smiling in at the driver and holding up one finger asking him to wait. He smiled back and started the meter.
“Look, go home and give it some time, Natalie is fine. Maybe she’s a bad housekeeper and has weird taste in air fresheners, but she’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
With that Barbara squeezed her way into the cab.
Dori bent at the waist to look into the cab and say goodbye.
“Take care Aunt Barb and thanks for coming out,” she reached in to give the older woman a fast kiss on the cheek.
“Goodbye dear and if you need me again just call.”
Dori thought for a moment about what Barbara had said. “Hey Aunt Barb.”
“Yes dear?”
“Why’d you say Natalie was a bad housekeeper? I know she isn’t the best, but the house wasn’t that bad.”
“Well, there was that horrible smell. It was all over the house, you didn't smell it? When I went into the kitchen it was the worst. Like old garbage, and the car exhaust coming in from the street was bad as well. And that was the weirdest air freshener to use, it did nothing to mask the bad smell.”
“What air freshener?”
“Why, the chocolate spray or candles or whatever it was. It was all over the house. I thought it was the chocolate bars she had out in the living room but that wouldn’t account for it. Surely you smelled it didn’t you? I thought she was baking a cake when we first got there.”
Barbara looked at Dori, but she looked away, glancing back toward the way they had come, back towards Natalie’s house.
“You did smell it didn’t you dear? I would hate to think I imagined something like that.”
Dori raised her hand to her throat and said, barely over a whisper, “Take care Aunt Barb, it was good seeing you and thanks for coming on such short notice.”
“Goodbye dear, please call if you need me again,” and she nodded to the driver who sped off. Dori barely noticed, she stood with her hand to her throat gazing back towards Natalie’s street.
“Chocolate,” she said under her breath.
“Jesus, Natalie” She ran back to the house, not slowing until she mounted the porch and banged on the door.
No response.
She knocked again, calling Natalie’s name.
Nothing.
She stepped off the porch onto the sidewalk and looked up towards Natalie’s bedroom window and called yet again but there was no response from the house at all, no life.
No life.
Why did she think that? Why did she choose those words?
She shuddered and moved back towards the porch and to the small potted plant just to the right of the door that hid the extra key. She dug to the three o’clock position and there it was, just an inch or two under the soil.
She fit it in to the lock and twisted the door open. Silence greeted her as she pushed the door in. She didn’t like it and wanted to close the door, lock it and leave but she dare not leave Natalie in the house alone.
Chocolate, the smell was undeniable. How did she not notice it before?
“Natalie?” Dori called from the open door. “Natalie are you here?” No answer came, no movement. Nothing. Dori moved a few feet inside and glanced about, her heart thudding in her chest. To her right, the stairs, to her left was the living room and beyond the hall to the kitchen.
“Natalie are you here?”
She walked through the living room towards the hall, past the bathroom on her left and closet upon her right until she stood just inside the large kitchen. The table was set for two. There was a saucepan on the stove and Dori could see the oven was partially open. All of this she took in but seen none of it for her eyes were upon the door to the basement.
He stays in the basement mostly.
She recalled her sister-in-laws words and felt a vibration emanating through the floor, a quiver low and steady. The reek of exhaust mixed with another smell both loathsome and sweet. She became aware of the wrongness of the house; malevolence oozed from the basement door. It beckoned to Dori, inviting her to descend to the depths below. She somehow knew whatever was down there was aware of her. It wanted her to walk down the steps.
Walk down, come down.
She awoke as if from a trance. She was at least five steps closer to the door than she had been a moment ago and she didn’t know how. Her eyes opened wide and she backed away, breaking the trance she'd been under. She backed towards the hallway.
“Natalie, you here?” she whispered to the empty house but knew her sister-in-law was not here, and would never be here again.
The smell of chocolate tickled at her nostrils but there was something darker just beneath it, something unclean. The low rumble pulsed through the floor and dropped down in pitch as if a car changed from park to drive, a sound that didn’t belong here. It was a sound which she couldn’t possibly be hearing coming from the basement.
She continued to backup until her back hit the wall of the kitchen, then she turned and ran towards the living room and out the door into the late afternoon sunlight.
Once outside she turned back to the house and realized only then she had been sweating the whole time.
“Natalie I’m so sorry.”
Whatever was in the basement, Natalie had joined it Dori knew.
She walked back to the door and pulled it closed, locking it and tossing the key into the potted plant as she hurriedly ran down the stairs. She backed away from the house to the sidewalk, keeping the house in view the whole time.
She noticed movement from the basement window but the curtain had fallen too quickly to be sure of what she saw. Her heart skidded in her chest and she ran from the house, down the street. She was nearly hysterical as she made the corner and turned down the next street, running for three blocks before becoming winded. She came to a stop at a small apartment building and leaned against it for support as she sucked in great quantities of air.
She put her hands to either side of her head and closed her eyes as she recovered from her run. She told herself she couldn’t have seen what she thought she did, it wasn’t possible. It was as Aunt Barbara said; she had psyched herself up and saw what wasn’t there.
There had been no small pale face smiling at her as the curtain had fallen back into place.
A word from the Author
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About the Author
Also by John Mc Caffrey
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Ripples Page 7