's cellar did not contain vegetables; it contained clothes. She saw pile after pile of women's clothes along the floor. These clothes weren't the dull gray dresses worn by the girls on Eternity either. Samantha saw blues, pinks, yellows, floral prints, stripes, and even polka dots, not the sort of thing Reverend Crane would have allowed.
Her stomach began to churn as she studied the clothes. She had studied Reverend Crane's ledgers that had detailed the ages of the children on Eternity over the last three hundred fifty years. Except for her there had not been any additions to the roster during that time. That left only two possibilities: either the Reverend had kept replacing the girls by kidnapping new ones from the mainland or else the women these clothes had belonged to were dead. From what she knew of Mr. Pryde, she suspected the latter.
She set the lantern on the floor so she could use both hands to study the clothes. As she did, she noticed another strange thing. All of these clothes were huge, for women even bigger around than Prudence. Samantha held up a white blouse that could have fit three of her.