I absolutely love this chapter. I hope you do too.
15;
Riley was nudged out of her sleep, unable to see anything except a hazy bluish light coming from the windows and a couple of dim nightlights scattered around the room. A whisper against her ear sobered her up in an instant.
"I knew you'd fall asleep."
They slept in the same bunk for the night, Riley still on top and Ellie on the bottom where Sam usually slept. They didn't want to risk rousing any others in the room by walking across it to waken the other.
"What time is it?"
"Around two. What does it matter? Let's go."
Riley quietly groaned and slid her feet off the side of the bed. She gently eased herself off, trying to reduce the noise of the sound of the bed coils retracting, and dropped onto the floor where Ellie was waiting.
They snuck through the room on the balls of their feet and stopped next the doorway of the room. Riley peaked her head around the corner and scouted for any movement before motioning Ellie forward.
They continued around the corner and up to the entrance door and slowly undid its locks. They leaned into the door and slipped themselves through the smallest gap they could manage and shut it behind them once on the other side.
They entered a cold night where a breeze was making its way freely through the air. Its darkness was broken by the reflection of the crescent moon whenever unobscured by the quick moving clouds. The area directly around the orphanage was bare, populated mostly by trees and a single empty road sparsely spotted with the occasional street light.
Once outside they moved more freely with less concern for noise. After several quick strides down the pathway they cut to the left and headed across the lawn and around the corner to where the holes were dug alongside the wall. They reached the first one and peered down into it.
"Stay here and keep a look out." Riley climbed down the small rusted ladder and reached the bottom of the eight foot drop. She laid her hands against the window and pushed up at different angles. "Damn it."
She turned around and climbed back up to where Ellie was still scanning the area. "Locked."
"Not surprising."
Riley moved onto the next hole, climbed down again, and pressed against the glass with her hands and pushed up. With enough force the stubbornness of the window gave way with a sudden jerk, catching Riley off guard. It was heavy and creaked as she pushed it up the rest of the way.
She called with a whisper to the top of the hole. "Come on. I can't hold it for long."
Ellie took one last look around and climbed down next to her. She took a wide step over the bottom frame of the window and let her feet touch the hard cement on the other side. Riley followed her in and turned around to slowly let the window down.
The basement looked the same, though with hardly any light reaching its interior the atmosphere became much more unsettling. They both crept over to the cooler door and knelt down to look at the lock.
Riley put her face within inches of it and let her eyes adjust a little longer in order to make out the tick marks along its dial. "Here goes nothing."
She spun around the numbers to the combination she found in the notebook and paused for a moment before pulling down. The lock clicked and fell loose in her hands. She turned it around, guided the lock arm out of the door, and laid it on the ground.
"Surprised that worked. Ready?"
"Just hurry up and open it."
Riley pulled the door open releasing a wave of chiller air than in the basement. Ellie reached in and patted the wall on the inside several times before finding the light switch and flipping it up. A small torrent of blinding light flooded out of the small room.
Riley was the first to regain her composure. "What the hell?"
The cooler looked almost no different than the first time. Shelves still lined the walls, stacked with the food needed for the orphanage, but there was one small difference. Under the single light bulb hanging from the ceiling sat an old rusted chair. Likely one from the pile in the middle of the basement. It was perfectly centered in the room and faced outwards toward the door.
"I have no idea." Ellie's breathing grew unsteady. "I don't like this."
"Me neither. Let's just do this quickly and get out of here."
They both moved inside of the cooler and started checking the shelves for anything that stood out. Riley searched the right side and Ellie the left, both looking under boxes and behind bags.
Riley turned around with a defeated tone. "Nothing. You?"
"Same. Just a bunch of-" She pushed aside one of the large bag of potatoes and found a worn pad. "…wait, found something."
Riley turned around to see her holding the small pad in her hand. "A notebook? Is it the same one from his office?"
"It's different."
She flipped it open and, instead of finding notes of day to day events like she expected, found the pages filled with tables and data. Most of the later pages were empty except for the first few which were hand written and difficult to read. The girls stared with confusion at what they were looking at.
"What is this?"
Ellie followed along the top of the page with her finger, each heading was written in its own box.
"Name, Date, Drug, Symptoms, Duration…?" She read through the first two rows in their entirety. "Jessica Turner, July 13th, Strychnine, Muscle Convulsions and Asphyxiation, 3 hours; Daniel Summers, July 30th, Yperite, Swelling and Skin Burns, 74 hours… what the-" before she could finish her question the sound of a key pushing against a lock's tumblers came from behind them in the dark. "Shit, hide!"
Ellie dropped the notepad back on the shelf and flipped off the light switch. As Riley was about to close the door she stopped herself, reached back in to feel for the notepad, and ripped out the first page. She shut the door and reattached the lock on the outside.
The delay prevented them from having enough time to leave back through the window without being heard. As Ellie was panicking to find another exit Riley grabbed her hand and pulled her around to the side of the stairs and into the small cubby beneath. They both huddled in the corner and tried to suspend their breathing, though their now rapid pulse made that nearly impossible.
They heard the sound of the doorknob twist and the door right above them swing open slowly, and for a moment after there was only silence. A heavy exhale broke the quiet followed by the creaking of the wooden stairs. The footsteps made their way down to the ground floor and moved slowly toward the direction of the cooler and stopped. The sound of a single click was followed by the door being opened. The light in it suddenly flashed on and sent beams bouncing off the walls of the basement.
