Chapter 109
- Kaysi -
The air in the stairwell was cold and damp. The stone, which hadn't seen light in decades, seemed to stretch on forever. Each step creaked as though the wood was going to give way under our weight. Josh's pale, cyan-blue flame threw jagged shadows that danced across the wall.
For a moment, the silence pressing down felt heavier than the dark between us, both lost in our own illusions of this place.
"This place doesn't feel like a church basement," I whispered, not like anyone but me would hear us. But something made me feel uneasy as I brushed my hand across the cold rail.
Josh tilted his head, a flame glimmering across his sharp, tense jawline. "This place feels more like something else. Cellar for storage, perhaps?" He said unconfidently.
"Cellars don't normally have doors that slam shut on their own," I half-heartedly chuckled.
"His smirk is unhumorous. "You're not lying there."
The dust on the steps was thick—yet smeared in freak trails. My chest tightened as I crouched, squinting in the glow of Josh's soul fire.
My eyes caught something just as the flame moved at the right angle.
"Wait." I stopped Josh from advancing. "Hold the light lower."
Small footprints led downward, the kind a child might leave—"Thomas."
Not just Thomas, though... Besides the small prints, there are heavier, larger ones. Boot print likely from an adult whose stride was long and deliberate. Maybe an arrogant man. More than one set, two... maybe three by the looks of it.
"Josh," I pointed.
He crouched down to my level beside me, all pretense of his natural cocky bravado drained from his face. "Great. He's not alone down here, and neither are we..."
We followed the trail, trying our best to stay undetected, but the echoes were much too loud in this narrow space. At the landing, in the corridor after we had left the stairwell, the ceiling hung low and damp. The walls closed in, slick stone that smelled of mildew and iron.
The air was wrong; it was suffocating. Too cold to stale.
Josh swept the flame forward. "Well, creepy basement with catacombs and missing people. That's not suspicious at all..." Josh said sarcastically, this time slightly nervous.
I ignored him, scanning the dust. The prints veered toward the left side, where heavy wooden doors lined the wall like crooked teeth.
Something shifted inside of me. The air seemed to thicken, pressing against my chest. My breath hitched, shallow, uneven. The stone walls began to close in, and shadows grew like fingers crawling towards me.
It was wrong. This was wrong...too wrong. And yet in a way... familiar in my mind.
I knew this feeling. Not from here, not from anything I could think to name. But yet my body remembered it in some way—from the stories I was told. This sinking, heavy, strangling feeling felt like the blackness of the Abyss. I believe I survived. The taste of iron played in my memory on my tongue.
The silence wasn't silence at all anymore. It was a scream of echoes that still left me blank, yet tormented me with its presence. My hands trembled. My knees locked, refusing to move another step forward.
I felt panicked. If only I could see the memory, maybe I could push forward instead of feeling the ghosts that surround me and hold me in place.
"Kaysi!" His voice was sharp and unkind. "You're breathing too fast."
My body reacted again to his harsh tone. I pulled back, flinching without my choice over my body's movement.
Josh lowered his tone. He spoke with less tension. "Slow down... In through your nose, out your mouth. Match me."
I tried. The first attempt caught in my throat. But he exaggerated the rhythm—slow inhale, slower exhale—and my chest started to follow. The burning in my lungs eased bit by bit.
The panic didn't vanish, but it loosened its claws enough to speak. "I'm fine. I can keep going."
"I know you can," Josh whispered. "But not like this. Not while your head's still back in..." He trailed off, jaw tightening."...Wherever it is you go when you feel like this."
He spoke with kindness but hesitance. The signs were there; I had the keys, yet I couldn't unlock the door in my mind. Josh, when I first got out of the coma, saved me from the scouts. The same that have hunted us many times before. And Baby then told him to prove he can be trusted with me and sent him off to take me to safety. Then he said Becky would be upset if I were hurt by or with him again, like it happened before. And now in this place that pressed on me like the Abyss itself, my body recoiled at his sharpness. My instincts screamed recognition my mind couldn't reach.
Should I let it go? Or demand answers? Did I even want them?
If I've come this far without a single clear memory, maybe it's safer not to know. Perhaps this is just my mind, feeding on fear.
But then why does every part of me believe he's holding something back?