For Rye Gavin Gardiner (best book club books for discussion TXT) 📖

became fangs, biting her skin through the still-sodden hospital gown under her open duffle coat. She stood at the top of a flight of dilapidated wooden stairs descending into the dark. The rusty light switch resisted her fingers at first, then cracked into place. There was a weak crackle as long-forgotten circuitry awoke.

Light exploded from glass tubes stretching the length of the ceiling. Renata covered her eyes as the fluorescent strips drowned the space in total white, until, as her eyes adjusted, the details of the cellar opened up before her.

Upon the rough brickwork lining the narrow chamber hung rusted pipes, tangling like snakes over creeping mildew. The mouldy space seemed to constitute part of the building’s foundations, an integral part of her childhood home’s anatomy, yet hidden from her all these years. The air was different; not quite rank, not quite natural, it was breathable yet somehow intrusive in her lungs, and icy cold. The mystery of the moths’ nesting place was immediately solved as she looked to the alien-like clusters lining the edges of the ceiling, white and cloudy like frozen smoke. But one detail above all others won her attention.

Everywhere, books.

They were strewn across the concrete floor in tumbling piles, like the naked, tangled bodies of a wartime death pit. The books’ covers lay open, arms and legs flung out, pages crumpled and spines damp. She descended the wooden stairs and knelt by the books, plucking one from the pile by its open cover.

She recognised it.

She recognised them all.

Her mother’s own attempts at writing had burned in the fireplace, but Thomas’s wrath had decreed mere banishment on her romance novel collection – banishment to this hidden chamber. She peered down the narrow basement. How could this have been kept from her? Why would it have been kept from her? Quentin had succeeded in reigniting her memory, images and words now leaping through the mist of her mind into crystal consciousness. Memories were unfolding. Now, staring into this forgotten cell, she thought back to the day they’d moved in. There had been, she now remembered, two items in place upon arrival: the painting and the bookcase.

Her father had meant for the cellar to remain hidden. Even so, there was nothing particularly of note in the tomb of light besides the books. It was a dumping ground for sinful texts, nothing more. So why hide its existence? Why not just use the cellar as a junkyard and padlock the door? Why not—

Her breath caught at the sudden realisation.

What if his hate for their little girl had spiralled deeper? What if there had been lessons needing taught under the cover of darkness? This place was Thomas Wakefield’s last resort. It was a prison-in-waiting.

She looked down the cellar, her eyes following the mishmash of ancient piping, and saw the place for what it was. It had lay hidden all these years, ready to aid her father in measures too sinister to share, too dark to risk being discovered.

This cell: he’d kept it ready for her.

Her legs went weak. She reached for the rickety banister to steady herself. He’d been right all along: this family was forsaken.

She cast her eyes to the ceiling. The upstairs floorboards were visible from below, long joists running their length between muddled spaghetti-clusters of electrical wiring. A single beam stretched the width of the room. It looked strong, solid.

She could take no more truths. Quentin had what he wanted. In her unravelling she’d performed unthinkable acts in which he’d no doubt find the inspiration for his masterwork, imbued with that sacred truth he’d so long craved. She was manipulated, used, defiled. Everyone in her life had each broken a single part of her, amounting to a whole, with Quentin delivering the killing blow. At first, back on Neo-Thorrach, she had wanted to end it all in light of dwindling options: a drought of inspiration, debt, nothing and no one to live for. Now, her need for finality rose from the truth finally revealed to her. The truth of her life.

The beam stared down at her. Rusted nails pointed accusingly from its splintered surface. She gripped the noose.

At the far end, beneath a knot of heavily rusted tubing and by a rotting wooden hatch, lay a decaying desk partially covered by a grimy sheet. From this she dragged one of two chairs, which she positioned beneath the central beam on a strangely shaped slab of concrete. She stepped up onto the chair and threw one end of the rope over the beam, looping it round and tying it securely.

Finally, time to rest.

it’ll hold it’ll hold it’ll hold

Damn Father.

Renata lowered the noose over her head, the scratchy hemp pulling loose a strand of hair.

Damn Quentin.

She fixed the rogue strand, cursing herself for doing so, then tightened the coarse rope around her neck.

Damn them all.

She kicked.

There was a crack, but not the crack she’d intended. It came from above as the beam buckled against adjoining struts, leaving her hanging some inches lower than she’d intended.

it didn’t hold it didn’t hold it didn’t hold

The snap of her neck was prevented by an unclean drop as she stumbled off the chair, which clattered back against the concrete. She was barely aware of her hands flying to the noose locked around her throat, and watched from afar as these alien fingers clawed at the rope. She wanted to die; apparently, her hands did not. As she watched this distant, dying struggle, she thought of just one thing.

Rye.

How dare he use her like a puppet then cast her aside, strings knotted and twisted beyond repair. Only one string now remained, and her neck was collapsing under its grip.

She kicked and clawed.

How dare he interrupt her private, long-awaited end with these horrors, dragging her back to this hellhole to be used as