“Go home, Dawes,” Joel barks, though his eyes stay right on me.
Todd ducks his head down and glances over his shoulder before shuffling toward the back door. He has a slight limp and keeps a hand to his back.
Aside from those kids who’d followed me home, the house has never hurt anyone before. I’m stunned it took the floor right from under Todd. Figures that he would think it was just a hidden hatch or something, although why he’d think I have one in my bedroom floor is beyond me. And Joel, I should have just gone to him. I should have gotten his help, because now this looks like I’ve gone behind his back.
Joel’s nostrils flare like fish gills, and I follow him into the dining room. He clicks on the light and pushes aside a stack of depositions on the table beside the pile with the newspaper article on top. He must be in the middle of a big case.
I wonder if Joel knows more than he lets on, if Dad told him more than he told me. Or maybe Joel is just as in the dark about things as I am. I rub my hand on my pants, feeling the sticky residue of blood. Gick. I have no idea where it came from, but I’m not sure I want to know.
He doesn’t say a word. Just glares at me. I’m not about to wait for the lecture.
“Why don’t we ever go in the basement?” I ask.
“So you were down there.”
He only saw us come up out of it. “Dad took me down once, but he had to like, lead me. And then when I was down there just now—”
Joel exhales loudly through his nose and tilts his head back. “You know better than that. Dammit, Piper. Dad had strict rules.” He holds up his fingers and tacks them off with his other hand one at a time. “No going in the basement. No opening the door behind his desk.”
“Yeah, but Dad was just anal. He didn’t really care about us. And Todd—well, Todd…” I know Joel will believe me. I still have a hard time forming the words. “The house like, made a hole, and—”
“I don’t care if he’s dead now, Piper. You stick to those rules, or so help me…” Joel is panting, and his finger is a sausage in my face. I smack his hand away. I suddenly want to smash my fist in his beak.
“You think just because you’re my guardian now that you can tell me what to do? This is my house too, Joel. My house.”
“No, it isn’t. Dad left it to me. You’re living here because I say you can.”
I’m stumped. Really? “Gee, thanks for clearing that up. I feel so much better now.”
I’m tempted to sweep every single stack of paper off the table, but I contain my rage. I kick my chair back, and it clatters to the floor as I stomp off and climb the stairs to my room.
“You’re fifteen years old, Piper!” Joel yells in my wake. “You do as I say!”
“Shove off!”
I stew in my room, hearing Joel’s orders ricochet in my brain. He has no right to be so demanding. So self-righteous. So dad-like. My feet cross over the chunk of floor that disappeared earlier. The books that plummeted are back on their shelves, but I want to dislodge them again. I want to tear the paper off the walls, to break something. No matter what I break, the house will just fix it anyway.
I don’t get what the big deal is. Joel has got to know more than he’s letting on. There was a definite voice in the basement. And blood. I don’t get what he thinks he’s hiding, but I’m sick of being left out of it. I lift my hand and cringe at the filmy gunk on it. This is my house, too. I shouldn’t be held captive from places in my own home.
I can’t help but think of Todd, wonder what he’s thinking right now, or what he thinks happened. Maybe the reason I keep avoiding his questions is because I don’t fully know the answers to them myself. The thought irks me even more.
Joel’s footsteps thump down the hallway, and I nearly swallow my lungs. He better not come in here. His door makes a soft slam, and the sound only triggers my nerves.
I’m done dealing with him. I’m done obeying some stupid rules and not knowing why. I went in the basement and came out alright—for the most part. There’s probably nothing behind the door in the library either. Nothing besides a staircase to the ceiling, anyway.
I’ve got to find out for myself. I’m opening that door in the library. Tonight.
I turn the knob of my bedroom door as carefully as I can, cringing when it clicks open. The only light in the hallway comes from a chink beneath Joel’s door and a soft gleam lingering toward the top of the stairs.
