—
I wake an hour or two later, needing the bathroom. We are wrapped in soft blankets on the floor, our warm bodies entwined.
My back and hips ache, and the heat of my subsequent bruises already evident. My back must be covered in them.
I stretch, letting myself luxuriate in the throb of them.
I look over at him sleeping beside me. He looks so peaceful.
I see my dress discarded across the floor, and my coat slightly closer. It might be a long, cold trek to find a toilet in this renovation.
I manage to hook the coat with my foot, and drag it over, before I shuffle out from under his heavy arm. He sleeps on, as I slide back the blanket covering me, the cool air of the house hitting me instantly.
I wrestle on my coat, trying not to knock over the glasses beside the picnic blanket, then head toward the darkened doorway on tiptoes, the floor gritty with building debris underfoot.
When I reach the dark hallway landing, I fish out my phone torch and train its fluorescent beam first up into the plastic-covered ascending staircase and then down the descending one.
The kitchen, I decide, must have a small guest toilet near it. I take a breath and head downstairs.
There is only one door off the main room. I open it hopefully but am met by a bespoke pantry with a tea-making nook. I close the door softly and continue my search.
Outside, there is a scream in the darkness. I freeze. I do not breathe.
I tell myself it can’t be a person. It can’t.
There is not a woman in the basement.
The scream comes again, and I am right. It is almost human but not. A fox shrieking into the night. Sometimes they can sound so real.
They say those screams, the ones that sound like humans’, are actually the foxes’ mating calls. I shiver off my misplaced fear and continue my search.
But Anna is back in my mind, and I cannot shake her and the thought that terrible things happen every day, and nearly every house around here has a basement. Even mine, with its washer, dryer, and storage shelves.
My thoughts stutter to a stop as I reach the staircase and see the steps leading down to Matt’s basement. There is a door at the bottom of the stairs with a key, ready and waiting, in its lock.
I’ve already been in Arabella’s basement, I argue with myself. What harm is one more?
I listen up the staircase for sounds of him waking. It can’t hurt to check. Then at least I can stop half thinking it.
There are no sounds from the mezzanine. I shine my phone torch down into the stairwell and start to descend.
At the bottom, I press my ear to the door, but there is no sound beyond.
I look at the key; it definitely wouldn’t have been left in the lock if there was something terrible behind this door.
I turn the key and lower the handle, carefully opening up the door.
Darkness stares back. I shine my torch in and am met by more stretches of plastic sheeting, the breeze from the open door rustling them like ghosts floating in the blackness.
I step into the basement and shine my torch in. The room flares into vision.
It’s a cinema room, with red velvet seating vacuum-sealed in plastic, small, mirrored tables between each seat, for drinks and popcorn.
The carpet is blood red and covered in a tight, sealed, protective plastic film.
All the chairs angle toward the screen wall, where a projector at the back of the room is lined up to show films.
There is no bunker, no basement of horrors, no Anna.
