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“Damn!” Theo hesitated. Dan didn’t appear to be home, and she had no wish to break and enter, but she couldn’t just leave the cat. She wasn’t sure if it belonged to Dan, and she knew full well the damage a cat could do if it chose to. What if it…? No. She’d just go in, get the cat, and leave.
The house was dark and silent. Not knowing where the switches were, Theo used the wall to guide herself down the hall. Her footsteps fell lightly on the floorboards. She counted off the framed book covers as her hands made contact with the frames. If her memory was correct, the room at the very end of the hallway was the kitchen. Perhaps it was Dan’s cat after all, seeking out its supper bowl.
She felt inside the doorway for a light switch, taking just a single step into the room before she slipped on something wet and sticky and crashed to the floor. As she got onto her knees, Theo cursed the cat who had no doubt spilled something. Her eyes were starting to adjust a little. She could make out the leg of the kitchen table, the shape of the cat lapping at whatever it had spilled. And then, as she turned, the outstretched form of a man. Dan. He was lying with his legs beneath the table. Even without light, Theo could see the whites of his eyes, staring and fixed. And she knew suddenly that she’d slipped in his blood.
CHAPTER 5
I am in trouble, and I may already be gone. Watch for the book. It will speak to you of what lies Underneath. Study it. Press a copy into the hands of everyone you love. Buy copies to hide away so that the story may not be taken from you.
WKWWK
Primus
Theo suppressed the instinct for flight and reached instead for his neck to check for a pulse, but her fingers fell upon a throat that had been slashed so deeply that she could feel severed tendon, slippery lumps of cartilage and muscle. His body was still warm, but she knew he was dead.
She pulled back gagging, pressing herself into the corner of the kitchen, and for a time all she could do was stay there, shaking. And then her phone rang.
“Theo, how do you feel about Chinese food—”
“Gus…help me.”
“Theo, what’s wrong?”
“Oh, Gus—” Theo struggled to get her mouth to form words when all she wanted to do was scream. In the end she managed to tell Gus where she was, what she’d found. The extra light from her phone allowed her to make out Dan’s face, his eyes staring, frozen.
“Theo, get out of that house.”
“I have to call the police.”
“Theo, listen to me. Whoever did this might still be there.”
“The police…”
“I’ll call them. You get out of that house! I’m on my way.”
Theo pulled herself up against the wall. In doing so her hand passed over the light switch and she flicked it, closing her eyes against what she knew she would see. She counted to three before she opened them. A large pool of blood haloed Dan, smeared where she had slipped. Theo did not let her eyes linger near his throat. Grief started to seep into the shock. As did the past. Theo staggered under the combined weight of anguish and terror and shame. She turned to go, to run.
A plaintive meow cut the fog. The cat she’d followed in had climbed onto Dan’s body. She couldn’t leave it, she couldn’t leave Dan like that, with some stray trying to eat him. And so she attempted to grab it. But the cat leapt out of her lunge and into the sink. She went after it, but by that time it had escaped through the open window.
Theo grabbed the sink gasping. She felt hot and dizzy, and for a moment she was afraid she might faint. She turned on the faucet and splashed her face, struggled against the urge to be sick. Her phone rang. Gus.
“Theo, are you okay?”
“Yes, where are you?”
“Just pulling up—I can’t see you.”
“I’m still inside.”
Gus swore. “Don’t touch anything, Theo; the police are on their way.”
Theo stepped back from the sink.
The door opened down the hallway, and Theo started.
“It’s just me,” Gus entered the kitchen. “My God, Theo, what are you doing?” He blanched as he looked at Dan’s body, the pool of blood, streaked where Theo had fallen, her bloody handprints on the wall, a blood-splattered garbage bag discarded near the door. Gus held out his hand. “Theo, come with me.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for the police?” she asked, shivering now.
