Page 105 of Deliver us from Evil

I’m still standing there at the threshold, staring into a black void, when the others arrive.

“Fuck,” Cass mutters somewhere behind me. “There a light or something?”

“Probably one down there,” Apollo says. “But, like, you’d have to find it first.”

“Anyone have a flashlight?” Zach’s voice is tight.

“Got one on my phone,” Cass replies absently.

But none of us move.

We just stand there, staring into the dark.

Which is absurd.

It’s just a dark room.

A few stairs.

If Cass gives me his phone, there’ll be light. Then I can go down there.

But it doesn’t matter what logic my fucking brain throws at me, I override it every time with, “it’s a fucking pitch-black basement.”

Maybe I wouldn’t have had an issue if Zach hadn’t told me that this was where our Ghost lived.

Because then it would just have been a normal basement. A cavity at the bottom of a house. Nothing to it.

But it’s not.

It’s our fucking Ghost’s basement, and that changes everything.

Apollo clears his throat. “So…uh…are we going down?”

“Yeah, course,” Cass says, but as if he’s lost in a dream.

“Why wouldn’t we?” The words come out by themselves—I wasn’t even aware I was going to speak.

My skin starts crawling. I take a step back. And as if that breaks the spell, Cass and Zach and Apollo all move back with me.

We press up against the wall, staring at the rectangle of night in front of us.

Cass fidgets in his pocket. Pulls out his phone. He turns on the light and shines it at the hole.

It’s like it hits an invisible door someone painted black.

Fuck.

“Okay,” Apollo whispers. “Look, it’s just a room, right?”

He takes a step forward. Then another. I stare at him, taking in his long blond hair, his lean frame. He puts his arm out behind him. “Phone.”

In that moment, I’ve never had greater respect for him.

And he doesn’t even look back. Doesn’t take even a second to see what we think. He just grabs the phone as soon as Cass puts it his palm, pushes back his shoulders, and heads for the darkness.

The second it swallows him, the three of us surge forward and cluster around the dark doorway.

“Apollo!” Cass calls out, like he’s convinced Apollo’s already been murdered.

---