Chapter 1.3 The Basement
Rainwood House Sings, a Movement Mystery
Quick recap: Sitting in his basement refuge, Demetrius flashes back to the previous evening, when he was suddenly accused of shooting a policeman and forced to flee down a dark alley to escape a hail of police bullets. He relives the trauma of hiding under garbage while surrounded by sounds of pursuit.
Demetrius tiptoed to the main part of the alley and listened as hard as he could. Hearing nothing close by, he dashed across to the opposite dogleg. Only someone who had played hide ’n seek in this alley as a kid would know that on this side, behind a couple other dumpsters, was an opening between two buildings just wide enough to squeeze through if you were small and skinny—or as desperate as he was.
Stealing his way around the dumpsters, he shimmied through the narrow gap. Cold and shock set him shivering as he hesitated at the edge of the outlet. Finally, he summoned the courage to step into the deserted street.
Demetrius makes himself open his eyes and survey the dim, cluttered basement. Deep breath, he tells himself. Stop replaying the scary scenes. Calm down and think.
How much trouble is he actually in? Obviously that cop Bennett had been hysterical when he yelled his accusation. The most minimal investigation would reveal Demetrius did not shoot Larsen.
But the cops had shot at Demetrius! If he’d been slower, or their aim better, or the darkness in the alley less complete, they would already have tried, convicted, and executed him right there.
If they get their hands on him now, how can he expect them to be fair?
As if in a badly edited film, his mind jumps to another moment in his flight, finding himself in a residential, tree-lined street, after walking for miles out Bladensburg Road and crossing the DC line into Maryland.
He’d been half asleep on his feet, trudging up the road, when a helicopter’s harsh thrumming had suddenly engulfed him. He cowered under a tree and watched paralyzed as the chopper dropped lower, creating a windstorm as its searchlight sliced the shadows.
Had it followed him as he was walking out of town? No way—he would have heard it. The police must have called out a metro-area search for him.
“Duh.” Michael’s chuckle had suddenly sounded in his head. “Of course a cop-shooting earns you an APB. Who knew mild-mannered you would get that honor, instead of daring, dashing me?”
Deafened by the helicopter’s roar, Demetrius had ducked into a wide alley. He scurried forward, hunching close to overgrown backyard fences, ignoring the vines whipping his face.
At the top of a rise, he’d crouched by an old oak overgrown with English ivy, hugging his bag, gasping for breath, watching the chopper’s insect legs dangling down, its searchlight inching up the alley, prodding like an insistent finger around each house.
A gate stood ajar a few yards from the oak. He lunged for it and slipped through, then turned to stare as the spotlight moved back and forth across the alley like a ghostly bloodhound. With the next sweep certain to skewer him, he’d wrenched his gaze away and hurled himself across the dark expanse of lawn toward the even darker shape of a house, the only thing large enough to swallow him from view.
“Waltzing Matilda...we’ll go a-waltzing...” The child’s tuneless voice pulls Demetrius back to the present. He lurches to his feet. Careful not to knock into anything, he creeps over to the laundry sink and gives the tap the barest turn. He sucks at the meager trickle it releases, hesitates, then raises himself on tiptoe to stretch over the sink’s corroded metal rim. He aims a silent stream of urine into the drain, sniffs, then nudges the tap open a bit more.
An urgent hum bursts from the faucet and he almost jumps out of his skin. With a shaking hand, he pushes the rusty metal handle back a notch. The hum drops a fifth, then cuts off. He exhales and bends to take a long drink.
A billow of haze—in his mind? in the actual air?—again enfolds him. It feels seductive, but now he knows how easily it can pull him back into the nightmare he just escaped.
“Samantha!”
Demetrius freezes at the sound of the woman’s voice, seemingly inches above him. He looks up and spots a ragged hole in the ceiling where a bulbous pipe emerges and travels down the wall behind the sink.
“Sa-man-tha!”
“What!”
In Spanish, the woman says something about “arroz.” Demetrius’s Spanish is meager, but he recognizes the word for rice. He feels a pang of longing for a steaming plate of arroz y frijoles from the taco place across from his apartment.
He doesn’t catch the woman’s next remark, but the English word “basement” jumps out. He spins and dives into the dark recess behind the staircase, somehow managing not to kick any of the junk crowding the space.
He folds himself in an awkward crouch, barely hidden behind a five-gallon bucket and some boxes. The stairs have no risers; anyone can look straight through to where he huddles.
His only hope is to blend into the darkness and keep absolutely still.
Chapter 1 ends here. Next up: Chapter 2, The Kitchen.