Chapter Fifty-Three Ashley
FIFTY-THREE ASHLEY
Ashley looked at the ceiling of the root cellar. Was the knackerman up there now with his long coat and bone face? Her heart thudded, vibrating in her ears, blocking out all other sounds.
Malcolm stared down at the dolls on the table, ran his hands over his face. “We should never have come here! We should have listened to Gram.”
“She was trying to protect us. That’s why she lied, did everything to keep us away from here. She was trying to keep us safe.”
“Well, we fucked that up! Those people up there, whoever they are, they’re going to come down here any minute, and—”
“Look at me, Mal,” she said, turning his face away from the table and making eye contact with him. “We’re going to find a way out.”
He nodded.
Footsteps thumped upstairs. Dust and cobwebs shook loose, drifted down from the floorboards overhead.
“There’s a doorway over there that’s been bricked over,” Mal said, pointing to the back corner of the root cellar.
“You think it leads outside?” Ash asked.
“More than likely.” Mal angled the clamp light toward it, went over to give it a closer inspection. “The mortar is crumbling like hell—I think I could get through this if I had the right tools.” There was a glimmer of hope in his voice.
“I saw a hammer and chisel on the tool bench. Go get them and see what you can do. I’ll keep looking around. Maybe there’s a sledgehammer or something that can get us out faster.”
Mal fetched the hammer and chisel and went to work. Ash began searching for a mallet, a splitting maul—anything with more heft to it. As Malcolm began tapping on the brick wall, she hoped they couldn’t hear him upstairs.
She could hear the occasional scrape of a chair on the floor, the low murmur of voices drifting down through the floorboards.
Ashley was pulling a tarp off a large, irregular pile of objects when she felt the back of her neck prickle. Her skin went cold.
Ash, came a whispering voice.
She held her breath and turned.
There, standing in the shadowy edge of the basement, was her mother. She wore her good camel-hair coat, though it was stained with blood. Her head was bashed open, revealing the cracked white skull and brain. Her face was swollen, her jaw unhinged.
Ashley closed her eyes and counted to three.
Tap, tap, tap went Mal’s hammer against the chisel. She heard a brick fall.
She opened her eyes and her mother was still there, staring at Ashley.
Every hair on Ash’s body stood on end. The air felt electric.
She knew then. This wasn’t a hallucination, never had been.
Above them, there was more pounding on Josephine’s front door. Footsteps moved across the floor to answer it.
“I’m sorry,” Ash whispered. And she was sorry. Sorry she hadn’t believed her mother had been real. Sorry she hadn’t said yes to going for coffee, for being frustrated with her mother’s obsession with the family tree when they last spoke.
There was shouting upstairs. Ash looked up at the ceiling. It sounded like several more people had arrived and they entered the house like a small stampede. She could hear some of what they were saying:
“It’s the knackerman’s mark!”
“He’s painted it on houses all over town!”
She looked back at the spot where her mother had been standing. She was gone.
Ashley heard Malcolm swearing from the root cellar.
Ash called, “You okay?”
“It’s a dead end. It just leads to another little room.”
Where her mother had stood just a moment ago, there was an old wooden stepladder draped with a worn rug, pushed up against the stone wall of the foundation.
Just above and behind the ladder, where the wall met the basement’s ceiling, there were a couple of boards nailed into something. She pulled the ladder out of the way for a better look.
“Mal!” she cried, trying to keep her voice down. “Come here! And bring the hammer!”
The boards covered a small rectangular window—she could see a few tiny slivers of daylight peeking through the cracks.
Ashley yanked the ladder back into place, tossed the rug off it, and scampered up.
Malcolm appeared and handed her the hammer.
She went to work prying at the rusty nails with the claw of the hammer.
Up above, there was more knocking. More footsteps. More panicked voices shouting about the marks.
The first nail popped out, went flying. She jammed the claw of the hammer under the edge of the board and leaned on it hard with both hands, while Malcolm sturdied the ladder.
The board came loose; she wrenched it from the wall and flung it to the floor.
Behind it was a window with a filthy, cracked pane of glass.
If they could get to it, it was just big enough for them to shimmy through.
The second, upper board was easier—a couple of good whacks with the hammer, and the decaying wood split, allowing her to pull it off the window in pieces.
“Hell, yeah!” Malcolm cheered her on.
Ashley unlatched the window, pulling on it. But the wood was old and rotten, swollen tight. Fueled by fear and desperation, Ashley gave the window a shove, then yanked back with all the force she could muster. The wood came loose, opening so quickly that she nearly lost her balance on the ladder.
The broken glass that was in the rotten frame fell out and hit the floor with an explosive smash.
Ash and Malcolm looked at each other, terrified. Upstairs, the noises got quiet.
“Let’s go,” Mal whispered. “Now!”
Then she heard footsteps moving toward the top of the staircase.
“I need Mom’s bag,” she said, scrambling down to grab the leather tote.
“You first,” he said, still holding the rickety wooden ladder. She climbed up, threw the bag out the open window, then pulled her upper body through the opening, shimmying as she wiggled her hips through, the belt loop on her jeans catching on a nail.
“Ashley?” Josephine’s voice called from the top of the stairs. Her footsteps started to descend. “Malcolm?”
“We’re good,” Malcolm called up to her. “Just dropped a canning jar.”
Ashley freed herself with a jerk, squirmed out, grabbed the bag from the ground, and stood up, keeping her body pressed against the house so no one could see her out of the window.
Mal scurried up the ladder and slid through the opening effortlessly.
They held their positions, backs flat against the house, eyes on the woods that began on the other side of the wide expanse of Josephine’s back lawn. No choice. They had to make a run for it.
“On three,” Ashley said, then did the countdown:
“One.
“Two.
“Three!”
They bolted across the yard, neither one of them looking back.
For a brief second, Ashley wondered what would happen if someone in the house had a gun.
They’d be easy targets—no cover, nowhere to go but in a straight line, running, running, breathing like freight trains, muscles and lungs screaming with effort.
At last they reached the woods, the safe cover of trees. They kept going, only slowing as much as necessary to scramble over tree roots and through brush.
They did not dare to turn around.
It seemed impossible that no one had come after them, no shots fired, no pounding footsteps; no one even shouted for them to stop.
Almost as if they’d decided to let them go.
We’re running right to him, Ashley thought. Whoever, whatever he is, he’s out here in these woods, waiting for us.
But then again, really, what choice did they have?
They just kept going, forging their own trail deep into the darkest place of the woods.