His muted, angry voice carries through as I pass. I pause and press my ear to his door. Who could he possibly be talking too this late at night?
“Get someone else,” Joel grumbles. “I told you—I won’t do it.”
Maybe it’s someone from his office. Maybe there’s something in this case that he doesn’t want to do. I think back to our conversation outside earlier, before he’d chucked the shovel. For the tiniest moment I feel sorry for him, like I should cut him some slack for being so hard on me. I could turn around. Just go to bed.
But this is about more than just an argument with my brother. The house attacking Todd tonight, just because I was upset that he’d invited kids over, and then again when he came bugging me for answers—I can’t help wondering why.
I’ve lived here for so long among secrets, when all along the answers have been literally at my fingertips. At the mere turn of a knob.
I can’t just go back to my room. I have to know more. And maybe I’m feeling more rebellious about the fact that Joel doesn’t seem to want me to than by our dumb argument.
The steps are silent each time my socked feet touch them. My hand slides along the wooden banister, and the lack of noise snags my back, like little hooks are there, begging me to turn around and return to my room.
“What’s going on?” I ask the empty house. It’s like a temperamental, fluffy pet dog with sharp teeth. Any minute it could snap, but for whatever reason, it’s still your pet. And you coddle it to keep it from turning on you.
The lights flicker, and a cool, unnatural breeze teases my skin. I lean against the banister, waiting for the wisp of air to pass. Go back upstairs. Just forget this. The banister rungs jar into my back, but I take a deep breath and stare up at the glints of color reflecting through the stained glass windows above the entryway into the kitchen.
“You know something, don’t you?”
The house doesn’t respond this time, so I force myself down the steps, one after the other, until I stop in front of the French double doors.
I don’t like the library. There has always been something creepy about it, even when my father was alive and worked in there all the time. And now it’s even worse because he died in there.
I draw a slow breath and reach for the low brass handle with trembling fingers. I chance a peek up to the landing. Joel’s door is still shut.
The cold, rickety knob whines when I turn it. The air is slightly cooler in here, and I flip on the lights, taking in the stale smell of leather and paper. Several bulbs are burned out, giving the space a dull orange sheen instead of its usual luster.
To anyone else, I’m sure it’s a beautiful place. Shelves upon shelves of books. Multiple levels to the room, with an elegant banister separating the second story. But most people don’t know that there is more than one set of stairs in the library. One holds true to its purpose—it leads to the upper level where more books are held.
Behind a door that I’ve never seen opened stands the other staircase that leads to nowhere. Literally. Joel says it goes straight up to the ceiling like a decapitated body. As a child I used to peruse the books, to wander and play while my father worked. And I would sometimes hear him talking to Joel and my mother about the door.
“It’s just not the time,” he would say. I never knew what he meant. But now I have to know. I’m through with secrets.
I scan the walls bulging with books, the leather armchairs and lavish rugs, and I imagine my father sitting at the desk, smiling at me behind his glasses.
The door. I want to know why he always sat so
close to it.
With an unsteady breath I penetrate farther in. I pass Dad’s desk, now smothered by Joel’s papers, and the sight stops me for a second. I thought Joel avoided this room as much as I do.
My eyes stray to the corner. To the door. And I keep walking toward it.
Circles are carved on its dark wood surface, embellished and interwoven with intricate designs, similar to the ones found on the basement door. I wonder if Joel has ever opened this. And why he got so pissed earlier, if he knows what’s in the basement.
Who am I kidding, I saw for myself. Regardless of the voice and the blood, there’s nothing in the basement. That room was empty.
Something my father told me once makes me think Joel probably hasn’t opened this door either:
“Even I don’t open this one,” Dad had said, gesturing to the door in the library just after leading me into the basement. It had the same carvings as on the one in the kitchen, and I tilted my head, trying to meet the gaze of the sideways eyes. “I never have, and I never will.”
“Why?” I asked, pulling my hand from his.
