Chapter 3 Sera
Sera
Iwake with a jolt, my limbs tangled in a blanket damp with sweat.
For a moment, I can’t remember where I am. The ceiling above me is unfamiliar—peeling paint and hairline cracks that branch like lightning.
But there’s something else too.
Footprints. Bloody footprints climbing up the wall to my left. They continue across the ceiling in an impossible path, as if gravity means nothing here. The prints are small, like mine. Each one perfectly formed, displaying arches and toes in tacky crimson.
My first thought is that someone’s fucking with me.
I kick off the blanket and examine my own feet, but they’re clean. No blood between my toes or caked under my nails. I slide off the mattress and approach the wall, peering at the first footprint. It’s still slightly wet, glistening in the dim morning light.
Standing on tiptoe and using the windowsill for support, I press my right foot against one of the prints on the wall.
A perfect match, right down to the slightly crooked pinky toe I broke as a child.
A normal person would be packing their car by now, fleeing this fucked-up house with its bloody wall and ceiling art. But I just nod, as if confirming something I already suspected.
“Of course they’re mine,” I mutter to the empty room. “Why wouldn’t they be?”
I wonder if I’ve finally cracked. Maybe I’ve been sleepwalking. Maybe I cut myself in the night and danced on the walls like a spider, forgetting everything by morning.
Or maybe this house has its own rules of physics and reality.
Either way, I have a job interview today. The gas station next to the sheriff’s department is hiring, and I need eyes on that building. I need to watch his comings and goings. I need to learn his patterns before I tear them apart.
I shower in the upstairs bathroom, where rust-colored water sputters from ancient pipes.
The claw-foot tub has stains that won’t scrub away, a permanent shadow of everyone who’s bathed here before me.
As I wash, I feel watched, not by cameras or peepholes, but by the house itself.
The walls have eyes, and the pipes hum with approval.
It has to be the same…thing that wanted me to fuck myself with items it handed me last night.
Like a dumbass, I forgot a towel, so I trek down the hall toward the narrow door of the linen closet at the end. I open it, peering inside at the mostly empty shelves coated in dust, grab one of the towels I finally unpacked, and shut the door firmly.
Click.
It opens again, just a crack. A whisper of movement.
I close it again, making sure the latch catches.
Click.
This time it swings fully open, as if pushed from inside.
I stare into the closet for a long moment, then I laugh.
“Cute,” I say. “You flirt kinda strangely.”
Wrapping myself in the towel, I step toward my bedroom and notice deep scratches in the wooden floor around the heating and air vent.
They form irregular patterns, like someone—or something—tried to claw their way out.
Or in. I crouch down, running my fingers along the grooves. They’re smooth, worn with age.
“Getting desperate, were you?” I ask the empty room.
The house stays quiet.
I get dressed, ignoring the bloody footprints and the scratches for now. Black jeans, a loose gray top that hides the numerous curves I’ve gained, and combat boots. I brush my hair but don’t bother styling it. Then I apply eyeliner with a heavy hand, smudging it just so.
Perfect for a gas station attendant. Perfect for a woman with secrets and murder on her mind.
Before leaving, I check on the basement door again. The boards still cover it, but I notice something I missed before—tiny gaps between the planks, where the nails have been pried loose just enough to create space. Not enough to open the door, but enough to see through.
I press my eye to one of these gaps, but I don’t see shit.
“Later,” I promise the door and whatever waits behind it.
The drive to the gas station is short but gives me time to settle into my skin, to remember who I’m pretending to be. Sera Vale, newcomer. Sera Vale, normal woman starting over. Sera Vale, who definitely isn’t plotting to destroy a man’s life brick by careful brick.
I park in the gas station lot, studying the sheriff’s department next door. It’s a squat, ugly old building with narrow windows and a flagpole out front. American flag on top, state flag below, both hanging limply in the damp air. The main entrance has steps leading up to glass doors.
He’s in there. I’m sure of it.
I spit on the ground and turn away, my blood a riot in my ears.
The gas station itself is like a thousand others I’ve seen—a glowing box of processed food and overpriced necessities. Gas N’ Go, the sign proclaims in loud neon. A smaller sign in the window says Help Wanted, Inquire Within.
Inside, the fluorescent lights hum overhead, casting everything in a sickly pallor. The place smells like coffee, donuts, and someone’s morning shit.
A twenty-something rail of a man rings up a customer. Beside him, a middle-aged man with thinning hair stands behind the counter, flipping through a Seventeen magazine. When the bell above the door jingles and announces my arrival, he looks up, his gaze immediately dropping to my chest.
“Help you?” he asks, closing his magazine but keeping a finger between the pages to mark his place.
“I’m here for my interview,” I say, approaching the counter. “I called two days ago.”
Recognition flickers across his face. “Right, right. Sera, wasn’t it? I’m Rick, the manager.”
He extends a hand across the counter. His nails are dirty, but I shake it anyway, noting how he holds on a beat too long.
Rick comes around the counter, gesturing toward a small hallway in the back. “Let’s chat in private.”
The office he leads me to is barely bigger than a closet, with a metal desk cluttered high with papers and food wrappers. A small window looks out on the back lot, where dumpsters overflow with trash.
Rick settles into a creaking chair and motions for me to take the one opposite.
“So,” he says, leaning back. “What brings you to our little slice of Kansas, sweetheart?”
I grind my teeth together but choose to ignore the nickname.
I’ve prepared for this, so the lies come easily. “A fresh start after a divorce. I needed to get away.”
Rick nods, trying to look sympathetic but coming across as gross instead. “That’s rough. His loss is our gain, I guess.”
I nod.
“Any experience?”
