From Twisted Roots

by Tobias Wade

  I tried to distract myself by setting up camp in front of her large television, which stood in stark contrast to the rest of the room. The sleek black flatscreen and its DVD filled entertainment center dwarfed the stiff, overstuffed furniture that looked like they could have been house originals from the early 20th century: an odd combination that spoke of Norma’s love for antiques, but also for modern comforts.

  It worked, for a while. I was able to relax just slightly with the noise of a movie filling up the quiet. I still checked constantly over my shoulder, feeling the occasional rush of butterflies if I thought I heard anything unusual. I employed the breathing techniques my therapist had taught me, and I stayed rooted on the couch. I liked to think Dad might even have been proud of me, had he seen how hard I was trying.

  The day was waning though, and whatever weak light that had been coming through the clouds outside was swallowed by darkness. Aside from the living room, the house had turned pitch black.

  My stomach rumbled. I wanted to ignore my hunger, and I might have been able to if I’d eaten anything else that day. Nerves had kept my appetite firmly suppressed, but the moment they relented even a little, it groaned and gurgled back into life until all I could think about was food. Food, and the fact that the kitchen was down a long, narrow hallway now shrouded in shadow. I hovered in the living room’s entryway, my fingers scratching nervously along my forearm, an anxious habit I hadn’t broken yet.

  “Maybe two dozen steps,” I said aloud, trying to reassure myself that the journey to the kitchen wasn’t a journey at all. It was just a short walk.

  With my phone gripped tightly in my hands, it’s screen pointed outwards to illuminate the hall, I managed to take a single step forward. The floorboard beneath me squeaked in protest. I had to fight back the urge to go running back to the couch.

  “I can do this. I can do this.”

  I shut my eyes, pictured the hallway as brightly lit, and charged. I slid into the kitchen and caught myself on the doorframe, laughing, proud. I’d done it! With the light switched on in the kitchen, I allowed myself to feel a sense of triumph. I realized it was silly, but I didn’t care. Dr. Jones always said to celebrate the victories, no matter how small. I shimmied my way to the fridge for some dinner.

  “Cassiiiieee.”

  I froze. It was like ice down my spine. I argued with myself, one half of my brain trying to convince the other that it was all in my head, that I hadn’t just heard my name.

  “Cassiiiiiiieeeeee.”

  But there it was again. I was certain that time. Slowly, I turned my head toward the basement door. I’d been so busy dancing around that I hadn’t noticed it was slightly ajar. From somewhere down below, in the thick blanket of shadows, a thin, reedy voice, was whispering my name.

  “Cassandra!”

  I screamed and threw myself at the door, slamming it shut with my whole body and turning the deadbolt into place. No sooner had I managed to get it closed than something thudded against the other side. I screamed again and tore out of the kitchen, back to the living room, where I immediately called my mom.

  “Deep breaths,” my mom said soothingly. I’d never been so happy to hear her.

  “Somethings in the house with me, Mom! Please, come get me!”

  I heard my dad in the background, “Is that Cassie? Oh no. Give me that.” There was a shuffling sound, then Dad’s voice, “What’s going on?”

  “Something’s here! Please let me come home!”

  “You need to get a hold of yourself. These outbursts, you’re too old for them! It’s time to realize it’s your over active imagination. You’re fine.” He didn’t sound angry, just tired. I couldn’t hold back the sob that bubbled in my chest. “Cassie, I love you, but this is good for you. You’ll see.”

  Then he hung up.

  I curled on the floor beside the couch, my knees hugged to my chest, and I cried. Any sense of accomplishment had vanished, replaced wholly by an aching, hollow aloneness. Except I wasn’t alone. I looked back down the hall toward the kitchen and shuddered.

  I didn’t want to leave the living room with all of its light and noise from the TV, but my bladder betrayed me. I waited until I couldn’t stand it anymore, then a bit longer still. When the threat of relieving myself with or without my consent became all too real, I was forced from my nest onto the floor. I didn’t have time to hesitate despite the knots in my stomach pulling tighter and tighter. The bathroom was down the hall, halfway between the kitchen and living room. I waddled as fast as I could, all my senses on high alert.

