Page 98 of Breaking the Dark

“Under the dance floor.”

Luke smiles wryly. “Of course,” he says. “Where else?”

He bends down and lifts the colored tiles, revealing a short run of wooden steps into a dark crawl space. A terrible smell emanates, dark and meaty, damp and putrid. Jessica claps her hand to her mouth.

“My God,” she says, under her breath, as Luke descends. “Please tell me there’s nothing down there?”

Jessica stands over the hole in the ground, her mind filling with images of the young men who went missing in this room, wondering what thoughts were going through their heads in their last moments, when they realized they’d walked into a terrible trap, that they were going to die down here. She imagines people dancing overhead, under flashing lights, covered in glitter-ball sparkles, heads tossed back with joy, blissfully unaware of the suffering beneath their feet.

Then she imagines Malcolm: Malcolm following Fox down there.

She imagines calling Mrs. Powder, explaining that her one and only son is dead, and buried under a dance floor in an abandoned nightclub in Harlem, and at this thought she feels a rush of black to her head, the edges of the room start to fold in around her, her breath catches, panic envelops her. She falls to her haunches and holds her head in her hands.

“Luke!” she calls down.

“There’s nothing down there,” Luke replies as he ascends the steps a moment later.

Jessica breathes a sigh of relief. “Are you sure?”

“I’m very sure.” He looks at her, curiously. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I’m good.”

He climbs all the way out and lets the tiled floor shut again.

“You know, I’d really like to get out of here now,” says Jessica, her eyes weaving around the room until the black energy in her head dies, settles like white ashes after an explosion, her breathing starts to calm, the panic subsides. And as she puts her psyche back together, she remembers another moment, not that long ago, when she felt that same black energy, that darkness, that fear.

It was in Sebastian Randall’s cellar.

One Year Ago

Barton Wallop, Essex, UK

Polly pulls on her Hunters and her pink quilted Barbour and says goodbye to Ophelia, who is making breakfast for the girls.

“Where are you going?”

“To Barton Manor.”

Ophelia throws her a look of disquiet. “Why?”

“You know why.”

“It’s too dangerous, Polly.”

“I know what I’m doing. And I don’t exactly have a choice.”

She grabs her bag and leaves the house, walks the quarter mile to the main gates, and then waits a moment to ensure that nobody is coming down the public lane before walking out.

Barton Manor sits just at the head of the village. It’s Jacobean, all leaded windows and gargoyles, with a decorative moat and a drawbridge through an arched walkway towards a huge double door framed with tumbling green ivy.

She presses a button by a side gate and a man’s voice responds.

“Hello,” she says. “My name is Rebecca Brown. I’m an interior designer. I wondered if I might be able to leave you my card?”

“Oh, yes, of course. There’s a mail slot, just to your left.”

Polly pauses. “I mean, I wondered if I might be able to hand it to you? And tell you a little about myself?”