Chapter 9

Air whipped past me. Light and shadow spun. The ladder blurred.

I threw out a hand. My knuckles rapped against a rung. Then another. The pain was like a red bell sounding a long way off. Then my fingers caught metal.

The speed of my fall and my own weight placed a tremendous amount of strain on my hand, arm, and shoulder. Somebody was ringing that red bell like crazy. For a moment, I slowed. And then my momentum broke my grip, and I fell again.

It was a shorter fall this time. I landed on my back, and the impact caused my brain to reboot. I didn't black out, but for what felt like a long time, I lay there, staring up into the darkness of the shaft. The work lights glittered like distant stars.

Slowly, pieces of thought came together again. Pain worked its way into my consciousness. My body ached in a hundred different places, but when I tried to sit up, I could. My legs moved. My arms responded. The palm of my hand was scraped where I'd tried to grab the ladder, but even that wasn't too bad. When I rolled onto my hands and knees, the world did a lazy spin, but it settled down again after a moment. I stayed there, taking deep breaths. Hormones were running riot in my body, and the pain and the dark and the leftover terror of the fall made me squeeze my eyes shut and focus on counting my breaths, fighting the pinprick need to cry.

When I had myself under control again, I got to my feet. I felt a little unsteady, but the world stayed where it was. I checked the back of my head—no blood. I was, as far as I could tell, in one piece.

By pure dumb luck.

Let me tell you, I didn't relish the thought of explaining this particular turn of events to a bronze-eyed deputy.

Somewhere between discovering the body and ending up down here, I'd lost my phone. More of those pathetic little work lights outlined corridors that led away from the ladder; in their weak glow, I could make out a few details of the backstage area: unfinished interior walls, with studs and drywall exposed; scaffolding and braces that suggested part of the fun of the fun house was its structural instability; arrows spray-painted onto plywood, with scribbled writing in carpenter's pencil. I could, if I wanted to, find my way out of this place by following those directions. I mean, it wasn't that big.

Instead, I gave the ladder a gimlet eye and, favoring my scraped palm, started to climb.

Maybe I should have been scared. But I wasn't; I knew what I was going to find.

When I got to the landing, the stack of boxes had been knocked over, and they lay in a jumble. But it didn't matter. Even in the low light, I could see what I needed to see.

Lyndsey's body was gone.