Chapter 7: The Hallway Where the Light Could Not Reach
The hallway narrowed the house into a passage I could not cross without being seen.
I had managed to pull Noah away from the kitchen, one hand braced against the wall and the other locked around his wrist. He stayed close, clutching the stuffed dinosaur against his chest. Behind us, the flickering kitchen light threw broken bands across the floor. Each time it went dark, the house seemed to shift. Each time it came back, Evan was still there.
I kept my breathing shallow. The ribs on my left side ground against one another whenever I moved too quickly, and the pain had settled into something hot and deep. I could not afford to fold over. If I did, I might not get upright again.
Noah looked toward the kitchen.
I pressed one finger to my lips. He nodded, serious and silent.
The split-level stairs were only a few steps ahead. They led upward toward the bedrooms and downward toward the front door, but neither direction felt like an exit. The lower landing was exposed. The upper hall ended near the rooms where Evan could corner us. Still, standing in the middle of the passage was worse. It gave him every angle.
I tested my weight on the first stair.
Pain flashed through my side and took the strength from my knee. I caught the railing before I fell. Noah's hand tightened around mine. The stuffed dinosaur slipped under his arm and bumped against the wall.
From the kitchen came the scrape of a shoe across tile.
Evan had not followed quickly. He did not need to. The house belonged to him in a way it had never belonged to me. He knew which boards complained, which doors stuck, how little room there was to turn on the stairs. I knew those things too, but fear made them feel like information he had placed there for this moment.
I started down instead of up.
The lower landing was darker, and the front door waited beyond it. If I reached the door, I could at least put a barrier between us. I did not know whether I could open it, whether the car keys were reachable, or whether the phone was still connected. I only knew that distance had to begin somewhere.
One step.
Then another.
My breath caught halfway down. I stopped with my heel hanging above the next stair, afraid that the sound of my breathing would carry. Noah turned toward me, his eyes wide. I lowered myself onto the step and pulled him close without speaking.
The phone was no longer in my hand.
I felt for it against my sweater, then along the pocket of my jeans. Nothing. The absence struck harder than the pain. I remembered the dark rectangle on the floor, remembered Noah holding it, remembered the open call as if Grandpa's listening could make the walls less solid. Now I could not see the screen.
Evan appeared at the top of the stairs.
He did not rush. One hand rested on the railing. His work jacket was dark against the weak hallway light, and his face held the same calculating stillness that had frightened me in the kitchen. He looked first at me, then at Noah, then at the space below us.
I moved Noah behind my shoulder.
It was a small movement, almost useless. The stairwell still left us nowhere to go. But Noah obeyed, pressing his body against the wall and keeping the dinosaur between them.
Evan took one step down.
I pushed myself upright. The effort tore a sharp line through my side, and the stair blurred. My hand slipped on the railing. For one second I thought I would fall backward into Noah.
I did not. I stayed standing.
That was the only ground I gained.
Evan stopped above us, close enough to block the upper hall and far enough to make the lower landing feel unreachable. The kitchen light flickered behind him. The front door remained below, visible but not available, and the phone was somewhere in the house between us.
May you like
I backed down one more step, dragging Noah with me.
The hallway disappeared behind Evan. The way out stayed in front of us, but his control reached farther than his hands.
