Stranger Things: Beyond the Silver Rainbow

[19] (Nancy)

Nicole's house smelled like coconut-mint and cat litter. Nancy patted the wall until she found the light switch, which lit up a small lamp over the front door. She bumped right into Will when she sped inside and with a "Sorry!" she surveyed the home: a sparse brown living room with no TV at all, a kitchen with a two-chair table, a hallway straight ahead, two bedrooms, one bathroom, extra door. "Does Nicole have a basement?" She pulled the sticky door open and headed down the stairs. Yes.  The principal trait of basements was that their rooms were dark.

"Dunno, I just drove her home. Oh, hey. Basement."

Wooden stairs creaked under Nancy's feeling feet. Dragging her hand along the wall in want of a railing, she descended into a damp black pit that reeked of mildew and more so of cat litter. When her shoe tapped the solidity of a cement floor she spread her hands all over the wall, but found it empty. The backs of her forearms felt hot. "Hey, is there a light switch near you?"

"Oh, uh. Yep." A bare bulb flashed to life, revealing a small one-room cellar.

Along the wall to the left sat a washer and dryer with a laundry tub between them. Above the laundry tub there was a little cobwebby-curtained window, and under it on the floor, a litter box. In the centre of the room a card table heaped chaotically with folded laundry stood over a floor drain. Along the far wall on the right, a clothesline stretched from corner to corner. It was empty of everything but wooden pins, wire hangers and an old wedding dress. The hem of the dress puddled on top of a long tiered stack of boxes. The stack's lowest layer bore the dark horizontal blemish of past floodwater, and in a gap between those boxes, in the furthest corner from the stairs, a silver-grey cat crouched, staring at her.

And that was it.

Nancy slapped her hands to her face and punished the back of her head against the wall so hard it cracked in her ears. There was no word for the sound she made.

"Any luck down there?"

What was she doing?

Steve met her at the top of the stairs wearing a look that promised she wouldn't have to answer him out loud. "I figure you'll do Nicole's room for girl reasons?" he said. "The guys are softly ransacking the bookcase in the front room, so..." He leaned on the hallway wall with that hunch in his shoulders again, with his hands in his pullover pockets and his eyes less focused than normal.

"You can leave, it's okay. Really. It's okay. This is dangerous. We're still breaking the law." Nancy tried to force a laugh. "Get out while you still can." It came out stale.

"Sure, I could do that but there's no evidence." Steve shrugged. "I like no evidence, especially when there's no stealing either. Take her room and be quick, hey? I'll mess around out here."

"Are you sure?"

"W'yeah, of course. If I left I'd have to call the cops on you myself." He winced at her, sarcastic and pleading at once. "...Since that would be my natural course of action."

"I didn't mean it." Nancy hardly even remembered saying it. "I was scared. And... mad. But not at you. I'm sorry."

"You said something dumb when you were scared? Who does that?" Steve shouldered up from the wall and headed for the living room. He planted a peck on the top of her head as he passed her. "Get your act together, Nancy."

Nancy left the basement door open for the cat.