Dark Rivers of the Heart

place," he told her.
        His father had concealed the latches behind clever strips of flip-up molding. Spencer found all four: one to the left at the back of the bottom shelf, one to the right; one to the left at the back of the second-highest shelf, one to the right.
        Behind him, Rocky padded into the file room, claws ticking on the polished-pine floor.
        Ellie said, "That's right, pooch, you stay with us."
        After handing the flashlight to Ellie, Spencer pushed on the shelves.
        The guts of the cabinet rolled backward into darkness. Small wheels creaked along old metal tracks.
        He stepped over the base frame of the unit, into the space that had been vacated by the shelves. Standing inside the cupboard, he pushed the back wall all the way into the hidden vestibule beyond. his palms were damp. He blotted them on his jeans.
        Retrieving the flashlight from Ellie, he went into the six-foot-square room behind the cupboard. A chain dangled from the bare bulb ill the ceiling socket. He tugged on it and was rewarded with light as sulfurous as he remembered it from that night.
        Concrete floor. Concrete-block walls. As in his dreams.
        After Ellie shut the doors, closing herself in the closet, she and Rocky followed him into the cramped room beyond.
        "That night, I stood out there in the file room, looking in through the back of the cupboard, toward this yellow light, and I wanted to run away so badly. I thought I had started to run… but the next thing I knew, I was in the cupboard. I said to myself, 'Run, run, get the hell out of here." But then I was all the way through the cupboard and in this vestibule, without any awareness of having taken a step. It was like… like I was drawn… in a trance… couldn't go back no matter how much I wanted to."
        "It's a yellow bug light," she said, "like you use outdoors during the summer." She seemed to find that curious.
        "Sure. To keep mosquitoes away. They never work that well. And I don't know why he used it here, instead of an ordinary bulb."
        "Well, maybe it was the only one handy at the time."
        "No. Never. Not him. He must have felt there was something more aesthetic about the yellow light, more suited to his purpose. He lived a carefully considered life. Everything he did was done with the aesthetics well worked out in his mind. From the clothes he wore to the way he prepared a sandwich. That's one thing that makes what he did under this place so horrible… the long and careful consideration."
        He realized that he was tracing his scar with the fingertips of his right hand while holding the flashlight in his left. He lowered his hand to the S.I.G 9MM pistol that was still jammed under his belt, against his belly, but he didn't draw it.
        "How could your mother not know about this place?" Ellie asked, gazing up and around at the vestibule.
        "He owned the ranch before they were married. Remodeled the barn before she saw it. This used to be part of the area that became the file room.
        He added those pine cabinets out there himself, to close off this space, after the contractors left, so they wouldn't know he'd concealed the access to the basement. Last of all, he brought in a guy to lay pine floors through the rest of the place."
        The Micro Uzi was equipped with a carrying strap. Ellie slung it over her shoulder, apparently so she could hug herself with both arms.
        "He was planning what he did… planning it before he even married your mother, before you were born?"
        Her disgust was as heavy as the chill in the air. Spencer only hoped that she was able to absorb all the revelations that lay ahead without letting her repulsion transfer in any degree from the father to the son.
        He desperately prayed that he would remain clean in her eyes, untainted.
        In his own eyes he regarded himself with disgust every time he saw even an innocent aspect of his father in himself. Sometimes, meeting his reflection in a mirror, Spencer would remember his father's equally dark eyes, and he would look away, shuddering and sick to his stomach.
        He said, "Maybe he didn't know exactly why he wanted a secret place then. I hope that's true. I hope he married my mother and conceived me with her before he'd ever had any desires like… like those he satisfied here. However, I suspect he knew why he needed the rooms below. He just