Lacey turns left to find Gideon throwing open the first of many doors in a long hallway, body in a trembling frenzy and eyes ablaze with need, with trepidation, with heat. "Erie?" He moves so frantically his feet keep tripping over themselves and the strings dangling from the collar of his hoodie fly up and strike his cheeks. "Erie!" The next door opened bathes him in a rectangle of golden light, but it only highlights the aggressive droop in his lips as he wrenches himself off the threshold and to the next one.

She takes a tentative step forward, wrapping sweat-laden fingers around the strap of her satchel. This version of him is something like what she saw when they were getting here; it fills her gut with something heavy and uncomfortable. He's so...emotional. She can't predict emotional. "We should really check the rest of the house first to make sure nobody's really home," she says, voice low. "Someone might be napping upstairs or something."

But he can't be tamed, not like this. He won't appeal to reason so long as he keeps running, so long as he keeps throwing open doors and calling out the name of a boy he wants to hold close and keep safe. Through the dark chasm of one doorway he might whisper-yell it, a hushed "Erie," and in others, (more often than not), he calls out with choked strain, "Erie, where are you?"

As each room turns up empty, he gets more frenetic: hands tugging at hair, pulling down the skin of his face, pounding into one another. By the time he's done with the hall Lacey thinks he's just about lost his mind and the fact that he nearly runs her down trying to get to the corridor on the opposing side of the entrance doesn't help his case. As she ungracefully jumps out of the way, he marches forward, hands clenched at his sides. He turns abruptly, though, back to Lacey. His shoulders are stiff and he presses his hands together, rubbing his mouth as he paces in front of her again.

"He's not down here," he says. "We need to check over there, upstairs. You think he's got a downstairs?" He nods to himself, then strides past her. "Downstairs first. That's where any sick fuck would keep someone tied up. C'mon, let's go."

This is all too fast, too blurred. She likes the safety bubble her idea provides - as safe as they can get after breaking and entering, at least. He's rushing around this way and that and it's throwing her for too much of a loop. "You need to calm down," she blurts, fingers splayed. He stops so suddenly he nearly topples forward. Good. He's listening, then. She lets herself breathe for a second before continuing. "He might not even be here at all! Instead of running around like a couple of chickens with our heads cut off, we need to search each of these rooms you just ignored for clues on where he could be. Does that make sense?"

He's trying, he really is. He must be. When he turns back to her, grey light coming from the kitchen window haloes him, dusting him with neutrality and shadowing the way he doesn't look her in the eye. Neither fit well. His Adam's apple bobs; lungs heave. "I'll calm down and search. I'll calm down and search each of those rooms once I'm sure Erie's not here. If he's here, clues have no point. Does that make sense?"

His comments singe her and she sizzles, but nevertheless, she huffs. If this is the only way to appease him, she'll oblige. Not like I have much of a choice. "Whatever. Fine. But if he's not here, we do this my way."

Time isn't wasted on finding a reply and relaying it. Gideon examines two doors on the wall leading into the kitchen, and after seeming to choose based on some gut instinct, he turns a loosened metal knob and allows the door to creak open on old hinges. Lacey comes up behind him; sure enough, the ground dips down. Softened light from the various windows in the house only illuminates the first three steps. The rest is pitch black, a type of black your eyes don't adjust to.

Wonderful.

Her stomach turns, and she doesn't doubt that Gideon's is doing the same, given the way he hovers at the top of the stairs, hovering with a reluctant dip to the corner of his mouth. But, ultimately, if they're going to do this, they're going to have to start moving eventually. With a wall of cheek tissue clenched between her teeth, she wakes her phone and swipes away the map in favor of a flashlight. The cold white light spreads down the stairs, giving them a clear view of the concrete at the bottom and what looks like two poles beyond that. Their shadows criss-cross into one another before fading out where the ceiling cuts off their vision.

Gideon creates a curious hmph before removing his own phone from his pocket and joining her light with his. He casts her a brief glance, a firm nod of the head with enough time to see the placid blue of his eyes, before he takes the first step, and as such, begins the descent.

