By Carma Shortess:
I think I’ve made a mistake, coming back. The house is… nostalgic in a sort of awful way. Two stories, full of windows
curtained both inside and outside. Crumbling bricks are stitched together with planks of wood drilled in. If I had any say in it I wouldn’t have come back at all, but the will was very specific that I had to stay a night in the house. The sole inheritor to what I knew was a sizeable sum of money my father had stashed away. All I had to do was come back. One last jab at me I guess, for not coming home.
The key had been golden when I was a child, but it had faded into an ugly and rusted copper. Fake. The door, remarkably, didn’t creak as I opened it, even with the state of the rest of the house. Despite his means and obsession with presentation, my father couldn’t have been bothered to get the most basic maintenance done on the house. I guess that insistence on presentation was for misfit daughters only.
-
The inside of the house wasn’t nearly as poor as the outside made it seem. It was well kept, except for a thick layer of dust. You’d think he’d been dead for years rather than weeks, guess that’s what happens
when you’re a stuck-up recluse. I beat the dust off the couch in the living room and laid a blanket on it. I see a small portrait of my father, knock it onto the floor and smash it with my foot. Father’s executor wanted proof that I entered the house, so I snapped a
selfie next to my father’s shattered image. I’d stay in the damn house, but I wasn’t going in any more than I had to. Bad takeout and a stiff neck from the couch were a small price to pay for that.
-
3:16, a little less than 3 hours until sunrise. He couldn’t have just left me with the small fortune, my father had also passed down his insomnia to me. I couldn’t get away with anything at night, he’d be sitting like a hawk, at just the right angle to see my door. Naturally, I was in the one room without a window. One time he was sitting right on the other side of my door. He never did anything, never punished me at all. He didn’t say anything but “go back to bed.” That had pissed me off more than anything, the dismissal.
Wonder if they left the water on. I stand, my eyes on another of my father’s pictures that I’m really considering throwing when I notice that the door to the basement is open. I don’t know how I could have missed that on the way in, that door was always closed. Father had, to my knowledge, never unlocked it. I’d tried so damn hard to get in there, I’d hit it, looked everywhere for a key, tried very unsuccessfully to pick the lock. Those were the only times he’d yelled, always something along the lines of that ‘he’d always respected my privacy and I should do the same.’ To his very little credit, he hadn’t ever poked through my room.
One particularly tense day he said I’d never get through that door as long as he was alive. I guess that was more of a promise than a threat. There was no way he didn’t plan this, he knew I’d go in. Spiting me with my own spite? I’m almost as impressed as I am infuriated.
-
I’m proud that I held out for a whole two minutes before heading for the basement door, I really am. The steps are stone, unlike the hardwood floors, and they go down a whole lot more than you’d expect. I can’t see the bottom even with my flashlight on. I think this is where he kept his money, probably all in quarters, just to make me haul it all back myself.
After five minutes down the staircase I am absolutely certain he’s messing with me from beyond the grave. The ceiling started to get lower until I had to bend my head down to keep going. Just as I was getting ready to turn around the stairs and stop, and start going up again like a ‘V’. I’m not about to let him stop me from seeing whatever’s at the end of this.
-
Yeah no, I’m done now. 3 more Vs and the walls had turned wet and rough. This must be underneath the lake, which should be about half a mile behind the house. How long have I been down here? My phone’s nearly dead, but it says it’s 5:54. As much as I’d love to see whatever father had down here, by the time I get back it’ll be past sunrise. I turn to go back up the stairs, when my leg brushes against something, a piece of fabric. Even with how little battery my phone has, I turn the flashlight on and see a mound of what looks like clothes, but they look faded and dust-covered, like they’ve been down here for years.
I reach down to grab them, but as I pull back I see a pale skull fall out of the shirt. It tumbles down a few steps and settles into the small crevice of the V as I stumble back. Someone had died here, someone had died under my house. Did my father know, is that why he kept me out? Something else fell down with the skull, glittering gold, a necklace. My hands tremble as I reach out for the chain. It has a small cross on it, nearly identical to the one around my own neck. It was the only thing I had after my mother left, part of a matching set between her and my father, I always assumed he had the other.
Oh god. I’d always thought my mom had run off, tried to get as far away from him as possible. She was dead, turning to bones down here and he never told me? Had he killed her, locked her down here until she starved? No, as much as I hate my father, he wasn’t a murderer. Jesus, I hope not. I feel sick. My hands tear bloody across the coarse walls as I scramble up the steps, only to slip on the damp stone.
My vision swims, tinted red as I try to struggle out of the crook of the V. I’d hit my head on the way down, and I can feel the broken glass from my phone digging into my elbow. I try to drag myself up the stairs, but the stone was too slick for me to hold on to. I flailed, sliding back down to the bottom of the V, and I realized I didn’t know which way I came from. My mother’s body had fallen down, settling in next to me.
I scramble and scream, no way out. No one knew I was here, who knows when anyone would come check. I feel my head reeling, consciousness fading as black clouds my vision. I can only see the empty eye sockets of my mother as I start to fade.
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