PLAYHOUSE Chapter 3/10

He made it to the basement door about two seconds before the footsteps reached the bottom of the main staircase.

He got through, pressed the door shut behind him with both hands controlling the latch, and stood at the top of the basement stairs listening. The footsteps crossed the entrance hall. Heavy and slow. He felt them more through the floor than heard them. They moved right — east wing direction — and then faded.

He went down.

Dark. He clicked on his headlamp. The beam hit bare concrete walls, old shelving, the specific cold of a basement that hasn't been heated since the nineties. He had the map. Management office was far left.

He went left.

Past closed doors, past a wider junction, to the office at the end. Door was unlocked. Inside: old desk, old filing cabinet, a dead plant that had somehow turned completely into gray powder inside its pot without anyone noticing, and a corkboard on the wall.

In the middle of the corkboard, one index card, big handwriting: KEY = DESK DRAWER. DO NOT FORGET. (YOU ALWAYS FORGET.)

He opened the drawer. Regular house key. Yellow smiley face keychain. He held it in his hand and thought: okay. Front door. He just had to get back up, across the ground floor, out.

He turned around.

Small round mirror on the wall beside the door. He glanced at it without thinking.

His reflection looked back. Dusty jacket, headlamp on.

Something stood in the doorway behind his reflection.

He spun around fast.

Nothing. Empty doorway, dark hallway.

He looked at the mirror again. Just him.

He told himself: headlamp shadows. Old building. Tired. He moved on.

He was halfway down the hall when he heard the elevator.

From above, east wing, ground floor — the cage door grinding open. Then the motor. Going up.

He used the stairs while Mabel was in the elevator.

He came up onto the ground floor and moved down the main hall to the front door. Key in the main lock, turned it. The lock opened. He pulled the door.

Three inches. It stopped.

He pulled harder. Nothing. He looked at the frame and finally saw it — top of the door, almost at the ceiling, a deadbolt he'd completely missed. Separate lock, no key for it.

He stood there with three inches of outside air hitting his face and thought some things he wouldn't say out loud.

He closed the door. There was another key somewhere. He had to find it.

From upstairs, the elevator coming back down.

He went back down the main hall, past the mural — three painted figures now, Mabel's space blank on the wall. East wing. Two rooms he hadn't searched.

First door: locked. He tried master keys one at a time. Fourth one worked.

Records room. Cabinets on every wall. He started working through drawers. Third cabinet, second from top: a folder labeled MASTER KEYS DUPLICATES. Already empty. He kept going.

The elevator stopped. Cage door opened. East wing. Same hallway.

Footsteps. These were different from Mabel's. Lighter, more deliberate, placed with this careful precision.

He turned his headlamp off and got into the gap between the last filing cabinet and the wall and stopped moving completely.

The records room door opened.

Breathing that wasn't his. This slow sound with a faint mechanical quality underneath it. Then a drawer opened. Another one. Silas going through the files systematically, one by one, unhurried. A third drawer. A fourth.

Sufyan's shoulder was pressed against the corner of the cabinet and it hurt but he didn't move.

Two minutes. Maybe three. Then the footsteps went to the door. The door closed. The footsteps went down the hall.

He counted sixty seconds before he turned his headlamp back on.

His hands were doing the shaking thing that happens when your body has an opinion about something you just did. He shook them out.

He kept searching. Bottom drawer: maintenance forms and a bundle of keys, rubber-banded. Under the forms — a long old key. The kind for a deadbolt.

He held it up. Nearly laughed.

He checked the hallway through the door gap. Empty. He went.