It Will Only Hurt for a Moment by Delilah S. Dawson

Author:Delilah S. Dawson [Dawson, Delilah S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Worlds
Published: 2024-10-22T00:00:00+00:00

24

Ingrid’s flashlight turns off and she grabs Sarah’s phone, snuffing its light. Sarah hears her pulling the key from the lock, trying to keep the entire ring of ancient metal from jangling like a klaxon. They’re in complete darkness now.

Sarah’s heart is pounding so loud that she’s certain it’s echoing up and down the hallway with each jerky thump. When she heard that voice, she hoped it was just her overactive imagination, but Ingrid’s response means it’s very real.

“Hello? Is somebody down there?”

Silently she sighs in partial relief.

It’s not a ghost, not some monster—it’s the old wizard. Gail’s husband, whatever his name is. And it sounds like he’s coming down the stairs. Her heart doesn’t let up a bit as she realizes that if he finds them here, she’ll get kicked out, and she has absolutely nowhere else to go.

Ingrid grabs her arm and pulls her away, back toward the lobby and office. They’re tiptoeing in their boots, running as quietly as possible, keeping close to the wall. Ingrid must have her hand on it to guide them as they hurry blindly down the hall. She yanks Sarah into the open office doorway and flicks on her flashlight, throwing the wrecked room into stark relief. She points the beam at the massive desk, and Sarah immediately understands. They scurry around and crawl underneath it. Ingrid turns off her flashlight, and Sarah is overwhelmed with darkness, with silence, with the ancient, moldering scent of slowly rotting paper and leather and wood.

“Hello?”

Footsteps shuffle to the office door and stop.

Sarah can hear the old man’s phlegmy sigh, his rattling cough. It sounds like the end of things, for her and eventually for him.

She goes completely still as a flashlight beam jitters over the back wall, glinting off the gold titles on the books, shaking to the rhythm of an old man’s hand. The light disappears and the footsteps shuffle off. Sarah leans forward, but Ingrid’s arm blocks her, making her jerk back.

“Give him time to leave,” Ingrid whispers. “That’s, like, Urbex 101. He’s gotta go past us, then double back, then decide there’s nothing here, then leave. If we go now, he’ll be behind us on the way out.”

Sarah takes a deep breath and tries to center herself. She remembers a yoga instructor once telling her that she could find a breath in even the smallest space, that she could center herself in the moment and take three deep breaths and feel her heart rate go right down.

Bullshit.

It’s all fine when you’re lying on the Roomba’d floor of a posh yoga studio, enveloped in essential oil mist with a professional recording of Sanskrit chants playing softly in the background. But when you’re sitting under the desk of some sort of vampiric mad scientist from the eighteen hundreds waiting to see if your entire life is about to implode for the second time in a year, there just isn’t enough fucking space, not even for a single breath.

“Are you panting? Are you about to

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