Nathan, “the gifted one” as she liked to call him, never had to worry about trying to figure out the right thing to say at the right time. He was smooth, confident, funny, and if anyone was stupid enough to piss him off, he usually just beat the hell out of him.
The only good thing about the news of her humiliation spreading through the small town like wildfire was that it brought Nathan to the bakery where Sam hadn’t been able do anything more than sputter and pray that she didn’t add to her humiliation by passing out. Her brother simply strolled into the bakery, nodded in greeting to a few friends before coming to stand next to her. He’d looked from her red face to Craig’s lipstick smeared mouth and wrinkled clothes and smiled like it was Christmas morning. Although Nathan had been disappointed that it had only taken one punch to knock Craig out, she’d honestly never seen him happier.
He’d actually whistled a jaunty tune as he’d put his arm around her shoulders and led her out the door, but not before he’d drop-kicked Craig in the stomach for good measure. That really seemed to make his day. Not even the four hours they’d spent packing up her junk and moving it out of the small house she’d shared with Craig during one of the hottest days of the summer had dampened his mood. For weeks afterwards, she’d look over at him when he sighed dreamily and found him once again smiling fondly.
Sam flicked on the kitchen light as she walked into the dark room. Why anyone would build the kitchen on the south side of the house, she would never know. Granted, whoever built this house probably hadn’t foreseen two generations of Powers ignoring the upkeep of the property.
She walked over to the large porcelain sink and yanked open the yellowed curtains, revealing what should have been a beautiful sight. Instead, all she saw was a large ratted nest of briars, old leaves, and twigs with just a hint of sunlight peeking through. She groaned as she reached over and turned on the coffeepot that she’d been forced to buy when the old one caught on fire. It was just another sad reminder of all the work that was waiting for her.
Not that she was really complaining. Thanks to all the work around the house and property, she was able to stay busy when she wasn’t working at the hospital. It made pretending that she didn’t have a social life by choice that much easier, because no one would believe that she had to rush home right after work every night because she missed Charlie, the bane of her existence.
She reached over the coffee pot and opened the cabinet that had seen better days and sighed when the handle broke off in her hand. Without batting an eye, she tossed the rusted handle onto the counter to join the rest. She opened the cabinet and reached inside for the box of blueberry pop tarts and almost cried when all she found was an empty box.
Damn it.
She’d have to settle for strawberry pop tarts, her second favorite. She’d really been looking forward to starting her day with some blueberry goodness. It was fine, Sam thought with a sigh, placing her breakfast tarts in the toaster. At least she could look forward to eating her breakfast in peace without a hundred-pound hound from hell stealing her food.
Just as the mouthwatering aroma of heated synthetic strawberry filling and icing hit her nose the light in the kitchen flickered out. Her eyes automatically shot to the coffee pot that had just been warming up and ready to spurt out the lifesaving elixir only to find the red light off.
Sam grumbled as she grabbed the flashlight off the counter and extra fuses for the fuse box and headed for the pale-yellow basement door that had been the star of most of her childhood nightmares. It figured that the one time she needed Charlie he was off terrorizing squirrels. It didn’t matter that she was a grown woman, she hated going into the old cellar.
Always had and always would.
It was creepy, dark, and gave off a sinister vibe no matter what Nathan said. Of course, he’d never been scared of the cellar. Nothing ever scared him. When they used to come here as kids to visit Grandma Powers the little bastard used to hide down there, leaving Sam to Grandma’s cheek pinching, reminiscing about better days, and prune remedies. Hours later he’d come back upstairs smiling, covered in dust and picking spiders off his clothes and god, how she’d envied him.
The one time she’d spent more than five minutes in the basement had been life altering. Her grandmother sent her down to the basement for a jar of prunes for a snack when neither of them could find Nathan, who’d smartly ran off after their father dropped them off earlier that morning. At the time, Sam had dreaded the basement and the prunes in equal measure. It wasn’t until she had the jar of prunes in her hand that her hatred for the basement won out. Her grandmother, eighty at the time, had forgotten that she’d sent eight-year-old Sam downstairs two minutes earlier and shut the basement’s only light off, closed the door, and promptly bolted it shut.
Several things occurred during the memorable ten hours that she’d stayed locked in the basement. Her fear of spiders and all things creepy took on a whole new level of terror. She’d also discovered that the old basement was soundproof, given that no one heard her screams. She would have kicked the door at the top of the stairs, but she hadn’t been able to find the narrow passageway that led to the stairwell in the pitch-black. It was also when she’d discovered that the basement was haunted, which had only taken five seconds of listening to the eerie growling coming from the wall that she hadn’t imagined no matter what Nathan says, to help her come to that conclusion. It was also one of the reasons why she avoided going down into the basement whenever possible.
Of course, her inability to deal with anything stressful was probably her least favorite development from her time spent in the basement, hence the passing out at damn near everything. It was kind of funny how she could handle working a trauma and even help put someone back together, but any hint of embarrassment, confrontation, or stress had her hitting the floor. What made it worse was that everyone knew about her problem. It had made her a target all through school and made her the town joke on more than one occasion. It helped that her brother was the town’s golden boy, but not by much.
