Get it together, woman. You've got a job to do.

She was far too old and in too much pain to let the names bother her now. It hurt to stand with her back bowed for too long so she crossed the room hurriedly, her slippers scuffing on the rough, dirty concrete.

The gas furnace ticked and hummed pleasantly. Beyond it, in a darkened, cement-walled chamber covered in cobwebs from floor to ceiling, stood the old wood furnace.

It looked like a squat black monster on clawfoot legs. The boys from HVAC had removed the thick black stovepipe from the top when they put in the new furnace. The joists above were still charred from the fire in '83.

She remembered dragging Marty away from it. His palm red and angry, oozing puss and blood as she carried him hurriedly across the room. She'd torn off the hem of her sundress and wrapped it hastily around the slash on Ruby's wrist as—smoke, it was smoke, wasn't it?—blood poured out like a leaky faucet. The scissors at Ruby's feet, in a pool of her blood, bright crimson under the bare lightbulb. More blood on Martin's face, on his lips—

Don't you think about that, Missy.

Norma regarded the place where she'd found them. God only knew how Marty had come across Ruby's special shears. It wasn't like she ever used them herself. They were a family heirloom, she said. Precious. Not so much in their monetary value as sentimental.

Where are they now? Norma wondered. Tucked away in her sewing chest? She hadn't thought of them in—gosh, at least twenty years.

She flapped out the drop cloth and let it settle over top of the furnace. With the door to the basement locked, Marty wasn't likely to come down here. Still, it was best to be sure. He'd always been crafty. If he wanted to get down here badly enough, he would find a way.

With any luck, he wouldn't bother with the thing under the tarp.

And the thing under the tarp would have no business with him.

Best that he not remember, Love, the voice said. For all of our sake's.

Norma still didn't recognize the voice but she couldn't help but agree.

She left the basement, locked the door behind her, and returned to her bedroom.

The duvet was warm and inviting. Come the next morning, she would forget having gone down to the basement at all. She would look at the bruise on her shin and the dirt on her pink bunny slippers while perched on the porcelain throne and wonder what in the heck she'd gotten up to in the night.

And the creatures eavesdropping on her thoughts would be just fine with that.

Ruby slept fitfully.

Bridge hadn't gone well that night. Typically, she and Geraldine were a pair to be reckoned with—as a team, the others had nothing on them. Tonight she'd been focused more on the nasty business Mavis had been involved in than the cards in Geraldine's silk-gloved hands and her own. As a consequence, Helen and Ethel had taken every single trick.