  I didn’t hear the crying until after I finished and was in the hall again. It was soft and plaintive, and coming from the basement. I held my breath, terrified and shivering in the dark hall, torn between bolting and being stuck in place. Every so often, between the distant sobs muffled by the locked door, I’d hear my name.

  “Cassiiiiieeee.”

  It sounded so pained and needy, which only made it more terrifying. When I was finally able to rip myself away, I was only too happy to drown it out by turning the TV up.

  Sleep didn’t come that night. Every sound, every shadow out of the corner of my eye, was the thing in the basement coming for me. I was cocooned in blankets on the sofa, my phone clutched in one hand and the fire poker from the hearth beside me. I was shaking and crying quietly, praying for daylight.

  The knocking started just after midnight. A series of dull, irregular thuds from the basement.

  Thud.

  Thud.

  Thud.

  It echoed throughout the house. Each one sent a new jolt of terrified electricity shooting through me. I buried my head in the blankets and fought not to call my parents. Dad would just get angry anyway.

  Enduring this was torturous. Exhausted and too frightened to think coherently, I ran from the living room and up the steps to the closest guest room to lock myself in.

  I sat in the giant bed, rigid and tense, ears strained like a rodent being stalked. I couldn’t hear anything from downstairs, but that didn’t mean I could relax. The night dragged endlessly on, and it was only once the gray pre-light of dawn started to push back the darkness that I got any sleep.

  Ravenous hunger woke me only hours later, and I had to make the trip to the kitchen. I kept the fire poker with me and did a thorough visual sweep as I entered. My heart beat hard and fast against my ribs, and I was ready to turn tail and flee at a moment’s notice. The basement door was still shut, still locked, and everything was just as I had left it.

  I was only there long enough to make a couple quick, sloppy PB&Js and wolf them down with a glass of milk before I went outside. It was a brilliant, sunny morning, and I needed to get out of the house. If it felt cramped before, it was claustrophobic now. I breathed deeply, repeating to myself that all was well and I was ok. I walked along the cobblestone path leading around the side of the house.

  Norma let her large yard run wild, saying she loved the freedom it represented. The grass grew tall, weeds were as plentiful as flowers, and the trees stretched wide and open in every direction. I would have missed the basement window, set low to the ground and half concealed behind an overgrown bush, except for the sun glinting off it. I paused and scratched my arm, struggling internally.

  I wanted to look. I didn’t want to look. I did. I didn’t. I needed to know. I was scared. But the window allowed me to peek in without actually going into the basement, and I eventually crouched beside it. The glass was dirty on both sides and I had to wipe away a layer of grime before I could even begin to see inside.

  It was dark. All I could make out was a mass of shapes: all of Norma’s things that didn’t fit in the attic. I didn’t see anything moving. Didn’t hear anything. After a moment, I stood up again.

  “Maybe Dad was right,” I said doubtfully.

  I turned away with a shake of my head. Something behind me rattled the window’s glass from the inside.

  It took some convincing and
some crying and some screaming, but my parents showed up a half hour later. Dad marched past me, straight into the house. I followed on his heels.

  “Please, Dad, don’t go down there!” I begged.

  “No! It’s nothing. You’ve let your damn imagination get the best of you, and I’m going to show you!”

  I grabbed at his wrist, but he shook me off roughly. Mom took my hand and tugged me gently back to her, but I was hyperventilating. The room was spinning, and I pulled away to stagger into the kitchen.

  “Dad!” I had to hold the fridge handle to stay on my feet. “Please!”

  But he opened the door and he went down, never once looking back.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  Mom flew past me at the sound of Dad shouting. “Tony?!” she called down to him.

  “Jesus Christ, oh God!” he was still shouting.

