Page 101 of The New House

Stacey’s front door is not only unlocked, butopen. I go into the house, fear gnawing an acid path through my insides.Too late now. What did she mean by that? If she’s done anything to Peter, if she’s harmed a single hair on his head—

I head up to the kitchen, taking the stairs two at a time. An empty bowl smeared with chocolate and vanilla ice-cream is on the counter. A dirty coffee cup bearing the imprint of Stacey’s signature pink lipstick sits beside the sink. The kitchen has the deserted air of a hastily abandoned shipwreck.

My anxiety builds as I go back downstairs and check the bedrooms. There’s no sign of Peter or Stacey.

It occurs to me she might have tired of waiting for me and driven Peter home instead, but a quick text soon establishes that’s not the case: Tom hasn’t heard from either of them, and I can’t see Stacey leaving her front door wide open anyway.

Something bad has happened, I canfeelit.

I check every inch of the house again. Stacey still hasn’t responded to my texts, and when I call her, her phone rings out on the kitchen counter. She’d never have left her phone behind if she’d gone out. Something’swrong.

I stand in the hall by the front door, debating what to do next.

And then I see the cellar.

The door is just a fraction ajar, which is the only reason I notice it. It’s been ingeniously designed to blend seamlessly into the wall at the foot of the stairs: I’ve walked past it a dozen times and never noticed it was there. I know this house almost as well as the architect who designed it, and I’m quite certain there isn’t a cellar on the plans. There was a small workman’s cottage on this site before the Second World War, if I remember correctly: the basement must be part of that.

‘Stacey?’ I call, opening the cellar door wider. ‘Peter? Are you down there?’

No answer.

The stairwell is unlit. Using the torch on my phone, I grope my way carefully down the dangerously steep flight of concrete steps, one hand on the rough stone wall for balance. When I reach the bottom, I find the cellar floor is beaten earth, the ceiling so low I have to dip my head to avoid hitting it on the old beams. It must be an ancient root cellar. I can’t imagine it’s been used in years.

‘Peter?’ I call again. ‘Stacey?’

I cast my torch around me. The cellar is about ten feet square, and there’s nothing in it but a few broken tools. Everything is covered with a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. It looks like no one’s been here in decades.

I almost miss it at first, concealed as it is by a partial collapse of the ceiling, but then I see it: another door directly opposite the stairs. Two heavy bolts at top and bottom have been pulled back from their locks. Drag marks scored in the earthen floor show it’s been opened, and very recently.

My heart pounds as I grab the doorknob and pull. It’s black as pitch in here: without the daylight spilling down the stairs from the house above, this room is even darker than the root cellar. My field of vision is restricted to the narrow circle illuminated by my phone torch. But I can feel cold air on my face: there must be a vent or duct to the outside somewhere.

I yelp as my shin makes contact with cold metal, and swing my phone down.

‘Oh, dear Christ,’ I whisper.

Felix is still alive, stretched out on a bare, stained mattress atop a narrow metal bed frame. He shrinks back from the sudden glare of light, turning his head away with a gargled yelp.

I drop to the floor beside him. ‘It’s going to be OK,’ I tell him. ‘I’m here now. I’m going to look after you. I’ll get you out of here.’

The bottom half of his face is oddly black, and it takes me a moment to realise it’s not dirt but dried blood. The stench coming off him tells me he’s been lying here in his own filth for weeks: I can smell not just urine and excrement, but the sickly-sweet decay of sores and infected wounds.

His pulse is weak and thready, but it’s there. He tries to speak, but the most he can manage is a thick, choking sound. His eyes bulge frantically. I hook my finger in his mouth, trying to clear his airway. When I remove it, several of his teeth spill into my hand.

‘Dear God,’ I mutter, appalled.

The only time I’ve ever seen injuries like this was years ago when a plumber came to the Emergency Department after drinking a glass of drain cleaner which he’d mistaken for his glass of beer. I have no idea what’s happened to Felix, but if I don’t get him help soon, he’s not going to survive.

I swing my phone torch wildly around the room. It’s bigger than the last, and looks as if it was finished more recently: the floor is concrete rather than earth, and it obviously has electricity as a bare bulb hangs from the ceiling. There’s a large chest freezer in the corner of the cellar, and, to judge from the hum, it has power, too. I can’t imagine how anyone ever got it down here. I don’t even want to think about what Stacey might be keeping inside it.

I prop my phone on the floor against the wall so that my hands are free to help Felix. His left arm is bent at an unnatural angle over his head, and I realise he’s handcuffed to a thick metal pipe running along the basement wall. His muscles must have atrophied in that position: he stiffens in agony when I try to move him. He’s just skin and bone: he must have lost at least thirty pounds. What I can’t understand is why Stacey’s bothered to keep him alive. If she wanted him dead, why not simply kill him? Why prolong the agony like this? It’s unspeakably cruel.

I need to get help, but I don’t want to leave Felix. I pick up my phone to see if by some miracle I have signal down here, but before I can use it, something heavy hits me from behind and everything goes black.

chapter 61

millie

Pain.

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