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I step out into the hall, only then realizing I disturbed the line of salt I put around the room to keep the horseman contained.
“Do I need to keep you in chains?” I say to Brom.
He stares down at the salt and shakes his head. “He won’t be a problem.”
“You know I’m trusting you with our lives,” I tell him grimly.
He swallows and gives me a single nod as he holds my gaze. “I know.”
I believe him. I truly do.
But I don’t trust the horseman.
I’ll just have to keep a close eye on him. Part of me wants to run back into the room and grab the gun, but I’m afraid that will hurt Brom’s own trust in me. So I don’t.
I lock the door behind us, and then the three of us walk down the hall after the ghost, following the trail of blood. My heart is already racing and from the shallow, anxious breaths that Kat is taking, I know she’s feeling the same. I reach down and grab her hand while I hold the candlestick with the other, perhaps more for my comfort than hers.
But this time the trail of blood doesn’t lead to the woman’s wing.
Instead it goes down the stairs to the first floor.
And with a horribly uneasy feeling that makes my scalp prickle, I’m getting the sense that I’ve done this before.
We slowly go down the stairs, careful not to slip on the blood, and then follow the trail and the faint thumps as they go down a wing that holds a few classrooms.
One of the doors is wide open, the crimson path leading inside of it.
“Where does that door go?” Kat whispers. “I thought that was just a closet. For the custodian.”
I stop moving, the two of them running into my back.
“What is it?” Brom growls.
I shake my head, closing my eyes as I try to remember something.
“I think I’ve been here before,” I say faintly. “I think I’ve done this before.”
Was it a dream? Did I imagine it? Or did it actually happen?
“Well, if you did, nothing obviously happened to you,” Kat says. “I think we should follow her.”
I open my eyes and glance down at her in surprise. “If I didn’t know any better, Kat, I’d think you were trying to paint me as a coward.”
“It’s just a ghost,” she says with a frown, nodding toward the closet. “Come on.”
“Gets haunted once, now she thinks she’s an expert,” I mutter to Brom, but he’s already following Kat as they go after the bloody trail.
I exhale noisily and hurry after them.
They’ve stopped inside the barren closet, looking down a set of narrow stone stairs, the red glistening under the candlelight.
Yes. I have been here before.
I put my arm out, pushing them both behind me, the candlestick shaking slightly in my grasp, and I carefully make my way down the steps, with Kat behind me and Brom bringing up the rear. By now I don’t hear anymore thumps from Ms. Henry, which I can’t tell is a good thing or a bad thing.
The staircase seems to twist and turn for a while, the air getting colder and more damp the further we go down, the smell of sulfur and decaying vegetation and sage filling my nose, until finally my boots meet a floor made of hard-packed dirt.
“What is this?” Kat says as she and Brom fan out beside me.
We’re in a tunnel, the candlelight casting flickering shadows on the dirt walls. They seem to glow red, as if soaked in blood, and the tunnel curves ahead, leading somewhere else.
I swallow uneasily.
“Yes,” I say softly. “I’ve been here. There’s a door around the corner.”
“A door?” Brom asks, holding out the key. “Then Vivienne brought us here for a reason. What else do you remember?”
“I don’t know. I never went in the door,” I tell him. There’s something else there too, but it’s hidden somewhere in my mind.
“You didn’t have the key,” Brom says. “But you do now.”
I nod, gathering up my courage, and start walking down the hall. It’s narrow enough that the two of them follow me single file, and we round the corner to see a large iron door at the end. The dirt on the ground at the front of the door has been disturbed, indicating it opens outward, and perhaps recently, but it’s hard to tell. If Vivienne came this way, her blood has already been absorbed by the ground.
I pause and press my ear to the cold metal, the stench of sulfur growing stronger. I feel like before I had heard something, someone inside wailing, crying out for me, but now I don’t hear anything at all. I suppose that’s a good thing.
Brom holds out the key and I take it from him.
Slip it into the old lock.
And turn.
With a heavy click, the key finds purchase, and the door unlocks.
