Daddy's Little Girl by Ed Gorman & Daniel Ransom

Author:Ed Gorman & Daniel Ransom [Gorman, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Speaking Volumes
Published: 2016-04-09T23:00:00+00:00

4

She still had no idea who had slammed the door shut or who had started to come in, apparently to do her harm, and then decided to back away.

Minerva was sweating enough that she wondered if she was running a fever.

All she knew now was that she wanted out of the basement. Upstairs the sunlight would be slanting across the real Persian rugs of the living room and a cat would be lazing on one of the window sills.

And that was where Minerva wanted to be.

Before starting off she went back into the cubicle to retrieve the flashlight that had fallen from her hands and shattered.

Sighing, wishing now that she’d listened to Ruth and just left well enough alone, Minerva started feeling in the damp darkness for the cylinder of the flashlight.

But instead of touching the flash, her hands found something else.

One concrete block in the floor seemed to jut up.

Its rough edges cut at her fingers.

When she bent again, her fingers stinging, she found that it was not only a single block sticking up, but a formation of blocks that reminded her of—

—of a trapdoor.

Back in her southern girlhood, trapdoors had been commonplace among the fancy houses of the wealthy. Many people stored valuables down there. Others, or so she’d always heard tell, used the subbasement level as a place for orgies of various and disgusting kinds.

It was not all that improbable that this mansion would contain a subbasement of its own.

She thought of the animal sounds....

... the wailing ...

... the moaning ...

The noises had always sounded muffled to her. What better reason for them to be muffled than that they were coming up through several layers of concrete and dirt and—

Which was when she heard it again.

The sound of a cry.

So faint as to be scarcely audible.

But there on the air, just the same.

She was bending over, trying to hear better for the sound that seemed to be coming from beneath her, when she heard the sound of leather again.

Instantly, she froze, realizing what a terrible position she was in—no trouble for somebody to walk up behind her and club her.

She jumped up from the floor, forgetting the moaning sound.

She left the basement as quickly as she could, stumbling several times, bruising herself, but keeping on running anyway.

She was overcome with a sense of evil—a sense she used to get at Mardi Gras when the devil masks became prominent—and she just wanted out of there, at any cost.

She made it upstairs panting, sheened with sweat and convinced she would never venture into the basement again, no matter what sounds she heard.

She didn’t want to know what was down there.

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