He sighed and sank against the lace curtains, pushing the bridge of his glasses up higher on his nose.
“Just like I’m your father and expect you to obey me, I also have to answer to this house, Peanut. I grew up here, just like you. My dad wasn’t very nice to me.”
Just like you weren’t nice to me, I thought but didn’t say.
“I learned early on that bad things happen when you don’t follow rules. Maybe when you’re older I’ll explain more, but for now I’m asking you to never open these doors.”
I stared at him. My seven-year-old mind concocted dozens of monsters that could be lurking behind the doors. Or maybe the doors were like the closet door on reruns I’d seen of Sabrina the Teenage Witch and they led to another world completely.
“Promise me, Peanut.” His tone lowered. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if it means keeping you out.”
Just like you hurt me before. I rubbed where my arms stung from the bruises he left when he’d come up out of the basement.
“All you need to know is bad things happen when you open that basement door and this one. Okay?”
My mind bumbled with questions. I couldn’t grasp why he was telling me this when I’d seen him come out from the basement before, or what bad things could possibly happen when he showed me himself there was nothing down there. But instead I nodded.
“I need you to say it, Piper. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
The memory boils my blood. Who did my father think he was, keeping all these secrets? He expected blind obedience, not bothering to ever say why. Jutting out my chin, I take a step, and another, my socked feet sinking into the ornate rug.
I’m nearly to the door, and I reach for it, but it’s as if cement gets injected into my chest, weighing me down, making it impossible for me to want to move. Something traps me in place. I’m incapable of even running.
The room temperature drops and chills tiptoe from the bottom of my spine to my neck. Out of the corner of my eye a figure creeps closer and closer to the forbidden door. It’s blurred around the edges and flurries like wind through a thin piece of fabric. The hair on my arms stands on end, and voices play in my head, eerie and entrancing.
Open the door lift off the floor open the door lose your soul open the door open it open open your mind will be mine open the door—
I slam my lids shut. No one is there, it’s nothing. I can’t—open the door your soul is mine—think, can’t—open—hear anymore. Open open…
The figure passes through the door, and the thickness in my chest shatters. My limbs are free once more. With a frantic cry, I dart from the room as quickly as possible, practically slamming the French doors shut. The panes of glass rattle.
Shivers needle all over my skin again. I feel disjointed and betrayed, like the fluffy pet dog just turned rabid and grew giant fangs.
I’ve always thought my house has been protective of me, but I wonder if it’s possible that something else entirely is going on. As if the house knows what I’m thinking, the lights flicker again. My skin crawls, but I set my jaw and stomp into the kitchen.
I’ve lived in this house for fifteen years. Noises have cajoled me at all hours of the day or night. Secrets have barricaded me in and kept me in ignorance. Objects have moved on their own. And for the most part I’ve accepted things without question. But I’m done floating along in the dark.
“I’ll show you, you can’t get to me,” I say. “I won’t let you get to me.”
My pulse smacks my throat, shooting along my arms, but I draw a knife from the bamboo block on the counter—like it can protect me—and force my feet to The Spot. I bend to lift the heavy ornate rug from the shiny hardwood.
I don’t want to do it. Everything in me is telling me to lower the rug, to go hide in my room like always. But after the memory of my father, after hearing that voice and the ghost, after being antagonized by Sierra, by Jordan and mostly by my brother, I have to check.
I’m through with not knowing what happened in the past, or what’s going on now. For some reason, it feels like opening this will be like unlocking my own personal cage and providing release.
The latch stares up at me like a cycloptic beast. The floorboards groan, but I bend. Hook my fingers under the latch.
My tongue swells with the pressure of lifting the heavy door. I haven’t approached this since they found him. Since my mom went to prison.
I heft the door. Musty, cool air creeps up from the hole, biting at my legs and the bare skin of my arms. Three wooden steps lead down into the five-by-five or so space, just large enough to shove a body—living or dead—into. But it’s empty. Except for—
I lean in and nearly lose my balance. The knife drops from my grip and lands with a clang in the hole below.
