Chapter Six
That night, I heard someone walking in the hallway. At first, I thought it might have been Vic, but the footsteps were too light, too irresolute to belong to the man whose presence had practically occupied my every thought since arriving at the house.
I pulled on my silk robe and felt for the door handle. The hallway was dark, and I crept cautiously and barefooted through the carpeted space.
I had left my cell phone on the bedside table, but it was too late to get it now. I was entranced by the dark figure moving gracefully and silently before me. I could make out the silhouette of a woman with long hair that danced unbound around her waist. She was clothed in a simple nightgown, and her form was cut in stark relief against the moonlight which seeped through the windows lining the hallway.
This woman was entirely ignorant of my presence, gliding through the hallway while I tiptoed behind, afraid to even let out a breath.
The figure was too slender and light footed to belong to Margaret.
I followed this apparition down the stairs.
The woman walked through the foyer, and opened the door to the basement. This made a creaking sound, and I found myself turning around, making sure that the noise had not attracted undue attention. Of course, I was not the one who had opened the door, and I can give no coherent reason for my own fear of discovery.
The woman disappeared down the stairs, and I followed.
I found that the unlit basement steps were difficult to make out, but I could hear the quick, light footfall ahead of me. Encouraged by this apparition’s swift progress, I abandoned my reticence, and drove forward into the darkness.
At the bottom of the stairs, I had incorrectly anticipated another. My foot met the ground prematurely, and I stumbled forward a pace.
There, in the basement hallway, I was now lost. There was not enough light to make out even the most basic shapes. Instead, I had to rely on the vague, fraught memory of my earlier excursion, hoping that it would give me enough guidance to find my way through.
I ran my hand along the wall on my right side, feeling the gentle mottling of the surface against my fingertips.
I moved slowly, my ears tuned for the breathing of my quarry, though I found I could hear nothing but my own movement. I could not detect even the softest of exhalations.
Suddenly, though I thought I had been so slow, so careful, I walked directly into a flesh and blood person.
I sprang back, my muscles clenching at the unexpected contact.
Yet, there was no sound, no exclamation, no exhalation.
I reached my hand out blindly in front of me and grasped a bony shoulder, which sat a few inches above my own.
The person whose shoulder I seized was unmoving, unresponsive to the contact. At this, I reached my other hand out, squaring myself against this figure whose body was entirely engulfed by the pitch black.
I felt the shoulder, the arm, the neck of this person, who was facing the wall.
I reached my hand in front of them and felt a doorway. It must have been the locked door on the right-hand side of the hall. I grasped the door handle and, to my surprise, I found that this time it turned freely and the door swung open.
Yet, the person I had pursued did not move.
I stepped in front of this frozen figure, blindly feeling along the wall, until my fingers met a light switch. I turned it on.
The small room flooded with light, and I saw that the person standing in the doorway was Edith.
Her arms hung loosely by her sides, and her eyes stared absently through me and into the room.
“Edith?” I said.
She reached a hand out in front of her, and walked into the room with an ease and grace I would have thought impossible, given her frailty.
I slipped to the side as she walked in a straight line to the middle of the room. Her eyes were open unnaturally wide, and I could track the exact curvature of her eyeball against the stretched skin.
“Mrs. Bauer? Edith?” I attempted, hating how weak my voice sounded.
I reached out and took one of her outstretched hands. In a matter of seconds, her fingers had clenched around mine, crushing them in a vice-like grip. Her drifting, wide eyes fixed on me as her expression morphed to one of uncontrolled, absolute hatred. Her mouth wrenched at the sides, and her free hand grabbed at me, her fingers wrapping around my hair.
I fell to my knees as she yanked at my hair, and I tried to fight her off. I found my hands wrapping around hers, prying the fingers one by one, and feeling the joints pop as I used unjustifiable force against the pain she was causing me.
She had no reaction to her hands becoming gradually ineffective, as she was forced to release me through the dislocation of her fingers. However, if she was in pain, she gave no indication. Instead, she reached her hands toward my face, her fingers hideously jutting out at odd angles.
I moved out of the way, and her over-wide eyes adjusted to my flight. She cornered me with a speed of which I would not have thought her capable.
Another figure came into view. Matthew stood in the doorway. He was wearing a loose white t-shirt and red plaid pajama bottoms. His hair was wild and his eyes were bleary, apparently having just woken.
“What’s happening?” he asked, as though demanding a full account from a useless subordinate.
“I followed her down here,” I said. There was nothing else to say.
“Sleepwalking,” he said. He tilted his head to the side, motioning me from the room. “I’ll take care of her,” he said.
I lingered in the corner of the room, out of reach of Edith’s grasping hands, and far enough away from Matthew that my quick exhalation might go unheard.
“If there’s anything I can do to help, I’m happy to stay,” I said. I tried to avoid looking at Edith’s mangled hands as I spoke.
Matthew shook his head. “This is just part of her treatment. I can assure you, miss, there is nothing you can do here.”
I hesitated. There was something about Matthew that I just couldn’t trust, but there was nothing more I could do. I supposed I’d done enough already.
“Okay,” I said.
When I left the room, I saw that the door to Matthew’s bedroom was open. I stepped into the room, grabbed one of the bottles of his tincture from the desk, and dropped it into the pocket of my robe. I didn’t know what I would do with it, not yet. All I knew was that I carried something valuable in my pocket, something that I hoped I would never have to use.
I walked back up to my bedroom, and closed the door behind me. I could hear Matthew’s voice in my head, imagined that I could discern his murmurs through the floorboards, though he had long since passed out of earshot.
As was my custom by this point, I listened for a movement from Vic’s room, but none came. I supposed he must be fast asleep.
I tried to follow his example as I lay back down in my bed, pulling the covers to my chest, and focusing on my breathing.
Yet, my mind wandered. I thought about the way Matthew had more or less insisted that I leave, and how he said that sleepwalking was just a side effect of the treatment.
There was no side effect I’d heard of which could account for such easy passage through the pitch black of the basement steps and hallway. I didn’t know what I had just seen, why Edith had moved towards me with such vicious fervor, a state which remained unbroken even after I had dislocated her fingers.
Realizing that no rest would come, I decided to step outside and get a breath of fresh air. The front door was still unlocked. I walked around the porch and into the backyard, guided by the still powerfully strong light of the moon. Though I had not looked at a clock since waking, I imagined it must have been around two o’clock in the morning.
A light was on in the attic, and I could see a silhouette in the window, passing briefly before the glass. Then the person walked in front of the light again.
Edith’s sister, Theresa.
As Theresa passed in front of the window for the third time, I saw her become still in front of the glass. Her hands pressed against the window, and her body froze.
I waved up at her, wanting to present myself as non-threatening. I supposed she had been told about the latest addition to their home, but I could not be sure.
There was no movement from the window, just the silent stare of the woman in the attic.
Now feeling the chill in the air, I returned inside.
Matthew and Edith were still in the basement, perhaps joined by Vic or Margaret, as I heard another low voice answering the medical student.
I lingered in the doorway at the top of the stairs, before returning to my room.
I spent that night wide awake, returning again and again in thought to the visceral feel of Edith’s aged finger popping from its socket, her hard grip on my hair, and the composed look on Matthew’s face as he took in the state of his deranged, unconscious patient.