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“Oh, Lord, let’s just get this over with.” Val reached behind her seat and grabbed her purse.
Outside the car, Val and Kerry climbed the steps, fully expecting Leaf to pop out at any minute, or hoping he would. Something just didn’t feel right about the situation.
“Leaf?” Val said, leading Kerry into the house. “You in here? It’s Val and Kerry.”
Kerry looked on the wall just inside the front door, found the light switch, and flipped it up.
Startled by the new light in the shadowy room that somehow seemed extra-spooky at that point, even with its backwoods location and dank interior design, Val turned to Kerry and quipped, “Why’d you turn on the light? You don’t know if he wants his lights on.”
Kerry shrugged and went to turn the switch down.
“Just leave it,” Val said, looking around the room at cobwebbed paintings of hunting scenes on every inch of wall space and antique hunting weaponry.
“Where’s Leaf?” Kerry asked to avoid saying something about how eerie the room felt. She’d never been a particularly intuitive person, but there was a sound radiating through the middle of her brain telling her to get out of that little woodsy cabin. “You think he’s here?”
Val stepped further into the house. She looked down a dark hallway that seemed to lead to bedrooms. “Leaf?” she called again before turning back to Kerry after there was no response. “He said he’d be here,” she said to her.
“Well, it’s not like him to say he’d be somewhere and then not be there,” Kerry replied.
“I know.”
The women instinctively moved in toward one another.
“Leaf!” Val called again, but only echoes of the sound of her voice returned.
Kerry pointed to the open door leading down to the basement that was at the top of the hallway. “Looks like there are steps in that doorway. Maybe he’s downstairs.”
“Okay,” Val agreed, nodding. “Go on and check it out.”
“What? Why me?”
“You found the doorway.”
“But you’re closer to it.” Kerry pointed to Val and then the doorway.
“Come on and stop being a pussy,” Val said, avoiding the pangs of flight in her brain. “He’s probably just down there doing some high-level FBI-type shit, like sharpening swords or something and that’s why he can’t hear us.”
Kerry frowned at Val. “Fine. Look, let’s just go down there together.”
Val rolled her eyes dramatically. “I don’t think so. The way I see it, we’re two black girls visiting a white man’s cabin in the middle of the woods and he’s not answering us.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Since when do black women go search for clues for missing white men in dark basements?” Val put her hand on her hip and awaited Kerry’s answer.
“You can’t be serious with that superstitious black stuff.” Kerry pointed out. “We drove all the way up here and you want to leave because going downstairs wouldn’t be the ‘black thing’ to do?”
“Yup.”
Kerry grabbed Val’s hand. “Come on.” She started pulling her toward the basement and spoke the whole time to cut the haunting silence around them. “Like you said, he’s probably down here working.” She pulled Val down the top two steps. “Probably has on headphones.” Two more steps. “And is listening to something like Pink Floyd or R.E.M.” Two more steps.
“I hate R.E.M.,” Val said.
Kerry looked back and up at her at the bottom of the staircase. “What? I loved them! Are you kidding me?”
“Your music taste just sucks.”
The women were hand in hand when they peeked around the corner and saw a light on in a room toward the back of the basement. There were couches and cots, and some old machinery of some kind filling up the space leading to the room.
