Rhiannon looked away and loudly cleared her throat. “Um…did you happen to have that advisor’s phone number?”

Hyacinth shook her head. “No need.”

She crossed the tiny kitchen and pulled down the gingham towels that hung from a mounted rack. The removal of the towels revealed a door of whitewashed wood.

Hyacinth pulled this back from its jamb, unto a black void, or so it seemed to Rhiannon, whose legs were losing their strength. Fear had rendered her helpless. She stood mutely, watching as her host clawed at the debris on top of the stained refrigerator until she found a large black flashlight.

Though she appeared to merely be testing the batteries, Hyacinth had the light upturned so that its beam shone against her chin, a sight that stirred in Rhiannon frightening memories of ghost stories around bonfires during those awful weeks when she’d been left to fend for herself at summer camp. She recalled how immersive those tales had been for her, the horrible impact they’d had, tainting the strange world around her as something seething with hidden peril.

Standing here now, in this dingy kitchen, Rhiannon came to appreciate how true those impressions had been.

Without a word, Hyacinth turned the flashlight to the open door and began her noisy descent of the basement steps.

Recognizing this opportunity, Rhiannon turned to charge for the front door, but a chanced view through the living room window crushed her plan of escape.

The straggling figures she’d seen moving down the unfamiliar street when she’d arrived were now loitering by Hyacinth’s rusted car. Or were these the same figures? No, for where there had been but a pair, there was now a group. Forlorn-looking women now stood alongside the imposing men. They looked to be huddling under the sputtering streetlamp like moths.

Rhiannon reached into her purse for her phone to call a cab, or perhaps call Iain. She stole another look. The figures were ordering themselves. They were lining up single-file along the sidewalk.

“Everything is ready,” announced Hyacinth.

The sound of her voice made Rhiannon squeal. She spun and looked into a flash-lit grin.

“You look frightened.”

“I am!”

“But there’s no reason to be. I’m coming with you, it’s fine.”

Hyacinth began down the basement stairs first, which made Rhiannon feel just secure enough to move to the doorway and look down at those ruddy steps; anything to keep her focus off the strange congregation outside.

The basement was no longer a wall of blackness. In addition to the gleaming finger from Hyacinth’s torch, it now hosted an intriguing sheet of prismatic light; something festive, carnivalesque.

It was to this cloistered aurora that Rhiannon moved, one hesitant stair at a time, until eventually she found herself standing amidst the cluttered cellar.