“Two years at a Kwik Shop in Kansas City. Before that, waitressing.” That was almost ten years ago when I was a teenager, but he doesn’t need to know that.
Plus, I’m sure it still counts.
He makes a show of considering this, though I can tell he’s already decided to hire me. The way he keeps glancing at my chest makes his intentions clear.
“Hours would be four to midnight, Wednesday through Sunday,” he says. “Pay’s minimum wage plus fifty cents. No benefits.”
“Fine by me,” I say with a shrug.
“We get some characters in here, especially at night. You good with difficult people?”
A laugh bubbles in my throat, but I swallow it down. “Difficult is my specialty.”
Rick leans forward, his chair protesting. “What about dangerous? Some of the folks around here… Well, they aren’t exactly friendly to outsiders.”
“I’m not worried,” I say, and I let a little of the real me show in my smile—a flash of teeth, a glint of something sharp.
Rick blinks, momentarily uncertain, before recovering. “Well, all right, then. When can you start?”
“Today.”
“Perfect. I’ll get the paperwork ready.” He stands. “Welcome to the Gas N’ Go family, sweetheart.”
“Thanks. And it’s Sera.” I rise and look him in the eye. “Not sweetheart.”
A flicker of annoyance crosses his face, but he nods. “Sera. Got it.”
Outside, the murky morning sun does little to warm the chill in the air.
I lean against my car and light a cigarette I don’t really want just for something to do with my hands.
The smoke fills my lungs, harsh and familiar.
I don’t make a habit of smoking, but sometimes the ritual of it helps me think.
From here, I have a perfect view of the sheriff’s department. Officers come and go, some in uniform, others in plain clothes. No sign of him yet, but it’s only a matter of time. I wonder if he’s inside right now, just yards away from me, oblivious to the fact that his past has followed him.
The thought sends a pleasant shiver through me.
As I exhale a cloud of smoke, I sense eyes on me, that prickling awareness of being watched. I scan the parking lot, the sidewalk, the windows of nearby buildings, but I see nothing. Then movement catches my eye—blinds shifting in a second-story window of the sheriff’s department.
I stare directly at it, making no effort to hide my interest. The blinds fall back into place.
“I hope it’s you, fucker,” I say. “Either way, I promise you’ll see me coming.”
I finish my cigarette and grind it out under my boot. Time to go. I have preparations to make, a house to settle into, ghosts to befriend, a basement to open, and my first shift on the job later today.
When I pull into my driveway, I find that the house looks different in full daylight, less menacing but more decrepit.
Paint peels from the siding like dead skin, and the overgrown yard swallows the stone path.
It should look abandoned, forgotten. Instead, it looks alert, as if it’s been waiting for my return.
Inside, the air has changed. Warmer now, with currents that shouldn’t exist in a sealed house, especially since I didn’t turn on the heat. I move through the rooms slowly, listening to the walls settle around me.
Upstairs, I check on the footprints. Most are still there, perfect crimson marks, but one near the center of the ceiling has smeared, as if someone dragged a finger through it while I was gone. I know I didn’t touch it. I can’t reach that high.
“Making changes to the decor?” I ask.
Only silence answers, but it’s a listening kind of quiet.
I unpack a few more things from my duffel bag, and from a hidden pocket, I remove a framed black-and-white photograph of him with his eyes cut out and place the photo on the floor, angled so it’s the first thing I’ll see when I wake. A reminder of my ruin. A promise of my metamorphosis.
As I finish unpacking, the room grows even warmer. The heating vent in the middle of the floor rattles slightly, then it goes still.
I approach it, kneeling to examine the rusted metal grate. No air should be coming out, but when I place my hand near the vent, warm air caresses my skin. Warm, damp air, like someone’s breath. It smells of earth and something metallic. Something like blood.
I press my ear to the vent. For a moment, there’s nothing. Then, very faintly, I hear it, like a rhythmic scratching. Like fingernails or claws on metal.
“It’s you,” I whisper. “Hello down there.”
The scratching stops. The warm air continues to flow, and I wait, perfectly still, listening so intently that I can hear my own heartbeat.
Then, so quietly I almost miss it, a single word floats up from the darkness:
“Penny.”
My real name, the name of the person I was before, in a voice like stone grinding against stone.
How does it know that? I smile, pressing my palm flat against the vent.
“Yes. Where are you?” I ask. “Should I come find you? Or will you come to me like you did last night?”
The warm breath against my hand intensifies, becoming almost hot. The metal grate vibrates under my touch. Then, with a grinding sound, it begins to loosen, screws turning themselves counterclockwise, metal pulling away from wood.
I sit back, watching as the vent cover works itself free and scoots over the floor. The rectangular opening gapes like a wound in the floor. There’s darkness beyond, but it’s not complete. Something moves in there, shifting shadows that suggest a form without revealing it.
“Soon,” comes the voice again, a little clearer now.
A man’s voice. Or something trying to sound like one.
“Soon,” I agree, though I don’t know what I’m agreeing to.
The darkness in the vent seems to pulse, expanding slightly beyond the opening, reaching tendrils of shadow toward me. I don’t move away. I let one touch my cheek, and it’s cold but solid, like smoke given weight.
Then it retreats, slithering back into the floor. The vent cover scrapes back into place before reattaching itself, screws turning until they’re tight.
Normal. Everything normal again.
Except for the smell that lingers—earth, blood, and now something else. Something that reminds me of candle wax and burned hair.
I stand, brushing dust from my knees.
“What a charmer you are,” I say. “But what if you scare me so much that I run away?”
I wouldn’t. I’m not going anywhere until I’ve destroyed him. Not even if this house is haunted by something that knows my real name.
Not even if that something wants me as badly as I want revenge.
After all, we all have our hungers. Some of us just hide them better than others.