Chapter Twelve
The basement door was at the back of the kitchen.
I had walked past it for months without opening it. I had told myself it was someone else’s problem. A locksmith later. Eventually. There was always something else to do.
I went straight for it as soon as I got downstairs. The lock was old and rusted, the kind that took a skeleton key. Like the one I found in the back of a kitchen drawer my first day in the house. I retrieved it from my bedroom and forced myself to open the door.
It yawned open with a long groan to reveal steep, narrow stairs leading into darkness. The light from the kitchen only reached the halfway point. The smell that drifted up was the same stale air and old incense scent that had greeted me when I arrived. Before the smell took over.
I looked down into the darkness and a shiver rolled down my spine. There was something down there I didn’t want to see. Or something the house didn’t want me to see. That thought pushed me forward.
I took the step slowly, running my hand along the wall for balance. At the base of the staircase was a string attached to a single bulb. I tugged on it and sickly yellow light fell onto the floor. And the marks.
So many marks. My eyes wandered over hundreds of symbols similar to what had been burned into the kitchen floor. But these had been painted onto the dingy white walls in something gone rusty brown with age. The same symbols and circles over and over.
Binding. Trapping. My gaze darted to the dark corners, but there was nothing there. I scanned the room again. This was a woman’s frantic attempt to hold back something that could not be stopped. Years of Margaret’s life. I shivered.
A sudden gust of wind blew down the stairs carrying sweetness and warmth with it. So much nicer than the desperation that clung to the walls of the basement. I walked back upstairs.
Warmth trailed me from room to room as I gathered supplies. A bucket, cleaner, a scrub brush. I went downstairs and started by the small window. It took me most of the day.
I scrubbed one mark at a time, watching the lines blur and finally vanish before moving on to the next. The basement gradually grew warmer and the air sweeter. I kept going until there was nothing but wet, dark concrete. Then I sat at the base of the stairs and cried.
The warmth folded around me, heavy and sated. Soothing with murmurs too soft to understand, but the tone adoring. The tears slowly faded and I felt wrung out. Empty.
“Are you ready?” the demon asked.
I looked around at the blank walls, a woman’s life’s work washed away in an afternoon. All in an attempt to stop the inevitable. “Yes.”
I washed my hands at the kitchen sink and dried them on the dish towel. The kitchen was warm and full and pleased around me. Waiting. I went out the front door to my car.
The neighborhood was quiet. Ordinary. A dog barking, a man mowing his lawn. I slid into the driver’s seat.
Rachel would sell the house. She would be happy to do it. After all, she’d been nagging me about it for weeks.
I looked at myself in the rearview mirror. The woman in the reflection looked happy. Her cheeks were pink. Her eyes were bright. She looked years younger than she had at the closing.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“Anywhere you want, Emma,” the demon said.
I smiled at my reflection. She smiled back. Then I put the car in drive and pulled away from the house at the end of the cul-de-sac, and the warmth went with me. The woman in the mirror kept smiling all the way down the road.
Thank you for reading!