With their vision obstructed Riley cautiously peaked from around the edge of the stairs. She was able to make out the silhouette of a figure in the doorway but had to jerk her head back in almost immediately when the figure turned around.
A low voice filled the room. "Okay, ready."
The stairs creaked once again under stress as a couple more sets of footsteps made their way down.
An instantly familiar Southern accent spoke out of frustration. "Stop struggling."
A third voice made itself known, heavily slurred and hard to understand. "What are you… you doing?" It sounded familiar to the girls, but it was too distorted.
Both footsteps stopped and a sudden grinding noise from the metal chair rang out as if a weight was suddenly dropped onto it. Riley peaked her head out again with Ellie doing the same beside her. The scene before them was surreal.
At the back of the cooler stood the first figure, perfectly still, with the taller man standing in the doorway with his back towards them. What they saw between the two terrified them. Under the single light, on the rusty chair, sat Tino. He was slumped forward and struggling to keep his head up. A wave of panic shot through them both and left them in a state of paralyzed observation.
David let an arm drop while the other one set something inside of a small box off to his side. He pulled the notebook off of the shelf and flipped it open, but instead of writing anything the man remained still.
James must have noticed the odd silence. "What is it?"
"My log. It's missing a page."
"That's odd. Did you rip it out?"
A long silence fell before his response. "Don't you think I would remember doing something like that?"
"It was just a thought."
A heavy sigh followed. "You and I are the only one with access to this room, correct?"
"Right."
"Well, it wasn't me. And if it wasn't me, then who's the only one left?"
"Just me, but I swear it wasn't. Why would I take a single page out of your book?"
A short pause this time, after which a stifled laugh suddenly erupted and startled the girls out of their daze. "No, I suppose you wouldn't, would you? You would have absolutely no reason to. I'll figure it out later. For now, let's continue shall we?"
He reached off to left side of the room behind the wall, his hand reappearing with a small opaque tube with a pointed tip that glinted from the light. Tino's limp body in the chair began to flail which caused the man behind him to quickly grab his arms and hold him still. Tino kept trying to make noises but they came out muddled.
"Relax Tino, there's no need to be worried." David grabbed steady one of his arms and slowly pressed the needle against it.
Ellie immediately fell backwards and scurried herself as fast as she could against the side wall. Riley just as hurriedly pushed herself between Ellie and the wall while putting one hand over Ellie's mouth and the other around her chest hoping to silence her panicked breaths. Their view was blocked again and they could only helplessly listen.
"Alright, that's good for now. We'll come back tomorrow and see how he's doing."
They heard a click and the light was suddenly extinguished. The stairs creaked under the weight of first unknown set of footsteps. The cooler door was shut, the lock put back on, and then the second set of footsteps followed upstairs. The basement door closed with a groan and the door lock's tumblers were again jostled by the key and closed tight.
Ellie let her head fall forward and sobbed against the hand covering it. Riley held even tighter and waited until Ellie's body slowed its shaking and her whimpers subsided before she let her grip around her loosen.
Riley spoke through a blurred mess of nerves and adrenaline. "We'll get Tino out of here. Just hold on."
They waited for a few minutes to ensure the two men were gone for good before emerging from underneath the staircase. Riley ran over to the door and twisted the dial back and forth and drew the lock off the handle. She pulled the door open and flipped on the switch.
The light spotlighted Tino whose head was fallen backwards and his body motionless. Ellie stood back out of the room watching nervously with both hands over her mouth. Riley put her hand against his shoulder and shook him, hopeful to get a reaction.
He pulled his head back up and looked at the two figures standing before him. His eyes narrowed as he tilted his head in confusion. "Hey… what… is?" His head began to droop forward as he trailed off.
Riley stopped him from falling and threw his arm around herself to stand him up. "Oh shit he's heavy. Help me."
Ellie stood paralyzed at the door, her eyes darting in every possible direction.
"Ellie, now!"
She shook her head clear and followed the command. She put his arm around her shoulder and they both dragged him out of the cooler and across the basement towards the windows. Each step was harder than the last and by the time they reached the one they came in their energy was spent and they were forced to sit him against the wall.
"We can't do it. We have to leave him here."
"What? We can't leave him here, are you crazy? Who knows what they'll do to him!"
"I don't want-" Riley caught herself and lowered her voice. "I don't want to either! But there's no way in hell we can get him up that ladder. We could barely get him twenty feet."
"What about the stairs?"
"Seriously? That's where they are."
"Well we can't just leave him here… "
Riley grabbed her by both shoulders and stared into her eyes. "Ellie, we can't get him out of here. Not right now. We need to leave and get help, okay?"
Ellie began darting her eyes again back and forth between the girl in front of her and the boy on the ground beside them.
"Ellie."
"Okay… okay, yeah."
"Alright." Riley too looked down at the kid on the ground and noticed that his face was in a state of complete absence. "Sorry, Tino, but we've gotta go. We're gonna find you some help." She sighed and looked back up at Ellie and nodded toward the window.
Riley pushed up on the window and held it open for Ellie, stepping through herself once she was outside. They hurried across the lawn while making sure to stay out of sight of any of the main windows. They stopped once they reached the dark quiet street and looked around nervously.
Ellie was the first to speak through her nerves. "Where do we go?"
"I don't know. I don't know!" She looked up and down the road hoping for an idea. "Uh… the neighborhood past the alley. It's- it's close, they'll have a phone."
"What about the stores?"
"They'll be closed. Come on, we can't stop here and think, we gotta keep moving! Come on!"
Ellie nodded and they both sprinted eastward down the road.