Oh, beautiful, she thinks, close behind. Her free hand roams the wood panelling to the side, given the absence of a railing. There's nothing like breaking into a suspected murderer's house and then walking through his basement in search of a kid he's supposedly kidnapped because the person who came here with you is literally crazed and if you leave him behind he'll probably also get murdered by the suspected murderer. Nothing like that at all. She rubs her eyes. What am I doing here?

When their feet finally touch the bottom, Lacey has to fight the urge to shield her nose from the rife scent of must in the air. A chill swims between them, latching onto raindrops that haven't yet dried up from their clothes. Gooseflesh rises and skitters beneath her sleeves, and the hair on the back of her neck stiffens when a breath of icy quiet passes over it. She shudders. There's a feeling that comes with this room, and it's not a pleasant one. They need to hurry.

She and Gideon spin their lights at different corners of the basement. The space they stand in at the foot of the stairs is wide, devoid of furniture, with four thick support poles equidistant from one another. There's a shelf spanning the wall in the back boasting old DVDs and dusty VHS tapes, and on either side of it is a room, the doors left ajar. To either side of Lacey and Gideon, there's a narrow corridor leading elsewhere.

"So instead of having a normal basement like a normal person," she whispers, "he's got like ten rooms down here too. This is how we know we're dealing with a psychopath."

"Not all psychopaths do stuff like this and that's hardly grounds for diagnosis," Gideon says absentmindedly. He's already started searching, peeking his head into the room closest to the stairs. "Utility closet." He steps back and coughs. "I think we should split up. I'll handle this side, you head that way, yeah?"

"Excuse me? Since when was this Scooby Doo?"

"Listen to me. It isn't that big, we're just looking for Erie. It'll be done in two minutes. Alright?"

Fair enough. Two minutes, if even that. That's not bad. Satisfied, she nods in agreement, and just like that, they part ways - Lacey to the left, Gideon to the right.

She starts down the narrow hall, a hall that hardly gives her shoulders space to breathe, when, instead of a door, she finds a sheer curtain hanging from a rod installed in the doorframe. Not fond of the thought of having to squeeze her way through the rest of the bending corridor - which seems to wrap around the back of the stairs - she scoops a handful of the silky fabric in her hand and pushes it aside, shouldering her way into the room.

It's modelled like the hallway but with more space to move around, and at the end there's enough light spilling down from a small window near the unfinished ceiling to see by. If you're unconcerned about stepping on rusty nails or broken nails, that is. And if you're not where Lacey stands, where the light is obstructed by clotheslines weaved from one side of the wall to another and then back again, all throughout the room. Various articles hang, like sheets clipped up to dry, with button-ups and thin t-shirts glowing baby blue like they've got see-through souls of their own.

There's a basket of dirty towels in the corner. She wants to pick through it but that'll take time, so she propels herself forward, slipping between and under damp laundry so as not to drop anything on this grubby floor and let it be known that someone was picking through his house. Honestly, for someone so outwardly rich, so clean-cut and crisp, she was expecting more. A maid waiting around, even. Seven butlers. But it's just him, some plants, and these clothes. A washer at the end, too, suds running down the circular door like it's just finished a cycle.

Wonder if he's trying to wash out blood. DNA. Spit. The smell of death.

She's not allowed to ponder. She turns the corner at the washer and keeps going, struggling to avoid an overflowing hamper, a pile of clothes atop an ironing board, a drain in the corner. All of this, all of this could be a clue to what happened to Erie, to Stella, to the redheaded girl with the small face. And she has to ignore all of it. It puts a grind between her teeth and she snaps back a second blurred drapery connecting this room to the next.

It gets a questionable raise of the brow and a lip curled in disgust. If Dorian Gray had a portrait of age and faults in his attic, then Isaac Boone's vault of hidden atrocities is the bathroom in his basement.

