Page 181 of Deviant

“I thought so too. Five hours ago. Soon it will be dinner time, and we can’t miss that. Not if we don’t want Henry to become suspicious of what we’ve been up to.”

“There is one place we haven’t searched yet.”

“Where?” I ask, craning my head back to look at his face. “We’ve searched this house top to bottom.”

“Not all the way to the bottom,” he retorts with a sly smirk.

“The basement. Of course!” I grab his face and kiss him. “You’re a genius.”

“I’ve been called worse.” He chuckles. “But if you still want to do this today, we better hurry. It’s like you said. Pretty soon, it will be dinner time, and if either Henry or the twins see two empty chairs there, they’ll come looking for us.”

Without a further word, we rush downstairs to the basement, Elias holding my hand as we descend down the sameflight of stairs we take to the games. Just knowing that tomorrow six of us will have to face those macabre challenges again chills my blood.

“Don’t think about it,” Elias whispers as if he has a direct line to all my thoughts.

Easier said than done, but I try anyway.

Once we take the final step, Elias points to the opposing direction from where those wretched painted doors are.

“If I were an evil puppet master, I’d keep my records just close enough to the action but not so close they could be easily found,” he mumbles to himself as he leads me deeper into the disturbing hallway.

The air down here is thick with an unsettling stillness, and the lack of doors amplifies the unease creeping up my spine.

“There are no doors,” I whisper to myself as my fingers trail over the smooth, pale white wall of the long hallway, which seems to absorb the dim light overhead, casting the space in an otherworldly glow.

Elias pulls me further along the befuddling corridor, its starkness disorienting. Each step feels heavier as if the very wooden flooring beneath us is reluctant to let us move forward. Then, without warning, we stop before a small, empty space that suddenly appears before us.

A dead end.

That’s where this corridor led us to—a freaking dead end.

The room is hardly more than a few paces across, its wooden walls and floors creaking underfoot, a stark contrast to the coldness of the hallway. And as I stare at the wooden paneling of walls, making the room feel that much smaller, I suddenly feel like they are closing in on me, suffocating the very air in the room.

“I can’t believe this is all there is,” I utter, my voice a mix of confusion, disappointment and a little hint of panic. Why lead usthrough such an interminable corridor only to end at a room that is half the size of most rooms upstairs?

And as I imagine the wood-clad walls closing in on me, a deep sense of confinement and claustrophobia begin to claw at my sanity.

“Maybe you’re wrong, Elias. Maybe they have it in one of the torture rooms,” I stammer, eyeing the shadowy corners of the small space, my imagination conjuring up all manner of horrors hidden in the dark. This place feels wrong, like the very air is laden with secrets waiting to be unearthed.

“Roe, look at me,” Elias says, giving my shoulders a little shake. “I know that being down here brings back all sorts of traumatic shit, but you have to purge it out of your mind.”

“I’m trying… but it’s difficult,” I admit, feeling my skin crawl just by being in such a confined place down here.

“Do you trust me?”

“What does that have to do—”

“Roe,” he interrupts my panicked drivel. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes.” I nod. “Of course.”

“Good. Then all I ask is that you be patient with me for a few more minutes. Can you do that for me?”

Again, I nod.

“Good girl,” he says before planting a sweet kiss to my lips. “I know what I’m doing,” he adds, his eyes darting around the room as he begins to knock on the walls.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

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