The words were so clear that it felt like a memory rather than a dream. Something was odd about the way that—
Amy!
Robert suddenly remembered that Amy had refused her own room and instead insisted that she slept in the bed with him. But now, a cursory glance revealed that not only was Amy not in bed with him, but she wasn’t even in the room.
He hopped off the bed, the floor so cold on his bare feet that it nearly took his breath away.
“Amy?” he whispered. “Amy?”
No answer.
In fewer than five paces, he was at the door, noting that it was open even though he had been sure to close it before turning in for the night.
The light from the lamp on the bedside table cast a feeble, shadow-filled glow into the hallway. He squinted and looked frantically in both directions, but only saw rows of closed doors.
“Amy?” he asked the darkness, his voice a little louder now.
His first inclination as he searched for a light switch in the hallway was that she had gone wandering, exploring, or maybe she was just sleepwalking. Generally, Amy was a very deep sleeper, but following with the accident, it was entirely possible that she had awoken as confused as he had and had wandered out of the room.
But then why didn’t she just wake me?
Robert found the light switch and turned it on, bathing the hallway in a pale yellow glow.
Amy wasn’t there.
Robert was about to take his first step onto the stairs heading down to the main floor when the entire house suddenly lit up from a burst of lightning. The thunderclap followed even as the lightning continued to flicker, a burst of sound so loud that Robert cringed and instinctively covered his ears.
Jesus Christ!
“Amy!” he shouted after the sound faded, no longer caring if he awoke Ruth.
When there was still no answer, he took the stairs two at a time. When he reached the landing, he paused, perking his ears to listen.
At first he heard nothing. But then, when he was about to head into the family room, he heard a sound: a light scratching on the hardwood, like a mouse scurrying from the light.
His eyes snapped in that direction, noting that the door to the kitchen, which he had also closed after preparing their dinner, was now open.
“Amy?” he asked again.
He hurried into the galley-style kitchen, thinking for a brief moment that maybe Amy was in there, playing with the knives.
Don’t be stupid, she’s too old for that…but if she’s sleepwalking?
He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed to see that the kitchen was completely empty.
“Amy! Where are you, Amy?”
He was about to leave the room when he heard that same scratching noise—just a barely audible, chk chk chk—coming from somewhere deep in the kitchen where the light from the hallway couldn’t quite reach.
Robert’s searching fingers finally found the light switch, banishing the shadows.
His eyes immediately fell and fixated on the wooden door at the far end of the kitchen. This door was different from all of the other doors in the house, which were all the same—solid wood painted white, which fell in line with the period and design of the rest of the house. This door, however, didn’t have any of the paneling like the others, and it was the only one that wasn’t painted. During their abbreviated tour, Robert had specifically asked about this door, but Ruth had been quick to dismiss it, saying that it wasn’t important and that under no circumstances was he to open it.
At the time, Robert had shrugged this off, chalking it up to just one of many of the woman’s peculiarities, but now, as he stared at it, any caution that she had issued went ignored.
After all, when he had first pointed it out, it had a heavy padlock locking it.
Now it was open.
He heard the scratching sound again and quickly hurried to the door, throwing it wide, expecting to see Amy standing there on the landing.
But once again, Robert was met with only darkness. Darkness and the smell of earth and vegetation.
A cold cellar?
He reached inside the doorway, searching for a light switch. He came up empty.
“Amy?” he asked the darkness, his voice wavering slightly.
His heart, which had already been racing in his chest, kicked up another notch. He wished he hadn’t left his cell phone on the bedside table—he could have used a flashlight about now. Robert instinctively turned back to the kitchen, scanning the countertops for a flashlight.
The scratching noise drew his gaze back immediately.
“Amy? Are you down there?”
Time seemed to stop as he waited for a response. And then it came in the form of a subdued whimper.
“Amy!”
Thoughts of a flashlight left his mind and he reached out with his toes, finding the first step in the complete darkness. He took the next step, then the next. On the third step, he called out again.
“Amy? Are you down—?”
But when his foot reached the next step, a network of thick spiderwebs hit him square in the face, blanketing his eyes and mouth.
He coughed and tore at it, desperately trying to pull the sticky strings from his face.
His fall was inevitable.
As he flailed his arms in the suffocating darkness, his left heel slipped off the edge of the step and his body careened forward.
“Fuck!” His first three stumbling steps were incredibly lucky, and he somehow managed to avoid falling head first down God only knew how far to the bottom of the staircase.
But eventually the darkness won.
Unable to see anything, Robert misjudged the distance to the fourth step, and he missed it completely. His body hung in midair, and then both his legs were pinwheeling. The foot that had missed landed awkwardly on the fifth step, and only served to increase his momentum.
Gritting his teeth, his body skipped down the remaining stairs until he struck the cold, damp earth at the bottom, his left ankle twisting awkwardly beneath him.
Shooting pains traveled up and down his leg, and again a cry escaped him.
“Amy? Amy, you down here?” he hissed out from between clenched teeth.
His left ankle buckled as his attempt to stand failed. On his second try, he put all of his weight on his right leg and managed to force himself to a prone position.