There's another window keeping close to the ceiling directly opposite her, and she doesn't blame it for wanting to be as far away from the dirty tile as possible. Within every crease is a line of dirt and the white squares look chalky from dust. Two shelves painted a peeling white boast shampoo bottles crusted with dry soap and razors weaved with hair. A shirt lay on the floor, the armpits smeared with sweat stains. In the corner sits a toilet, the bowl stained similarly with a ring of brown where the water rests, and beside it, a sink with a toothbrush thrown haphazardly next to the drain and a bar of soap left to collect stubble remnants and dirt. The mirror above it weeps with water stains, ghosts of spittle specks left to dot an otherwise perfectly fine reflection.

The main attraction, however, is the clawfoot tub in the middle of the room. From where she stands, she can see an earwig scuttling down the drain to get away from her scalding gaze.

"Okay," she whispers to herself, "I'm officially over this."

Her voice must excite something, because in the corner, beside the sink, she picks up on movement, a light bump against a closet door. Scratches run up the wood. Her unease is exacerbated as she backs up against the doorframe and shallows her breaths. Oh my God, there's someone in there. Then: "Erie? That you?"

She doesn't wait for an answer - if it really is, any sane serial killer would duct tape his mouth shut. She rushes across the room and takes hold of the latch. It swings open.

Rats scurry and leap over her feet and she bumps into the sink with a cry that sends the bristles of the toothbrush straight down the drain. That's pretty much a lost cause - no way she's digging her fingers down that - but she can't bring herself to care as she watches the rats sprint through the curtain and into the laundry room. There's nothing else in this closet but a single mouse trap (accompanied by a single dead mouse) and a shelf of linens. And the stench of rat droppings. Huffing, she relatches it and moves through another drape leading back into the hallway - evidently, Isaac is opposed to doors.

The corridor plunges her into darkness again and she yelps at the sight of a towering shadow before blinding the stranger with her flashlight. Just Gideon. He's got his arm shielding his eyes, blinking rapidly. "Can you put that down?"

She does. "Sorry."

"It's fine." He leans up against the wall and swallows. "Nothing this way. Just a closet full of pickle jars and other foodstuffs, and an extra bedroom."

"Bathroom and laundry room that way," she says, gesturing vaguely to the drape. "And rats."

His whole face contorts, horrified. "Really? Did you check that other room beside that big open space?"

"Oh. I missed that one."

He throws himself into the darkness, his light quaking in front of him, and Lacey takes chase again. His weight busts into the door at the same time she shoulder-checks a pole. It throws her off guard, dizzies her, rattles her bones, but she follows his light until she's standing in the doorway of a large room, cradling her arm and watching him crouch down and shine LED through a bundle of cobwebs under a desk.

Noting the nothingness, he rises and runs a perplexed hand through his honey-brown hair. "He's not here."

Lacey purses her lips. Gideon shields his eyes again and she shakes out of a stupor, waving the light over the rest of the room. Her eyes widen. "No, but something else might be."

There are filing cabinets along the entirety of the wall, glinting the same tinted green as the porch outside. The desk Gideon found isn't the only one, either; there are at least three in the room, all adorned in papers and manila folders. Whiteboards glisten against the cement walls they're plastered to, a whole manner of shorthand and unreadable curls scrawled across them. This place is a business pig-sty, and down here? There's bound to be secrets somewhere.

Lacey's chest starts thumping in anticipation, hands clammy around the phone case. "Erie isn't here but I bet we can find something that tells us where he really is. Get looking. Now."

Although he hovers for a moment, a darkness filling the space beneath his eyes, he gets to work, pushing one hand through a stack of papers while the other suspends the flashlight over a workspace. Lacey takes a liking to the filing cabinets and starts thumbing through them. E, M, K - Erie, Mott or Murder, Killing or Kidnapping - y'know, the places a normal murderer would keep that information. But nothing she sees means anything to her. Accounts and dollar signs and decimal places. Nothing useful.

"Look," Gideon says. She looks up. He's holding back a piece of presentation paper left hanging above the desk, stuck to the wall. There's an image taped up underneath. "A map. Of Carrick. See." His hand lingers over roads and forests and rivers and she joins his side, squinting at an array of little red thumbtacks scattered all over. "All these random places are pinned."

"They might not be so random."

"That's what I was thinking. These might be places he's kept people, where he's- he might've buried people here. Killed them here." He nods, swallowing a lump. "Erie could be in any one of these."

