CHAPTER ONE #2
Maybe it’s a coincidence.
Maybe it’s karma.
Maybe it’s me. Either way, I’ve convinced myself the world is safer if I keep my distance.
So no, I haven’t given up on intimacy. I’ve just traded living bodies for silicone and batteries. My bedside drawer holds an impressive collection of toys, each one a reminder that pleasure is easier when no one else is breathing in the room.
A sick part of my brain thinks I should have brought the box with me on this adventure. Aunt Laura would have been horrified by me fucking myself in her bed. But even as I think it, I grimace at my own lack of tact.
“Well, at least I’m going to a warm place when I die,” I grumble to myself.
Toy box aside, there’s my sex demon who does sick, deliciously depraved things to me in my sleep. The gorgeous creature with the body of winding vines and hard muscles and face full of shadows. I’m a hundred percent certain he’s the reason human men mean nothing to me.
It’s been a reoccurring dream for so long, I can’t even pinpoint when it started.
He just appeared one night and dragged me into his world where he spent hours doing the most unhinged and filthy things to my body.
He tortures and terrorizes me in ways that have me waking up to soaked sheets and a body so tender I can’t sit without wincing.
I’m addicted.
It’s sad and pathetic, but I know no human man will ever worship me the way he does.
It’s all amazing ... until I wake up, tender, swollen and so aroused I’m cumming before my eyes open. I’ve started leaving a toy under my pillow for those mornings.
But fantasy is all it is.
A crippling fantasy that can never be real and at some point, I need to come to terms with that.
I’m beginning to think I am never escaping this road when I see it.
In the distance.
Tucked in a cluster of trees far to my left.
I spot it only because of the faint shimmer in the darkness. A flicker that has me leaning over the wheel to squint at it more closely.
Light.
A pinprick amongst the flurry of snow. It’s just bright enough that it can’t be mistaken for anything else.
Thrilled to finally find some remnants of civilization, no matter how small, I follow it, keeping it in sight as I gingerly maneuver the car closer.
With visibility at zero, I don’t even know if I’m on a road anymore, but whatever path I am on takes me down a dip and through a heavily enclosed dense forest before it opens to a clearing and a familiar, four-story Victorian I haven’t seen since last summer.
Aunt Laura’s estate.
“Holy shit,” I mutter under my breath, eyes fixed on the dark exterior barely illuminated by the haloes of my headlights and the single light glowing in the second-floor window.
I can’t even wrap my head around it. I don’t understand how it could possibly be here when ... what? I don’t know. I can’t think past the pounding in my head. It has grown to fill my entire skull with the brutal vengeance of a million bees armed with chisels, carving at the walls.
I let the thought drop away. It’s not important when I’m obviously here. Does the how even matter?
Prodding at my temple with one hand, I twist the engine off with the other. The one still throbbing. My fingers barely manage to twist the keys, but I get it and kick open my door.
Brittle, angry shards of ice slash across my face. They catch in my hair and rip at my coat as I stand in the screaming storm and squint up at the structure looming with the same formidable force as its previous owner.
It seems ... bigger, if that’s possible. It’s a daunting cluster of dark wood and grimy glass. Eyes in the dark watching me and finding me lacking. My own attention fixes on the lamp shimmering in the upstairs window.
The single yellow stamp against the black.
It’s been two months since Aunt Laura was found. Has it been lit all this time, like the house has been waiting for someone to find it? Or had someone come by, a caretaker, maybe? A criminal?
What if they’re still inside?
My gaze shifts to the front door, drops to the stone steps brimming high with fresh, untouched snow.
I exhale.
Clearly, I’ve lost my mind. Of course no one is inside. That must be Aunt Laura’s bedroom. The room where they found her rotting and bloated corpse.
Mom wouldn’t talk about the how. Barely mentioned the state of her older sister when she delivered the news. She merely looked me in the eye and said calmly that Aunt Laura was no longer with us and we would need to handle her burial.
Not Jenna or Aunt Laura’s other two grown children — Mom. The only person who tackled the whole thing. The only time Jenna decided to have anything to do with her mother was when the lawyer stated that the house was left to her children.
“I’m not living in that shit hole,” Jenna had muttered before the entire room during the will reading.
Two years younger, Kiera had shrugged and pointed out nonchalantly, “Could be worth something. Is there a list of her things?”
