When he finally realized that the walls on each side of him were not the same surfaces—behind the shelves there were no stacked rectangles and no curls of paint being slowly but insistently separated from stone—he could have smacked himself over the delay. That long to notice such a simple thing…his father would have been disgusted.
He stepped forward, he reached through the shelving unit and stroked a finish that was just as rotted, damp, and pocked as the rest of the walls. But it was also plaster. Plaster over concrete? If so, why? And why only here and nowhere else?
It wasn’t until he shuffled forward, shoving boxes out of the way with the toe of his shoe to give himself space to move, that he realized that particular wall didn’t butt directly up against the stairs. It jutted in a fe
