The Taking

well-oiled hinges.
        Candlelight revealed no occupants. Neither did the flashlight when, from the threshold, she swept the space with it.
        Beyond lay what appeared to be a receiving room measuring approximately twelve by fifteen feet. Windowless. Gray tile floor with a drain in the center. Bare concrete walls.
        A wide steel door directly opposite the one in which she stood would open to the alleyway behind the tavern. Cases of beer, liquor, wine, and other supplies had been delivered through it.
        In the wall to her right, reflections of candle flames purled in the brushed stainless-steel doors of an elevator.
        The tavern didn't have a second floor. The elevator transported supplies down to the basement.
        In the wall to her left stood another door, ajar. Logic insisted that she would find basement stairs beyond it.
        Between the doorway in which she stood and the basement door, the flashlight beam detailed a trail of wet blood on gray concrete: not a river of gore, just patterns of droplets intact and droplets smeared.
        With no electrical service, they had not taken the elevator down to whatever madness waited to be discovered below. Whether under duress or of their own accord, though in either case surely in the grip of unimaginable terror, they had descended the narrow passage in single file, naked and bleeding.
        A chill walked the stairs of Molly's spine as she considered that strange procession and wondered what ceremony or savagery had occupied those people in the cellar.
        She glanced back into the deserted tavern. Nothing had changed.
        Trying to avoid as much of the blood as possible, she stepped off the threshold and followed the beam of her flashlight along the trail that her neighbors had so recently marked with sanguinary clarity.
        The brass doorknob, once shiny, was patinaed with blood from uncounted trembling hands. She toed the door open toward her, into the receiving room.
        Beyond this threshold lay a small landing, pale wood stippled with crimson. She hesitated to set foot upon it, leaned through the doorway instead.
        A cold draft rose past her, redolent of a scent that she had never before encountered and that she would have been hard-pressed to describe. It was not a foul smell, in fact not even unpleasant, and yet disturbing.
        A cramped flight of steep wooden steps descended to a lower landing, from which a second and shorter flight turned left into the cellar.
        Apparently, they had taken no candles beyond the receiving room. Only the flashlight brightened the stairs.
        The thought of her neighbors' blind descent struck such pity in Molly that her knees weakened.
        O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark.
        She could not see the last few treads of the lower flight. The cellar lay entirely beyond her view, and she could not angle the beam in any way to illuminate that space.
        Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
        Easier said than done. Fear half throttled Molly, and she had not yet entered the walled and stepped valley before her.
        To learn the fate of those who had marked this route with their blood, to discover if Cassie was alive-and the whereabouts of her three guardian dogs-Molly would have to go down at least as far as the lower landing. Once there, she could stoop to the best vantage and with her flashlight pierce the darkness in the lower chamber.
        She couldn't decide whether this was a test of her courage or of her wisdom. Under the circumstances, prudence might be the good thing, the right thing; but how difficult it was, in the quick, to tell the difference between prudence and cowardice.
        Not the faintest murmur rose with the curiously scented draft. Not a sigh. Not a cough. Not a whimper. Not a word of whispered prayer.
        With forty people pressed into a cold storeroom, a sound or two of discomfort might be expected, an agitated movement motivated by distress.
        Although the thunder of forty fearful hearts might be entirely contained in forty breasts, surely the frightened breathing of so many would raise a betraying susurration. Not all of them would be holding their breath simultaneously, waiting for Molly to stop holding hers.
        Yet, coiled in a stillness deeper than mere silence, the tavern cellar waited in a hush.
        Her mouth