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Alice didn't quite know how she'd done it. She'd reached the bottom of the cellar stairs without turning back. Without freezing or breaking down.
She came to a brick wall at the bottom of the staircase. A blind left turn into a gloomy space where the naked, cobwebbed bulb above the stairs didn't travel.
She entered the cellar, taking out her flashlight. She ran it along the exposed, crumbling walls of a narrow space with a low ceiling. The floor was a dusted concrete. The air was cold. The way ahead of her led to another blind turn, to the right. She stopped and listened before taking it. The sound of scraping objects and heavy boot soles had gone dead. All was quiet as she approached the corner, lowering the beam of her flashlight to the floor. She squeezed her fingers tighter aroun
