Chapter 45
More stairs. More darkness. At least I wasn’t falling down these ones. No, I was choosing this descent. God, I hoped I wasn’t going mad. Would I even know?
At the base of the stairs, my feet found the concrete floor and I waited in the black. It was dark all around. I stepped away from the staircase.
Without any light, the room felt as if it were spinning, no discernible up, no down. Just floating in space. It was like what I’d always imagined death to be like. An unending darkness, a void, and me alone in it for all eternity with no escape.
Normally, I would run from this. I would drink or flick aimlessly through TV shows or scroll on my phone, anything to get away from the awful nothingness I was sure awaited me at the end of it all.
But this time I stayed in it, though every nerve told me to run back up the stairs, that no monster skulking in the living room could be worse than this one thought, this one inevitability, that just by standing here in it I was making it true, wishing it to me, letting it find me.
I waited.
And then I realised there was something here. There was fear.
I held onto the fear as a something.
I felt the rise and fall of my chest, the beat of my heart, the shifting of my clothes—just like I had in the forestry on the hill.
My eyes adjusted. And I saw the basement. And I saw the door.
Faint lines, plastered over.
The breach.
The house was quiet again. I’d half expected the door to be barricaded shut with planks and nails. But it was just like how I had seen it the first time.
I sat on my knees in front of the door. Now the real test would begin.
“What are you doing? Splitting or chopping?”
That’s what Rowan had asked me. Back when I first arrived.
When I needed help with my boiler. He was so happy to help me.
I felt the weight of the axe in my hands.
I thought of the firewood mashed to splinters.
I thought of my neighbour’s face, blade sunk into the curve of her forehead.
I thought of the vision of hopefully-not-Rowan upstairs, face halved.
When I’d raised my axe in wrath, in fear, I’d hacked one thing into two. Could an axe ever cut two things back into one?
I looked at the door ahead of me, shutting me out of 1a, keeping me in 1b, splitting the houses in two. It occurred to me that it was entirely possible to chop two things into one.
“What are you doing? Splitting or chopping?”
Chopping, I answered and swung my axe into the door.
The destruction was organised this time.
Less adrenaline, more precision. My axe crashed through the wood.
Each hit sounded like the beat of a drum.
I ignored the ache in my side, the bruises up and down my body, and focused on the work.
Splinters and chunks tore away reluctantly.
I squinted my eyes against the flying wood.
At least it wasn’t blood and gore this time.
I had a good steady rhythm, swinging like a metronome, breaking down the barrier in my way, bringing the houses together, making them one home once more.
Suddenly, light poured through the growing gap.
I stopped mid-swing, panted and wiped my forehead.
I tried not to think about where all the light was coming from.
I pushed the axe through the breach and used it to lever and rip away long thin panels. Once the hole was big enough, I barged my shoulder against the gap and pushed my way through.
Into my neighbour’s house.