Page 42 of Fear Me Not

All I want to do is crawl back into bed and stay there, but I can’t with the state it’s in.

At least I’m clean now. I find a tampon—relieved I made that trip into town while the pass was still open—and change into sweatpants and a baggy t-shirt. Then I set to work stripping the bed. With the sheets off, the mattress is as bad as I’d feared. There had been a protector between the mattress and the sheets, but it hadn’t been a waterproof one, and I’d bled straight through it.

My arms are bundled with my stained, wet clothing and my even more stained sheets. I leave the room, go to the laundry chute, and pull it open. It’s strange to think of this winding down through the floors of the hotel, opening into the basement. Something about it gives me the chills.

Then again, the whole hotel gives me the chills.

I drop my sheets down the chute and close it again. I’ll need to get down there, because I don’t want one of the men to discover them accidentally.

A horrifying thought occurs to me. What if they are already down there, dealing with their own laundry, and my mess drops out of the chute, practically on top of them?

The possibility of my utter humiliation gets my feet moving. I grit my teeth against another cramp. I always feel this way on the first day of my period and then it eases up, thank God.

Even with everything going on, we still have to deal with day-to-day living. Meals still need to be cooked and eaten and cleaned up after. Chores still need to be completed. It doesn’t feel right, somehow, to be doing such mundane tasks when it feels like I’ve lost grip on the real world, but they need to be done.

I reach the basement without bumping into anyone. I consider if Dov has watched my progress on the cameras and wonders what I’m doing. Does he have any in the basement? I’m unsure.

The basement door leads onto a staircase and, because of the size of the building, the basement has been divided into numerous rooms. The laundry room is the closest, the door on the right as soon as I reach the bottom. It also houses the big old boiler which constantly rumbles and gurgles and clanks. I haven’t had any desire or need to venture any farther to discover what might lay behind the other doors.

I flick on the light, grateful for electricity. There’s no sign of my bloodied sheets at the bottom of the chute.

Crap.

I glance around, as though somehow expecting them to be somewhere else. It’s not like they could have grown legs and walked off. I check the bank of washing machines, wondering if perhaps someone was down here when I threw them down and decided to do me a favor, but they’re all empty.

I should have just carried them down. Dammit. The chute must be blocked. They must have gotten stuck on something halfway down. Why didn’t I check with Blake that it was a working chute before I threw something down it? What a fucking idiot.

I’ve set myself up for my mortification to be deepened further. Now I’m going to have to tell him what I’ve done. I can’t just leave soiled sheets trapped in the laundry chute.

Standing at the bottom, I peer up into the chute, trying to spot a flash of white or even red. If they got stuck close to the bottom, I might be able to reach up and snag a corner and drag them the rest of the way down. But it’s nothing but a black hole.

Undeterred, I position myself so I can reach up into it. Just because I can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not there. I might be able to feel them. I know my chances are slim, but I’d still rather try than go to Blake and explain what’s happened. I’m an adult. I shouldn’t be embarrassed, but I am. It doesn’t help that things have been so strained between us. If we had the kind of relationship we’d had before I found out… no, I’d still have been embarrassed.

I jam my shoulder into the bottom of the chute and reach up as high as I can, straining my shoulder muscles and wiggling my fingers in the hope of touching a sheet⁠—

A set of cold fingers wrap around mine.

A scream escapes my throat, and I yank my hand back, my heart hammering. I stagger away from the laundry chute and trip over my own feet, landing heavily on my backside. I don’t tear my eyes from the bottom of the laundry chute, though, certain I’m about to see something from my nightmares crawling out from the tube.

“Pen, are you down there? I heard a scream.”

It’s Blake.

The air heaves in and out of my lungs and I clutch my fingers with my other hand as though I can dispel the sensation of the icy fingers folding around mine. They’d been long and bone-like and had held me for only a matter of a second, but I doubt I’ll ever forget that feeling.

Footsteps come on the stairs leading down to the basement, and, a moment later, Blake appears in front of me, his brow draw in a frown.

“Jesus, you’re shaking.” He drops to a crouch in front of me. “What’s wrong?”

Tears of fright wobble the sight of his handsome face. I can’t get my mouth and tongue to form the words to explain what I have just experienced. I don’t want to put it into words, because doing so will make it real. And it can’t have been real; it simply can’t have been. It was my imagination playing tricks on me. I can’t believe it was real because then I will never sleep again. I’ll live the rest of my life in terror of feeling that cold, bony touch once more.

“Talk to me,” Blake insists. “Please, Pen. What’s happened?”

Somehow, I force my lungs to expel air and my lips and tongue to shape words. “Rat,” I manage to say. “I saw a rat.”

He understands this fear. It makes sense—young woman sees rat in basement… man saves her from rodent. It’s safer that he believes that than the truth.

“Shit.” He rises to standing and rakes a hand through his hair as he looks around. “They sometimes escape the weather down here. Which way did it go?”