No one respected her, especially at work. She’d lost count of how many people she’d trained had been promoted ahead of her over the years. Even though she had the least amount of patient complaints, put in more hours than anyone else, and had more training and experience under her belt than anyone in the emergency department, it didn’t seem to matter to Dr. Adams. When she’d worked up the nerve, and also made sure that she was sitting down just in case, to confront him, he’d pointed out that he was afraid that she’d blackout during an emergency even though it had never happened. Not once in the seven years she’d worked as a nurse.
She paused in front of the thick oak door, half-hoping to hear Charlie’s scratching demand to be let in so that she wouldn’t have to do this alone. It really was the only thing the dog was good for, Sam decided. Knowing there was no other choice when she didn’t hear the annoying bastard’s demand to be let back in, Sam took a deep breath, opened the door, and told herself that ghosts weren’t real. Knowing that standing here wasn’t going to help, she reached out and placed her hand against the smooth stone wall as she navigated the steep stone stairs.
Admittedly, the cellar was well put together with its old-fashioned workmanship. It was the one thing that didn’t require Sam to spend her hard-earned money to fix. Whoever built the stone cellar really knew what they were doing. None of the rocks were falling out or even cracking. It remained cool in the summer and winter, and thankfully, had never flooded.
At the bottom of the stairs, she shifted to the side so that she could walk through the small passage that led to the cavernous basement. When she reached the end of the passageway her foot caught on something and she stumbled the rest of the way.
“Damn it!” she muttered, catching herself before she fell.
“Who the hell is that?” a man’s voice demanded, making her heart skip a beat as dread filled her.
Sam’s eyes widened when she realized that the normally dark basement was
brightly lit by sunlight, flashlights, and her grandfather’s old lanterns. Her eyes shot from a group of six men, several of them holding sledgehammers, to the wide-open cellar doors that she hadn’t been able to open in years. Her eyes shot to the pile of broken rocks by their feet and then up to the hole in the wall to her left.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded before common sense kicked in and once it did, she froze on the spot.
Six men had broken into her house and were tearing her cellar apart with sledgehammers. Her breath caught when she heard the telltale click of a gun being cocked. Correction, six armed men had broken into her basement.
“Drop the flashlight,” a large man with short curly red hair said, aiming a gun at her.
The flashlight and the box of fuses hit the floor before the last syllable left his mouth. She even put her hands up without being asked to. She wasn’t a wimp, but she also wasn’t stupid. One woman against six armed men in the middle of nowhere wasn’t exactly hope-inducing.
“Grab her,” he said, gesturing to two large men who didn’t look particularly happy to see her. Sam went to take a step back and take her chances when the men grabbed her roughly and dragged her over to the red-headed man.
“We really didn’t need a fucking complication with this,” he grumbled, rubbing the back of his thick neck as he shot her an accusing glare like this was somehow her fault.
Sam licked her lips nervously. “Listen, I don’t know why you’re here tearing apart my storm cellar, but I think there’s been a mistake. You have the wrong house,” she said, using the same calm, reassuring tone she used when she worked in the emergency room.
He looked around the basement and shook his head. “No, this is the right basement,” he said as he gestured to a large flat grey stone just above the small hole in the wall they’d created. Sam looked at the initials carved into the stone and frowned. She’d never noticed them before. He reached over and ran his fingers over the R first and then the T.
He tapped the spot. “I carved my marker the day we finished building this cellar.”
“Um,” she cleared her throat, trying to figure out a way to say this tactfully, “this cellar is over three hundred years old,” she pointed out.
“Three hundred and fifty-four to be exact,” the man said with an amused smile.
Okay...
“What I meant to say is that clearly you didn’t build this cellar. So, you’ve got the wrong house,” Sam rushed to explain when black spots started to dance around her vision. Passing out right now was not a good idea, she told herself, fighting it with everything she had as she looked him over.
He didn’t look a day over thirty and she already knew that her grandmother had never hired anyone to work on the cellar because there had never been a need. So clearly this man had either just carved his initials into the rock before she’d spotted them or he was insane.
She was gonna go with insane, Sam decided, slowly exhaling as the black dots multiplied and threatened to drop her on her ass.
He sighed heavily. “Look, I don’t have time for this. My mate’s being a bitch and won’t get off my ass until I check on something. Unfortunately, you walked in on something that you shouldn’t have seen. Granted, we would have taken care of you before we left,” he said with a careless shrug of his shoulders as she fought to process what he’d said.
She tried to take a step back only to have her arms yanked roughly behind her back and her hands tied together. Someone kicked out her legs, causing her to drop to her knees on the stone floor, sending sharp pain through her knees and legs.
“I’m sorry about this, little human,” the man said as he pulled back a large fist.
“No!” she cried out seconds before she was struck in the temple. She fell backward, slamming her head against the stone floor with a sickening crack as her world went black.