He jammed it into the deadbolt.
The door swung inward and a cold dank draft swept up out of the darkness and enveloped him.
He smelled stone and water, mold and earth, as though he stood at the entrance to a cave. Though he’d yet to cut the darkness with his flashlight, there was no question in his mind that this door led to someplace underneath the House of Kite.
And the hair on his arms stood erect and some primal siren sounded in his brain, but mistaking terror for adrenaline, he walked down into the darkness because he’d never felt more alive.
54
HORACE kept the beam of the flashlight trained on the rickety steps. They creaked as though God Himself were standing on them—twenty-two in all—and it grew colder the farther down he went so that his breath was pluming again by the time he reached the bottom, a dusty vapor in the lightbeam.
At last Horace stood on a dirt floor.
He shined the flashlight back up the staircase. The door at the top felt miles away.
The basement lay in pure silence and blackness. Horace imagined sitting at a table in the Ocracoke Coffee Company the following morning, near a window with the early sun streaming in. He would write this scene over coffee. It would be amazing. It would be safe.
Horace swiped the beam in a slow circle to gain his bearings.
What he saw unnerved him—doorways into nothing, stone passageways, shoddy wiring snaking up the walls. He shivered, stepped back from the steps, and shined the flashlight down the widest passageway, one that ran behind the staircase into seemingly infinite darkness.
It occurred to him that a person would have to be mad to enter that tunnel, and for a moment, he strongly considered heading back up the steps, through the kitchen, into the moonlit yard. The comfort of his bed at the Harper Castle B&B seemed more enticing than ever but he steeled himself, gripped the flashlight, and proceeded into the passageway.
He progressed slowly, letting the beam graze every surface.
The corridor appeared to narrow the deeper he went.
Horace passed a doorway, shined a light through it. In the brief illumination, he glimpsed a big oak chair in the throes of construction, dripping with wires and leather restraints.
He lost his breath, leaned against the wall to get it back.
When the sound of his own panting subsided, he listened.
Water dripped somewhere in the distance, beyond the ellipse of light.
He heard something move behind him, spun around with the flashlight.
There was nothing there but the sound repeated.
When the beam hit the floor he saw the fat rat sitting on its haunches staring at him, eyes glowing like luminescent beads.
It scampered back toward the stairs and Horace moved on in the opposite direction, the passageway now turning and branching and turning again, passing through alcoves and various rooms—one with a low ceiling, filled with empty wine racks, another with the burned and splintered remains of a bed frame. There lingered a foreboding, a dread attending these rooms and tunnels. Horace could feel it. Awful things had happened here.
He approached yet another corner, disorientation setting in. The basement seemed to extend beyond the boundaries of the house and he doubted whether he could readily find his way back to the stairs.
At the corner he stopped, shined his flashlight through the next fifteen feet of passageway.
An icy drop of water splashed in his hair.
He glanced up.
Another landed on his nose.
Horace wiped his face, moved on.
A moment later he arrived at a fork in the passageway.
He stopped, looked back in the direction he’d come, trying to recall the turns he’d taken, resolved now to find his way back to the stairs and leave this place.
He heard something, turned, now facing the two tunnels, sound coming from the one on the left, and not the scratchy footsteps of a rat or dripping water.
As Horace illuminated the tunnel, he wondered if the beam had weakened. It seemed softer, less focused.
He ventured in.
This corridor ran straight and narrow, the sound louder now, a metallic clink-clink-clink.
The beam of light revealed a wide doorway ten feet ahead on the right.
The clink seemed to originate from there.
Horace killed the light and approached in darkness, dragging his hand along the stone so he’d know when he reached the doorway.
He soon felt the break in the wall.
The clinking stopped.
He stepped through the threshold, thinking, Maybe I imagined it.
His foot hit something.
Movement below him.
Chains rattling against stone.
He turned on the flashlight.
The beam lit the horrified faces of two women and Andrew Thomas, each manacled and chained to an iron ring in the center of the floor.
They looked vanquished—faces filthy and bruised, streaked with dried blood. But they were shivering and very much alive.
Horace stepped back in shock, a tentative smile parting his lips.
Rich, hero, famous, author—
Andrew Thomas said, “Who are you?”
Horace put a finger to his lips, knelt at the captives’ feet, whispered, “My name is Horace Boone, and I’m here to get you out.”
One of the women started crying.
The other asked, “Are you FBI?”
Horace shook his head.
“You look familiar,” Andrew said.
“I followed you from Haines Junction.”
Horace shined the light on the manacles that bound Andrew’s wrists.
“You followed me? How did you find me in the first—”
“Let’s talk about that when we’re safe. Now I don’t know how to get these things off.”
He tapped the stainless steel manacles.
The woman who was crying said, “I pulled my hand through one of them, but I can’t get the other out.”
“Horace,” Andrew said, “we’ve been hearing a lot of hammering and sawing nearby. Go see if you can find an ax or something.”
Horace remembered passing the room with the oak chair. He’d seen tools scattered all over the floor.
“What time is it?” asked a quiet beaten voice.
Horace shined the light into the face of the little blond he’d seen with Andrew. “Not even midnight,” he said. “We’ve got time.”
55
THE joy, the giddiness, the aching hope consumed him. Horace Boone ran through the tunnels in search of the room with the oak chair, knowing that he should be afraid, though excitement overwhelmed what little fear there was.
He emerged from the labyrinth on the opposite side of the staircase from which he’d entered just ten minutes ago, and plunging back into that wide passageway, soon found himself standing at the entrance to the little room with the oak chair.