The Delilah Complex

Sixty-Three

The front door was shut, but not locked. Opening it, I called out Daphne’s name. No response. Running, I went from the foyer, to the living room, through to the kitchen, into the den, the whole time calling her name. Over and over.

“Daphne? Daphne? Daphne?”

Silence.

This was not the kind of house to leave unlocked. Besides, where was Daphne? She was an agoraphobic who had not left the house in six months, and yet she wasn’t home now, when our session was scheduled? And where was Nicky?

Alone, any of those things would have concerned me, but together with seeing those horrific paintings, I was seriously alarmed.

Had Daphne read the articles about the men who had been killed, men who she, too, had known from her more active days as a participant at the Scarlet Society, and used her talent with brushes and paint to give voice to her nightmares?

Yes, that had to be it. It was the only possible explanation.

I walked into the studio. Maybe Daphne was there, in a corner I hadn’t seen. Maybe she was wearing headphones and hadn’t heard me calling out.

The light splashed through the windows onto the gruesome canvases.

They were portraits of powerlessness.

“Daphne? Daphne?”

No answer.

There were three doors in the studio besides the main one. The first led to a bathroom. Daphne wasn’t there. The second opened on a supply closet and she wasn’t in there, either. As I closed the door, I thought I heard something and turned, scanning the room. Static was coming from the monitor on the marble fireplace mantel. I moved closer to it. A monitor picking up noises from where? I carried it with me as I moved toward the third door.

The first thing I saw was the red light that washed over the cabinets and tabletops. The smell was stringent and sharp. I hadn’t known what it was the first time I’d been to the house and I’d mistaken it for something else in Jordain’s office, but I understood now.

Daphne had told me that she took photos of her subjects and worked from them, as well as working from life. Of course she would have a darkroom of her own.

The ruby glow illuminated the bottles of chemicals and the plastic baths. The trays were empty, but there were at least a dozen photographs hanging from clips on a line running from one end of the narrow room to the other.

Dozens of shots of a face. Devoid of everything but desperation.

It was the face I recognized from the painting.

Where was Daphne?

I still had the monitor in my hand, and when it came to life I almost dropped it. The noise sounded like an animal in trouble. Or was it a human being moaning?

My fear suddenly surged into panic. I tried to figure out what to do.

The groans continued.

I ran from the studio, back out to the foyer, looking, searching for some clue that would tell me where Daphne was-because by now I was sure she was at the other end of the monitor.

Nothing in the living room. Nothing in the den. Nothing in the kitchen. But in the pantry off the kitchen there was a door flung open. Had it not been open, I never would have seen it-it was disguised to look like shelves.

Down a flight of steps.

In my hand, the moans continued.

Into a dark wine cellar where I was greeted with dank earth smells.

Wine and vinegar, sour smells.

And something else.

Putrid human smells. Urine. Feces. Filthy flesh.

In a house? In this house?

“Daphne?”

The moaning was no longer coming just from the monitor. Now I could hear it in the distance. It was down here with me. Not far.

Gagging on the odors I was following, I continued calling out Daphne’s name and listening for the returning squawks. Could Daphne be making those sounds? There was more than one person moaning. Who was she with? Where were they?

I went through another opened door, this one disguised as a shelf of wine bottles. Down three more steps. How low into the earth was I descending?

The scent of human waste was overpowering me. For one second, I wondered if I was going to be able to go on. Breathe through your mouth, I thought. Don’t even allow yourself to smell this. I pulled out my cell. No signal. Damn.

I took the last step and found myself in a large, windowless chamber. The center of the earth. The basement’s basement. And facing me, as my eyes adjusted to this deeper darkness, lurid proof that there is no limit to the depravity of the human mind.