  There was loud scraping. It sounded like banging metal, and my dad yelling for us. I managed to get across the kitchen and, with small, trembling steps, I followed Mom into the basement.

  Dad was hunched over with his back to us, mumbling rapidly. Even Mom paused on the final stair, her posture tense.

  “Tony?”

  He turned to us, his face a white mask of horror. I’d never seen my father so shaken. It was almost enough to send me reeling backwards.

  “Donna, help me!”

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  He moved aside. Mom and I gasped.

  Aunt Norma was facedown on the basement floor, pinned beneath a heavy set of steel shelves and everything that had been on them. Old books, sporting equipment, and various odds and ends had spilled around her. Beneath the dark hair that had fallen across her face, her skin was shockingly white. I could have sworn I saw flecks of red around her mouth.

  Was she breathing? I couldn’t tell. I felt sick, awash with dizziness. I looked away, unable to stomach the sight. With my eyes turned to the floor, I became aware of about a dozen balls, golf and tennis, scattered around the bottom of the stairwell.

  With a slow, sinking, I pushed myself up and walked mechanically to the basement window. Another few balls were lying beneath it.

  “Oh...oh no...” I breathed, realization setting in like a sharp blade.

  Norma had never made it to her vacation. She must have come down to the basement to get something. She’d tried to pull it down, but the whole shelf came with it. That was why the door had been open. The voice, thin and pained, had been her’s, calling to me. It was her that I’d heard crying in the night. She must have been throwing the balls that fell around her at the stairs, then at the window, trying to get my attention. And I’d ignored it. I’d been so scared, so wrapped up in my own head, that I’d not even checked.

  Mom and Dad scrambled to get Norma, who had yet to move or speak, out from under the shelf. I sank to the floor, my hands covering my face, and let the guilt dissolve me into tears.

  Little Old Lady Magic

  Mom changed after Dad died.

  The heart attack was sudden while washing his car. He was only 64. I found him when I got home from school, but it was too late. The doctor said he went quickly, like it would be some kind of consolation to a sixteen year old. I just wanted my dad back, not his empty attempts at comfort. My mother was far more open to the gesture and had a good, long cry on his shoulder beside her late (by an hour) husband. At least the doctor had enough sense to look embarrassed by the display.

  It was the first time I really noticed just how selfish she could be.

  Dad had been a good barrier; he’d shielded me from the type of woman Mom really was. I imagine part of it was her own doing. Dad had kept her happily wrapped up in expensive clothes and a three story McMansion with his investment banker salary, and she had no reason to rock the boat. Thinking back to all the times he’d been the only one to attend my horseback riding competitions and dance solos, making excuses about Mommy not feeling well, it became clear that he’d been sparing my feelings.

  She just didn’t want to go, and he did his best to make sure I didn’t know it.

  I asked myself a lot how I never noticed before. I’d always known she was a little vain, a little self-absorbed, but that came part and parcel with a lot of my friend’s moms and hadn’t seemed out of place. I guess it boiled down to the willful ignorance of childhood: I simply hadn’t wanted to.

  The last clump of dirt had barely been tossed on his grave before Mom was on the phone with his life insurance provider, sobbing about how she hated to think of money at a time like this, but she did have a daughter to think of, you know. I sat across from her at the dining room table, at once disgusted and, admittedly, a little impressed. If she hadn’t made it as a bored trophy wife, she certainly could have tried her hand at acting.

  I tried to give her the benefit of the doubt at first; everyone grieves different, and maybe focusing on finances and the like was her way. That lasted for all of two days before she started going through Dad’s things.

  The clothes in their giant walk-in closet went first.

  “They’re perfectly good suits, Calla.” Mom grabbed an armful from the rack and dropped it into a nearby box. “Your father would be happy to see them go to someone less fortunate.”

  It might have seemed like a generous gesture, had she not almost immediately filled the space with a brand new wardrobe for herself.

  His photos were the next to start disappearing.

  “I just can’t bear to look at him, Calla,” she said while plucking frames off the mantle. “It’s too painful right now.”