Something hit him in the face again, and he swatted it away, thinking that it was another spiderweb.
Then he heard the scratching sound again, and he immediately whipped his head to his left, gasping at the pain in his leg.
The darkness was so all-encompassing that it was impossible to see anything. Something hit him in the face again, and his hand shot up and grabbed ahold of it.
It wasn’t a spiderweb this time, he realized, but the string from a light bulb. Still wincing, he pulled, and light from a bare bulb immediately blinded him.
“Amy?” he asked again.
Blinking rapidly, his vision slowly cleared.
And what he saw took his breath away.
There, standing with his back to him only about ten feet away, was Amy. Only, it wasn’t Amy, not quite.
“Amy?” His throat was suddenly so tight that he could barely get the word out.
The girl was Amy’s height, but her hair was too dark to be his daughter’s. And she was wearing a plain gown, and not the jeans and t-shirt Amy had been wearing for the last few days. And although she clutched some sort of animal in her left hand, it wasn’t a bunny; it wasn’t Mr. Gregorius.
Instead, it looked like a rat; an incredibly life-like rat with a long pink tail.
“What the—?”
Robert tried to shuffle away, back toward the stairs, but his ankle was too weak and he stumbled again. This time, however, he was somehow able to prevent himself from going down.
Then the girl slowly began to turn and it felt as if all of the air in the room, including the small amount in Robert’s lungs, was
sucked out.
The girl was about Amy’s age, but her face was incredibly pale, and her eyes—Jesus Christ—her eyes were solid black orbs that stood out on her otherwise tiny face.
As Robert watched in horror, the girl’s mouth started to open, but inside there were no teeth or even a tongue. Instead, it was like an infinite black pit that continued to grow until it nearly took over her entire face.
And then she spoke, and this time Robert fell.
“Help me, Daddy,” she said. Her voice had an airy quality about it, like words hissed in a whispering wind.
Robert’s own mouth opened, but a massive thunderclap from outside suddenly reverberated the entire house, swallowing up his scream. The lone bulb flickered and then went out, leaving him once again in sheer blackness.
He couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe.
Robert couldn’t do anything.
Less than a second later, the light blinked on again, and he found himself staring at Amy’s heart-shaped face.
“What’s wrong, Daddy?”
Robert swallowed hard, still unable to speak. His eyes darted to his daughter’s hand and relief washed over him when he saw that she wasn’t holding a rat, but her fuzzy bunny rabbit, Mr. Gregorius.
What the—
Amy’s brow knitted in concern.
“Daddy, are you okay?”
Chapter 13
With time and distance, Robert began to pass off his encounter in the basement of the Harlop Estate as some sort of mental mirage brought on by the stress from Wendy’s passing. And as his twisted ankle slowly healed, he became more rational about the encounter.
Stress, it was only stress…the little girl you saw was just Amy; the dark was playing tricks on you.
As for Amy’s part, she claimed to not remember anything about getting out of bed and somehow opening the locked basement door, although he surmised she must have found a key somewhere. The rain had let up shortly after they had hobbled out of the basement and, unable to sleep, Robert had taken Amy and driven back home. Not wanting to wake Ruth, he had left her a note thanking her for the opportunity, but firmly indicating that he was going to have to pass on the offer.
Thanks, but no thanks.
But now, less than two weeks later, sitting in his kitchen, staring at the letter from Wendy’s—his—credit card company, he was beginning to second guess his decision.
The bank had called, politely reminding him that he needed to not only pay this month’s mortgage, but last month’s as well. The credit card company had also called, and they had been considerably less cordial and sympathetic with respect to him losing his wife.
He managed to keep them both at bay with empty promises, all the while knowing that this wasn’t a viable long-term strategy.
So Robert did what he could, putting out feelers out for work, but this being the summer, no one was interested in hiring an accountant. It didn’t help that Audex wasn’t the only company to go young, and his snub of Landon at the funeral wasn’t likely doing him any favors. The man was as slick as his hair, and despite his—their—loss, he wouldn’t put it by the man to contact managers at other companies and preemptively sour his prospects.
Despite all of the calls he fielded from money collectors—so many that he had gotten into the habit of just letting it go to voicemail—the one call he was expecting regarding money owing never came.
The insurance company and the fifty-thousand-dollar payout from Wendy’s policy. He had called them, of course, but they were quick to drag their feet, telling him that they would inform him of their decision once they had completed their investigation.
Investigation…
It drove Robert nearly mad with frustration.
His next call was to a lawyer that he had looked up on the Internet, and after paying him with his own credit card, which was now suffering from the same mounting figures as Wendy’s, although not in the same ballpark, the man’s advice had been simple.
“Declare bankruptcy.”
Bankruptcy.
It sounded like such a dirty word that it made Robert’s stomach clench.
“Is there nothing else I can do? Get a stay, perhaps, until the insurance pays out?”
