Rise the Dark by Michael Koryta

ribbed bars and gaps between. The angled sections were hinged. He reached out with his flashlight and tapped the center of the object, and the bench seemed to explode.
    The flashlight was torn from his hand and he felt something snap at his finger like a wolf’s teeth and then the flashlight was on the floor, rolling, its beam painting crazy patterns of the generator shadows, and Mark couldn’t see the workbench anymore and didn’t have a damn clue what had happened. It had felt like an explosion, but there was no fuel, and no debris. His heart was thundering and he’d reached for his gun as if he needed to return fire.
    He knelt and found the light and turned it back to the bench, and finally he understood—it was a trap. A literal trap, with a spring-loaded central piece that banged those angled jaws home. If he’d tapped on it with his fist instead of the flashlight, he’d have a broken hand.
    He turned from the device and back toward the stairs and that was when he saw the dead woman.
    She was jammed beneath the short flight of steps, her body pressed into a crevice barely large enough to contain it. He’d walked right over her when he’d entered. Her eyes were open, glittering in the light, bright, but not as bright as the blood that saturated the front of her white dress. Her throat had been slashed, and not long ago—the blood wasn’t entirely dry.
    Mark said, “God, no,” as if he could deny the reality.
    Slow drips of blood plinked down from the gash in her throat and joined the horrific pool below.
    This, Mark thought dully, would be the real Dixie Witte.
    When he’d arrived, the blond woman had seemed startled, legitimately bothered by the fact that he was early for his appointment. Had she emerged from the cellar just a few minutes earlier? Had she smashed the remains of a human life under the steps like so much discarded junk and then gone up and put beer on ice?
    What if you’d been on time? What was supposed to be in the beer? Was that walk to Medicine Wheel Park actually part of the plan, or was she filling time?
    The dead woman’s eyes were fixed on his, and they were the only part of her that seemed to hold a trace of life. He had the disquieting sense that she wished to tell him something, or wished for him to tell her something.
    Did you hold hope, even as you died? Did you watch your own blood fill your hands and, even as you understood that it was too much, too fast, still think that there was a chance?
    I’m glad they shot Lauren, he thought, because he’d read the autopsy reports, read the expert opinions stating that she wouldn’t have known pain. But who in the hell could say that, really? The living could only guess at how it had gone for the dead. There was no such thing as an expert opinion when it came to death.
    He was standing there staring at the corpse when he heard a low, distant rumble like far-off thunder. For a moment he thought that was exactly what it was, the coming of another storm, but the sound remained.
    Not thunder.
    Myron’s truck.
    Shaken back into motion, he straightened and promptly slammed his head into the low ceiling, a teeth-snapping crack; he swore and dipped low again, back into a crouch, and drew his gun. There was a small window in the cellar, right at ground level, that let a small amount of light in. When he went to it, though, the pane was so filthy that it didn’t allow a clear look anywhere, and even if it had, the window faced the backyard. The sound of the truck was coming from the front.
    He turned from the window. The only path of exit was up those steps, right over the dead woman.
    He crossed the basement in an awkward crouch, trying to keep his eyes on the door but not look at the woman, which was impossible. He’d just reached the base of the steps when he heard the front door open.
    He had no idea where his Dixie Witte impostor had gone after she left the house or whether she knew that he’d remained so long. What he did know was that