Page 27

B

I stepped through the orphanage’s crumbling threshold, and the air seemed so thick and heavy that it pressed down on me like a weight I couldn’t shake. The moonlight barely made it past the doorway, swallowed by the darkness that seemed to pulse and breathe in this fucking place.

My throat was raw and tight, and as I fought the storm of emotions raging inside me, I glanced at my phone.

But I had no missed calls from Eddie. Figured.

That idiot was probably still bumbling around in the swamp.

Or maybe a croc had gotten him. That wouldn’t be the worst outcome.

One less asshole on my list. I made a mental note to call him after I set this place ablaze.

My boots echoed off the cracked checkerboard tiles as I strode down the corridor toward the principal’s office in the far corner of the ground floor.

The office where so many kids got the cane. Boys and girls. Where their cries were stifled behind the closed door, where their lives were shuffled like a deck of tarot cards. Only every second card was the death card.

But it wasn’t the principal’s office that interested me. That room had been stripped bare decades ago and cleaned out like the rest of this place when they shut this hellhole down. It was what lay beneath Mr. Whitmore’s office that I was heading for . . . the secret space the cops never found.

Not forty years ago, when the authorities and reporters had swarmed the halls, snapping photographs, scribbling notes, and pretending to care.

And not even decades later, when the orphanage made headlines again for the bodies buried out back.

The tiny skeletons unearthed in the dirt had stolen everyone’s attention, their nameless graves becoming the story.

No one thought to search the building again.

They might have uncovered the real heart of darkness, hidden below the floor. If they had, they might have solved dozens of cold cases.

The secret room was in the basement, hidden behind a false wall the principal himself had installed, or so he’d once bragged to me.

I stepped into the principal’s office, and the moonlight streamed through the broken window, landing squarely on the cracked leather office chair, throwing it into the spotlight.

Mr. Fucking Whitmore would’ve hated that.

He never liked being the center of attention.

Not surprising, considering how many dark secrets he had to hide.

His grand office desk was long gone, along with most of the other furniture. The lone chair was perched on a tattered rug with a geometric pattern that was barely visible beneath the layer of mouse shit. Somehow, the filth improved the design.

In the corner of his office stood two rusted filing cabinets, their drawers half-hanging open like broken jaws. They’d been empty for years. I knew because I’d checked them the first time I came back here.

With Alice.

She’d begged me to bring her back, and though I’d resisted at first, I could never really say no to her.

Though if I’d known the real reason she wanted to return, I would’ve stayed far away from this hellhole.

But she wanted to show me the place she’d chosen for her eternity, overlooked by the angel that had given her the smallest joys during her daily nightmare.

I swallowed hard and shoved the memory aside, forcing myself to focus on the present.

Brushing dust and crap off the edge of the shelf that acted as the latch, I pushed it inward, and the hidden door groaned open just like it used to.

The sound echoed up the walls as if the building had a bellyache .

Using the light from my phone, I descended the narrow concrete steps into the room below that had to be part of the building’s original construction, but Whitmore had made it his own private den of horrors.

The air was stale and sour, thick with the scent of old paper and death.

The space was long and narrow, maybe half the length of the orphanage above.

Filing cabinets lined one wall, and their metal surfaces were pocked with rust. The opposite wall was lined with sagging shelves, weighed down by warped boxes stacked haphazardly and ready to collapse under their own burden.

When I was thirteen, I used to help Whitmore down here, cataloguing the items he stored in this basement.

At first, I thought it was nice . . . like he was teaching me something, showing me responsibility.

But that was just part of his act. He wasn’t mentoring me.

He was grooming me, using me, abusing me.

The labels on the boxes were faded and peeling, their edges curled as though even they wanted to escape the horrors detailed inside each box.

Every time I came down here, the silence got to me. Upstairs in the orphanage, silence had been a rare commodity. Down here, though, it was suffocating, as though the walls were burdened by endless nightmares.