"Think so?"

"I have a hunch. Here, take a picture. We'll need it later."

With the flashlight still functional and Gideon holding the paper back, she opens her phone camera and focuses on the map. She snaps several photos, the flash blinking in and out of existence with each one. Can't be too careful. I wonder if-

A distant noise, like something falling over in another room, jolts her photography and she takes a blurred picture of Gideon's arm. He lets the presentation paper fall and throws a bug-eyed look her way, chest heaving rapidly. "I thought you said you checked everywhere."

"I did."

A squeak, like unoiled metal twisting against itself, fills their shared silence. The sound of rushing water follows it.

"Someone's here," Gideon whispers.

A greasy dread fills her, twisting from chest to gut, from fingertips to toes. Isaac shouldn't be back yet, and even if he was, they would've both heard him pound down those stairs. There's only two other answers: either they missed a room and someone's finally woken up, or Lacey's new desperate friends have tracked her down again - with Darcy's help, no doubt - and inhabited this space with them. Well, fuck me.

God seems to do just that by giving Gideon a grand idea. Before she can grab at his arm and yank him back, Gideon takes off into the musty darkness. He lets his phone clatter to the ground as he occupies himself with his previous endeavor. "Erie? Erie is that you?"

"Shit," she mutters under her breath. She scoops the phone up and pockets it on her way out. Her own light catches his backside just as he disappears beyond the first drape. Converse slipping on dust and dirt, she catches herself on the doorway before throwing herself forward, on Gideon's heels as he sprints through the hanging linens. He knocks a few to the floor in his haste. She clenches her fists as she lands a muddied footprint on an otherwise pristine sheet. She can't fix this, not now.

He turns the corner and flings back the curtain. It falls back, but she can see his silhouette standing in front of it, paralyzed, while his head turns this way and that. With a grunt, she practically punches her way through the fabric until she's stood beside him, ready to deliver the most righteous lecture Carrick has ever seen.

She doesn't get the chance.

In front of them, the room sits empty, but the faucet of the clawfoot tub in the center runs full blast, so violent that it sprays against the sides and some speckles of water fall on the floor. A lone cup rolls underneath it. Gideon's eyes are on it. And although the basement was already frigid, this room is straight-up freezing. She can tell he feels it too; a shiver wracks his body and his teeth begin to chatter.

"Someone was here," he fumes, pointing aggressively at the floor while he tucks his other hand under his arm to keep warm. "Someone's fucking with us. Do you feel that?"

It's a penetrating atmosphere, unsettling melancholia with a tasteful tingle, tang. It's like if sweetness and touch had a love child and let it drift along as an invisible cloud, fogging heads and hearts alike. That's the aura of Malevolence. So yes, she feels it. "Not someone. Something."

He turns to her, brows and mouth twisted in confusion. "Could you be any less vague?"

She opens her mouth to argue but there's movement, a rapid flash of sickly pallor that makes her grab hold of his arm for emotional support. One hand reaches beyond the porcelain and becomes an arm that stretches, awoken from a long sleep, before clasping the edge of the tub. The slap of the palm is something only she expects to hear, but much to her surprise, Gideon jumps at the noise too. "That came from...there? What the fuck?"

Another arm claps the side. This time, the waterbug scuttles out from under a fingernail and throws itself to the floor. It lands on its back and waves its little legs in the air with fearful passion. Gideon blinks profusely as he tries to figure out where it came from.

All the while, Lacey keeps her eyes trained on the thriving beast in the bathtub, slowly driving her hand into the flap of her satchel. "Remember when I told you I could see things?" she asks. Her fingers bump plastic and she latches onto it.

"Yeah? But that's nonsense- no offense. It doesn't...that's not a thing."

"I'm telling you, it is." It comes out calm, clear, concise. A third hand reaches up, a fourth, a fifth. They start to haul themselves up on unused muscles and broken nails, a pulsing conglomeration of elbows and fingers. "This isn't some plumbing problem. I'm telling you there's something in that bathtub that I'm looking at right now and if we don't get out of here before it does, we're fucked. Come on. Now, Gideon."