Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 71212 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71212 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 356(@200wpm)___ 285(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
“Possibly.” I took a photo of the vial, along with the rest of the neatly organized shelf. It was cooler inside the case, too. I noticed a vent behind the vials that must have worked to regulate the temperature.
Whoever built this knew what they were doing.
I crouched down and opened a drawer. There were more empty vials, along with some syringes and gloves. Curiously, next to those items was a neatly organized makeup section. Nothing too elaborate, but there were a couple of items that caught my attention. A foundation for someone with a lighter complexion told me more about how this person looked, along with a brush that must have had some sort of DNA trace on it. There was ChapStick and lotion and some other skin care things but nothing of note.
The next drawer had an even more interesting find: cell phones. Quite a few of them. Mostly older-model iPhones but a couple of others thrown in as well. And they were all labeled with the same neat handwriting that had written the labels on the vials.
Names. Familiar names. Ones I had burned into my memory after hours and hours of digging through the lives of each name.
All of these were victims of the Midnight Chemist. He had kept their phones. That wasn’t something even the cops had revealed—or maybe they didn’t even know.
One of the phones didn’t have a label. I found that to be a little odd. Why were all the rest clearly marked and this one was set to the side without any way to tell whose it was? It was a newer iPhone, too, different from the ones that didn’t even have tracking yet.
I grabbed the unlabeled phone. I held the power button down, but the screen stayed dead. It needed a charge.
“Who do you think that belongs to?” Tristan asked, looking down at the phone.
“We’re going to find out.” I looked around, wondering if there were any other hidden clues. I was starting to see the full picture, but there were pieces missing. We weren’t at the finish line yet.
“Let’s see if—” BANG.
We froze, solidifying into a pair of breathing statues. I broke the icy spell first, yanking my gun out from the holster and aiming it out toward the rest of the basement.
That was the trapdoor that led down here. Someone had slammed it shut.
A loud zap sound followed the bang and then a quick flicker as the lights all turned off in unison, the power having been turned off, plunging us into a sudden and all-consuming night.
23
TRISTAN HALL
I fumbled for my phone, digging into my pocket and yanking it out, my hand shaking as I hit the flashlight button.
“You had a gun this entire time?” I asked in a shocked whisper.
“Shh.”
The flashlight bounced off the glass aquariums, creating a horrifying display of shadow puppets that seemed to be taunting us from their invisible stages. This was worst-case scenario. We were in the belly of the beast, and the beast just snapped its jaws shut around us. I wanted to curl up in a corner and accept my fate, but then I remembered I had made it out of this once; I could do it again.
“Keep behind me,” Gabe said, inching toward the stairs. “And try to aim the light wherever I aim my gun.”
It was difficult at first. He would look left, and my light would still be aimed to the right. Fear pooled in the back of my throat, like spoiled milk fighting its way to come back up. I tried to reframe this situation: use it as research. I could write a killer thriller when all this was done.
The caveat being that I had to survive this in order to write it.
Gabriel put an arm out and came to a sudden stop. We were right in front of the stairs that led up to the rest of the house. Sure enough, the door we had come in from was now shut, only a small slice of light breaking through. I could hear my own heartbeat. Or was that Gabriel’s? I couldn’t tell.
He started moving forward again. It felt like I had swallowed a gallon of sand, my mouth as dry as ash. I swallowed, but it hurt, nearly making me cough. I put a fist up against my mouth to cover any noise as we slowly went up the steps, the thin wood planks creaking even as we inched upward. Gabriel had the gun aimed up toward the door.
He reached out, his hand holding one of the handles. I took a breath and steadied myself. I had no idea what was on the other side of that door, except I did know it was our only way out. The darkness felt like a living thing, its inky black tentacles stretching up from the basement and trying to close around my ankles, dragging me back down into the depths. A cockroach scuttled up the wall near my head.