My breath burned in my throat as the memories came rushing in, vivid and jagged, slicing through my resolve.

I could still feel the weight of his hand on my shoulder, heavy and wrong, as he guided me down the stairs.

The sharp, metallic snap of the key turning in the lock still echoed in my ears as fresh as if it had happened yesterday.

He’d called it a secret hideout, something special just for me.

I’d been stupid enough to believe him. Stupid enough to think I was just getting a piece of candy and a secret adventure.

That night was only the beginning.

I did get a chocolate bar, though; a treat I’d never seen before then. He made me feel special, whispering in my ear, making me promise to keep the room and everything that happened here our little secret. Although he made my skin crawl, I never told anyone. Who would have believed me, anyway ?

It would have been his word against mine. The principal against the orphan. A man against a lowly, unwanted girl. I never stood a chance.

It took me nearly a year to kill him.

My fists clenched as I fought the memory, but no matter how hard I tried, it wouldn’t stay buried. It never did. My first murder.

I’d killed him with a pencil, gripping it so tightly the wood splintered as I drove it into his neck. I could still hear the sound he made, that wet, desperate gurgle as he choked on his own blood. I hadn’t planned it. It was just a moment of divine opportunity, and I’d taken it without hesitation.

Killing him had been surprisingly easy. Dragging his body out to the paddock behind the orphanage, though, had been absolute hell.

But I’d done it. Alone. Silently. Painfully. Even at fourteen, I’d understood the importance of making a body disappear and covering my tracks. As far as I knew, Mr. Whitmore was still listed as a missing person, just another name on the long list of disappearances tied to this cursed place.

I forced myself to focus, shoving the memory back into the dark corner of my mind where it belonged. Drawing a slow, steady breath, I strode deeper into the room.

The middle section of the room was the focal point of this nightmare.

Mr. Whitmore’s old oak desk was still there, like a monument to his fucking depravity.

It was where he’d detailed his unofficial reports.

The ones documenting everything that went on in this place, above and below.

The ones I helped catalogue and store. I often wondered what he’d intended to do with all those notes.

Publish them as some grotesque memoir? Savor them in his retirement, gloating over the horrors he’d orchestrated and the lives he’d destroyed?

Only he didn’t get away with it.

I made sure of that.

After I killed him, I sealed off this room, locked it tight. For four years, it remained untouched. Until I needed it again.

The next time I came down here, I wasn’t a scared, immature orphan. I was eighteen. A staff member. And angry as all fucking hell.

This time, it wasn’t a teacher luring a child into a nightmare. It was me, luring Bryon Baldock down here with the promise of sex .

As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I steadied myself for what I was about to see. At least, I hoped he was still there.

I swept the light from my phone across the desk, then to the chair, and a small, satisfied smile curled at the edges of my mouth.

Bryon Baldock’s skeleton was still in the chair, slumped forward, held in place by the straps I’d used to tie him down. His skull lolled lazily to one side, and the yellowing tape still clung stubbornly to the remnants of what used to be his mouth.

I hadn’t meant to kill him like that.

I’d wanted to end him with the same kind of violence he’d inflicted on so many kids.

Evil prick. My position as a staff member had its perks .

. . leftover food, a bed to myself. But sometimes, I got intel that was actually useful.

And when I got wind that the authorities were coming to shut the orphanage down, I couldn’t let Bryon walk away.

But the police came before I could kill him.

As the authorities tore through the building, rescuing the kids upstairs, I was still here, trying to decide what to do with him after I’d strapped him to the chair and gagged him.

In the end, I put more strapping on him and left him there. To rot.

After what he’d done to Alice, he deserved to die slowly, agonizingly, all alone, just like that.

If anyone had ever found his body, they would have found the records too.

The files in this room documented everything.

Names of pedophiles, the payments they’d made, the authorities who’d chosen to look the other way.

Names of every child who came through the front door but never walked out. It was all here.

But no one ever came down here.

The building had been condemned, abandoned, and left to rot. Just like the bastard in the chair.