William Royden

Beaten and dirty.

We moved closer to them, and I saw that they must have belonged to a child.

Before I could dwell on them, Cording had moved the flashlight to the wall opposite.

There, drawn in very large, blocky chalk letters, were four words.

Something like, Hantanos Krik Giora El.

Cording moved the ray of the flashlight past them so quickly that he must have expected those letters to be there.

Their image was in my mind one second and gone the next, burned there.

Each letter was more than a foot high and done with great care.

Cording moved closer to the wall and trained the light on a row of index cards that had been taped there at eye level.

The index cards were old and yellowed, and on each had been drawn a simple, featureless human stick figure, one per card.

They were lined up in a row, six of them, beginning at the far right edge of the strange words on the cement.

A card table had been set up on the side of the basement opposite where the bureau was.

We stepped over to it.

Now I could no longer feel the cold air outside the cellar touching my back.

On top of the card table was an old cassette tape recorder.

As we watched, the recording wheels moved slowly around.

The sound inside the cellar was being taped.

But no effort had been made to hide the recorder.

Beside it was a shoebox full of cassettes.

Cording lifted a couple of them up to my camera.