At the slow rock of the lawyer’s head, Jenna sighed and decided, “Katerina,” in that same gross, shrewd way her mother used to spit my name, “I think you should go and make a list. Nothing crazy. Just whatever looks like it will sell.”
When I complained it was literally three days before Christmas — at the time — her response was, “Exactly. We,” she wiggled a thumb between her and her siblings, “have children. We have dinners to make and presents to wrap. I’m sure you can take one day off your busy schedule to run over.”
Mom had been no help. Reminding me it was a time of helping others. Aunt Laura’s children were grieving and needed our support.
The only person grieving was Mom and for her, I accepted. I climbed into my car and here I am standing at the foot of a house I swear wants to eat me.
I shudder.
Why am I here?
Why me?
Groaning under my breath, I shuffle to the trunk and pull out my duffle with my good hand. With my numb fingers, I try to find the keys Mom had given me and I had worked into my keyring before leaving.
It’s been two months, I remind myself as I shuffle up the stairs, wade through the snow. Two months with no air circulation and no one to throw out the bed. I’m not a horror fan or a morbid person, but I know I’m walking into a smell I will never forget.
Braced, I shove the keys into the lock, take a deep, clean breath and twist the knob.
The door swings open to silence and a faint hint of dust. Before me, a foyer yawns wide and still. A hollow chamber of echoes that seem to breathe as I step over the threshold.
It’s freezing.
Without anyone adjusting the furnace, my breath is a white fog blowing out around me.
Gingerly, I drop my bag down next to an iron shoe cubby and sweep the walls for a switch. I find it and flip, flooding the space with a filthy glow that illuminates the rich, paisley wallpaper and dark, polished wood.
Nothing has changed.
It’s like the few times Mom and I visited on our way to Nova Scotia for vacation. The only thing missing is the sour-faced woman standing in the doorway between the foyer and the living room, wringing her hands in a dishcloth and scowling at us for disturbing her.
“Oh, Aunt Laura,” I murmur, not nostalgically, but with a sort of acceptance that feels equally heavy.
She was a terrible person without question, but I would never wish death on her. Not the way she went.
Alone. Forgotten.
With no one bothering to mourn her longer than the hour of the ceremony before getting into their cars and going home. No one, not a single neighbor or friend, bothered to stay for the reception after. Most of the family left, too. Those who remained did so out of familial obligation.
Except Mom.
She stayed until the very end, until the last person walked out. She cleaned up and stayed a little longer with Aunt Laura’s urn before taking it home with her because Aunt Laura’s own children didn’t want it.
I asked Mom once why Aunt Laura was the way she was. Why she was so hateful. Children weren’t born bitter and cruel. Something must have happened to make her that way.
Mom said Aunt Laura was always looking for something and the longer she went without finding it, the colder she became.
“Even as kids, Laura was always so angry. Like the world was holding her against her will.”
Part of me wonders if she ever found it. If she died so suddenly because she could finally rest.
Letting the thought go, I shut the door behind me and drag off my boots. Both are placed neatly on the rack. My coat gets snagged on a hook in the wall, and I unearth a pen and pad from the side pocket of my duffle.
And pause.
My wrist isn’t hurting, and my head isn’t throbbing. I even give my hand a tentative flick just to be sure and it all feels fine.
“Interesting,” I mutter under my breath and continue to my first task — locating the heater.
I find it in the kitchen and tweak the knob, nudging it a few degrees and sigh when I hear the rumble of the furnace beneath my feet.
“Thank God,” I breathe through chattering teeth
One task complete, I begin.
Or I try to.
I’m about to start the walk through when I remember my phone in the cupholder of the car. Outside. In the snow. After I’ve already removed my coat and boots.
Nope. Not going back for it.
I’ll assess the house and call Mom when I get back on the road.
The tour starts in the parlor. I make note of each piece of furniture and framed picture of torn limbs. Distorted faces screaming while chains crush and twist around bones. Grotesque masks of human faces wrenched in agony and splattered with blood.
Each room is a museum of horror. Of a war between weakness and evil. It’s a shrine of symbols that make my skin itch and books I’m too scared to touch. Especially the ones with the patched cover stitched together with crusted thread. Each crudely cut square is a different color.
“It’s just a book,” I tell myself, trying not to draw a parallel between this and an armchair I saw online made of human skin.