A huge stain the size of a small blanket leers up at me, dyeing the concrete an abysmal blackish-red. Dry heaving, I jerk up, slam the door shut, and kick the rug over it, hurting my injured leg in the process.
Blood. It’s the only logical thing that stain could be. My stomach won’t stop curdling, and the image won’t get out of my head. My mother, dragging the body. Dropping it in. The body. Dropping. Splatting.
I dash for the bathroom, but my stomach settles by the time I get there. I already know why there are no bloodstains on the wood or anywhere else in our house. The house won’t stand for it. It doesn’t fit that the stains are still in that hole.
I wish I’d never looked.
I head up the stairs, though I keep glancing behind me every few seconds, sensing that same presence fasten onto my back. I wonder if the impression is from him—that figure I saw.
I take a quick peek in at my parents’ room. Everything looks like it always does. Gaudy walnut bed, dresser and nightstands topped with marble. I know I should check the attic—it’s spacious enough for someone to hide in. But I’m not sure I want to find anything else tonight.
I pass Joel’s closed door and lift my hand, but I feel carved out, like the only thing keeping me moving is a ticking machine inside of me. I’m not ready to make up with him yet. Especially not after he told me I’m only here at his permission.
I move mechanically, crawling into my chilly sheets. The bloodstain haunts me as I try drifting off to sleep. And the basement, something was definitely there. Something with blood on it.
I wish there was a way to scratch away memories. But these are like a sour aftertaste in my brain. Once you see something, there’s no way to un- see it. The acrid tang moves to the back of my mouth, like the warm night air is baking me alive and I can taste myself rot.
Murder. The same number of letters as Mother. Same start. Same finish.
Though the house holds Mom’s traces, she’s still vague to me. I have glimpses of her in my mind as a child, but I haven’t heard from her since she was incarcerated. Dad never let me call her. Even Joel hasn’t spoken to
her since the arrest. I always think of her though.
Most of the time it’s a made-up confrontation. But there’s still so much I don’t know about her.
I rake my mind for something—anything I can think of. A smile, a touch. The way her perfume smelled or how she would bunch up her pantyhose before gliding a dainty foot into them. I can’t remember if her feet were dainty. Or if she’d worn pantyhose.
One memory creeps its way in. I was five or six, looking at her and Dad’s wedding pictures as she slipped them into an album. Her brown hair was cropped short and fluffed out from behind her ears.
I remember asking her why she fell in love with Dad. She got a sad, far-off look in her eyes—oh man, what color are her eyes?
“Because I thought he would never lie to me,” she said.
I stir awake, but it feels like I have sand under my eyelids. The painted cherubs on my ceiling scrutinize me. My limbs are sleepy and relaxed—I don’t want to move. And why should I? After yesterday—the coughing, the party, the ghost and the bloodstain—I never want to move again.
I crane my head back, and a red 7:20 stares back at me. I blink several more times before it hits. My audition!
“No!”
A rush of energy sends me bolting out of bed. “No, no, no,” I mutter. I peel my clothes off as quickly as I can and stuff on the black shirt and silver skirt I’ve been saving for weeks. I don’t know how I could have done this. Today of all days, I can’t have overslept.
I fumble through my usual makeup routine, trying to cover the redness and bumps on my face. My dying flatiron decides it has straightened its last hair, so one side of my strawberry blonde locks looks sleek, while the other looks like I’ve rubbed a balloon against my head. Bleh. Todd will be here any minute.
I pull the whole mess back into a ponytail and head downstairs; only I smack my forehead and nearly lose my balance halfway down. Practice! I didn’t practice! I force away the thought—I won’t screw up.
“Whoa, slow down,” Joel says when he passes me in the hallway. He’s already dressed, decked out in his typical suit and tie.
Phobic Page 7