  Another seemingly understandable move for a grieving widow to make. Or it would have been, if she didn’t replaced them all with pictures of herself and her gaggle of equally botoxed and bottle-blonde girlfriends.

  His collection of antique hunting rifles, his golf clubs, the sportscar he’d spent the last two years restoring himself, all disappeared in a month.

  The only signs that my dad had ever lived in the house at all were in my room, tucked away in the back of my closet under my bed. I’d saved his wedding ring, something I was sure would be pawned off if Mom could find it. I’d managed to get my hands on some of his vinyl records too. None of his favorite ones, though; for some reason, those seemed to be the first to go.

  The home I once loved, where I had felt loved, quickly became the world’s largest shrine to my mother.

  Even that might not have been so bad if she hadn’t brought her brother to live with us.

  Unlike my mom, I never cared for Uncle Blake. There was just something about him, a constant ooze of used-car-salesman, that got under my skin and put me off from the get go. Dad tolerated him well enough—he was his brother-in-law, after all. After one too many requests for a loan on this or a “sure thing that just needs a couple thousand dollars for deposit” that, Dad put his foot down and Blake stopped coming around so frequently. It was the only time I ever saw my dad really stand up to Mom.

  Fat lot of good it was doing me now.

  I started looking for any and every excuse to get out of the house. I spent more time with my friends, and at the dance studio, and the gym than ever before. When I wasn’t doing any of those things, I was out jogging.

  Our neighborhood was a semi-rural one: a gated community of equestrians who owned acres of land for their horses. It was peaceful to run along the side of the road, past well-manicured pastures and stylishly rustic barns. A lot of my neighbors had lived there a long time, same as my family, and I was friendly with most of them.

  Mrs. Grady had been an exception, but that changed when I started jogging.

  She was an older woman who lived at the end of the cul-de-sac in what was probably the largest house on the largest piece of property. Unlike a lot of others in the neighborhood, she always looked a little frumpy with fly away gray curls and baggy, comfortable clothing. She had what Mom liked to call a resting bitch face.

  Whenever we saw her, Mom made a point n
ot to wave or even look in her direction, muttering about “such a woman” taking up the most expensive lot.

  It didn’t help that she had two dogs who barked and clawed at the tall wooden fence whenever anyone went by. I never saw them, I don’t think anyone did, but it was generally agreed that they must have been huge and mean from their sound. There was always the slightest hint of a strange smell hanging over her backyard, almost like rotten eggs. Just the kind of pets someone like Mrs. Grady would be expected to own.

  After hearing nothing but negativity spewed toward the older woman, I’d unconsciously internalized a disdain for her. I took a page out of mom’s book and pointedly stared straight ahead whenever I went by her house when she was outside, which was most evenings, as she did all her own yard work. Another oddity that set her apart from the majority.

  It was during one such evening run that I finally had my first real encounter with Mrs. Grady.

  I’d gotten into an argument with Uncle Blake over something small and stupid, and I’d headed out to put some much needed space between us. I was fuming, stomping my feet with every step, distracted by all the nasty names I was coming up with for my uncle in my head. I didn’t notice the pothole in my path until I rolled my ankle in it.

  I went down with a surprised, pained yelp. Behind me, Mrs. Grady’s eight foot fence began to quiver as her dogs pawed at it, barking wildly. They had the deep, bone vibrating barks of very large canines. Of all the lawns to have fallen into, that one probably would have been my last choice.

  “Snicker, Doodle, hush!” a voice snapped from the depths of the rose bushes outside Mrs. Grady’s front door.

  The dogs immediately quieted save for a few whines and the sound of snuffling along the ground.

  The elderly woman disentangled herself from the plants, wiping her gardening gloves on her already dirt stained capris. She saw me sitting in the swale at the edge of her yard and came bustling over with a frown. At first I thought she was going to yell at me for daring to trespass, and I braced myself with a snappy retort if my own.