“Nuh-uh. File for bankruptcy; you can rebuild your credit later. Look, Robert, it’s a better option long term than to continue missing or skipping payments. In the interim, you can put your house up for sale before the bank forecloses on it. Even that might be tricky, but if you don’t do anything before the fall and these letters keep piling up? You’re going to be in a hole that you will never be able to crawl your way out of.”
Robert’s mind flicked back to the day before all of this had happened, when he was working at Audex and Wendy was running her own real estate firm. Back then there had been so much promise…
Robert shook his head and he scolded himself for lying.
Things hadn’t been great, or else Wendy wouldn’t have been fucking his ex-boss Landon Underhill.
In that moment, Robert wished Landon were standing in front of him so that he could punch the man in the face.
He shut his eyes.
Who am I kidding? He would probably put me in the hospital…and then who would look after Amy?
“Robert? You there?”
Robert grunted.
“Look, you paid me to give you my professional opinion. Take it or leave it.”
Robert opened his eyes and fought back tears. When his vision focused, it was on the letter that Sean Sommers had delivered what felt like a year ago, lying limp on the counter. He wasn’t sure why it was there, given the fact that he distinctly remembered throwing it out.
Robert chewed his lip, remembering how scared he had been in the basement that stormy night when the lights had flicked out.
Look after me for a few months, days even, and I’ll give you my house.
The Harlop Estate was in rough shape, no doubt, and it was located two hours from any major city center, but still. It was massive and had to be worth a pretty coin. Even if it wasn’t worth seven figures, it would certainly be sufficient to pay off their debts. And it was summer, meaning that Amy was out of school. What good did it serve them to stay here, constantly reminded not only of Wendy, what with her stuff laid out as if she were coming home from work and not dead, but of the bills that they couldn’t possibly pay? Was that better than Amy living in an old house in the country with a creepy, dying aunt?
Robert wasn’t so sure.
It’s time to man up, Robert.
“Robert? We are coming up on the hour, now.”
The thought of paying this lawyer, whose sleaziness rivaled even Landon’s, snapped him out of his reverie.
“So you think I can just hold off until the end of the summer?”
The man paused.
“I think it’s best to start the bankruptcy procedure immediately, which of course I can do for you. Pending payment, of course—”
Robert shook his head.
“But you said something about the summer, didn’t you?”
“Well, I can craft a letter, fudge some of the information, and send it to your bank and credit card company. Tell them to hold off on seizing your assets—cite mental illness.” He paused, seeming to mull this over. “Yeah, mental illness is hot right now. Oh, or maybe PTSD, that’s a good one, too. It might work.”
“Fine, let’s do that, then.”
“But it’s going to cost you, Robert; the letters will cost you two-fifty.”
Robert was incredulous.
“Two-fifty?”
“That’s a deal, believe me.”
To hell it is. Two hundred and fifty dollars for you to sign your name on a form letter you probably found on the Internet?
He felt dirty all over again.
“Fine, just do it.”
“I’ll do it today, Robert. I’ll be in touch.”
Robert didn’t even say goodbye.
He hung up and grabbed the letter off the counter and rea
d it again.
A vision of Ruth trying to grab the oxygen mask, the hose of which was pinched on the back of the wheelchair, came to him then, and he suddenly hoped that she was still alive for him to tend to.
A morbid but appropriate thought.
And he was also set to wonder where Mr. Sommers had gone, having seemingly vanished after dropping off the letter. The strange man with the short blond hair hadn’t been at the Estate, that was for sure.
I don’t like him, Daddy.
He shivered, then scolded himself for acting like a child again. When he looked up, Amy had appeared in the kitchen and was staring up at him.
“You spooked me, Amy.”
Her face was blank.
“Are we going on an adventure again, Daddy?”
Robert felt himself nodding.
“Yeah, sweetie. I think we are.”
This time, though, do us both a favor and stay out of the basement.
Part II – Moving In
Chapter 14
Robert suppressed a gag as he brought the sponge up to the back of Ruth’s neck. He looked away as he squeezed the warm water from it, unable to stand the appearance of her jutting spine and pale, liver-spotted flesh. Other than the water cascading off of Aunt Ruth’s back and splashing to the tub below, a slow trickle that was highly unnerving, it was otherwise silent in the Harlop Estate.
This whole ordeal had Robert on edge. When Ruth had first asked him to bathe her, his reaction had been immediate and unwavering: no way. He had attempted to break the news to her gently, but she had simply brushed him off.
‘You’ll come around,’ she had said.
Robert had only smirked at her confidence. But sure enough, as the woman’s funk grew so thick that it made it nearly impossible to even be in the same room as her, his resolve had weakened.
After Amy had made several comments about Ruth’s smell, and repeatedly asked him why he wasn’t helping bathe her, he eventually acquiesced. A man could only take so much badgering from both ends of the age spectrum.
And, truthfully, although the process was revolting, it wasn’t that bad. After all, Ruth was just a sick old woman, not a leper. She needed help, and as honest as he was, Robert felt that it was duty to do what he could, that he had signed up for this. If nothing else, the experience afforded him untold compassion for nurses and hospice workers.
Shallow Graves (The Haunted Book 1) Page 8