up with my own two hands if I have to. And even still, I will pull her from its depths.
“Astrid!” I call again.
The floorboards groan beneath my feet—or are they Astrid’s groans?
I propel myself forward and sidestep a jutting nail. There’s a door, just off this room that I think was a kitchen, but when I rip it open, it’s an empty closet. I try the next door a couple feet away, but there’s only a cracked toilet. Half a porcelain sink.
Passing the bottom of the staircase that bisects the cabin, I enter another room. Moving through the space like I’m wading through wreckage, I dodge a couch without cushions, a paint-splattered sawhorse. As I round the corner of the wall that separates kitchen from living space, I find one more door, carved into the hollow beneath the rear of the staircase.
My breath hitches, but I yank it open and surge ahead, nearly tripping over what’s on the landing inside.
A cooler. A toolbox.
A pair of black gloves.
For a moment, my body hardens. It wants so badly to be stone. But no. No. I kick the boxes and gloves aside and clomp down a set of stairs. “Astrid!” I shout, but I’m halfway down before I realize I’m heading into a dark, gaping pit. I look toward the open door at the top, search for a light switch, but there’s only a fixture without a bulb, its pull chain dangling uselessly. I scramble back up the steps, root around in the toolbox until I find a thin flashlight. I flick it on, shake it to try to sharpen its weak beam, but when I pound down the stairs again, it’s enough to show me that—my heart clamps shut—she isn’t here.
I wave the light around. I have to be missing something. But all I see is a narrow window, so covered in grime the glass is opaque. There are layers of dust and dirt. Spiderwebs. A stack of lumber in the corner. There’s no chain. No mattress. No Astrid. No person at all but me.
Does Cooper have her somewhere else? I skim the flashlight along the floor, as if I could find a map to Astrid in all its cracks.
What I find, instead, is familiarity.
I take a couple steps back. Then I crouch on the floor, imagine sliding a marble across the room, listening for its click in a corner we could barely even see. And yes—yes, it fits. So far, the basement matches the one I remembered. When I trace my eyes down the staircase in the center, I gasp. The bottom step—it has a crooked edge. It’s shaped like a trapezoid.
This is where we were kept. I know it like I knew Astrid’s face as soon as I saw it on the news.
I shudder as a chill climbs my spine.
I wasn’t returned to the woods twenty years ago. I was in them the whole time.
My stomach quakes, but I swallow down the threat of bile. Whirling the flashlight around, I take in details that have been out of my grasp. The rough texture of the concrete walls. An alcove in one corner. I can even look up now, like I couldn’t in my memories, and see the red door and—
The door isn’t red. It’s brown.
I creep up the stairs toward it, the boards shaky beneath my feet. Sitting down on the landing, I try to look closer at the paint. See if it’s just an old, discolored red. Like blood that’s long since dried.
Leaning in, I hold the beam of the flashlight steady, but the color doesn’t change. It’s cracked, nearly chipping, maybe even faded—but if anything, it’s only a lighter shade of the dark brown it surely once was.
I press my forehead into the heels of my hands. Feel my heart pump hard but slow. I was wrong. This isn’t it. But a second ago, I was so sure. So blissfully, terrifyingly sure. And Astrid isn’t here. So she could be anywhere. Exactly the same as before.
I smack my hand against the door. Then I smack it again. And again and again, until my palm vibrates with pain. Only then do I look at my hands—how empty they are, how incapable of saving anyone—and see a fleck of color. I bend closer, shine the flashlight onto my palm. Stare at a chip of brown paint.
I look at the door. Focus on its cracks. Its little fissures that could easily flake off. I dig my nails into one of them,