CHAPTER THREE
1779 Words
CHAPTER THREE
The back door led from the mudroom to the basement steps.
The hall was filled with old pine needles, a weathered sleeping bag, and what looked like piles of rubbish and waste. Ilse ignored all of this, ignored the hall, even ignored the rooms at the end of the corridor.
Her eyes fixated on the doorway leading to the basement. Just then, she heard a creak, and something tapped her back.
Ilse yelped, spinning around, but realized a second later, hand to her chest, that the breeze had caught the back door, slamming it shut.
She shivered, breathing heavily, and turned again, not wanting to expose her back to the old house. The basement door was bent and splintered. Half of it was missing as if pried off with a crowbar. In the dusty outline of the wall, Ilse spotted where the worn pattern of locks and bolts had once situated. These were long gone, the metal likely scavenged. The outline of the deadbolt, and the screw holes, though, were still visible against the rotten frame.
Ilse stared at the remnants of the lock, facing the basement steps which led down into darkness. Cautiously, with one trembling finger, she reached out towards the light switch and flicked it.
Nothing.
She frowned and tried again... But the lights were dead. Her father, she knew, had often used his own generator to power the house. He hadn't trusted the government. He hadn't wanted any electricians or service people snooping around his home when he wasn't there.
Ilse stood in the old, rotten, dark house, peering towards the shadowy basement. If she propped open the back door and the basement door, the sunlight over the lake might provide some illumination.
She shivered, still staring towards the basement as she reached out, carefully, pushing the back door open once more. Using a thick branch leaning against the steps, she propped the door open. Then, grunting, and sending particles of dust blossoming in the air, she pulled open the basement door fully, allowing the sun to shine through.
Now, the dark, bleak, stone steps leading to the basement were illuminated by streaks of sunlight. The glow seemed so out of place against these steps.
Still, she'd come here for a reason. No backing out now.
"Doss. Eleven victims. Blackouts, depression. Poison.”
Ilse stepped into the basement, breathing in for four seconds, out for four. Another memory flashed through her. This time the sound of her father's footsteps against these very steps. The sound of fierce, desperate whispering. The quick motion in the basement as children scampered for their sleeping bags or ducked behind the couch.
Usually, the first kid he saw got it worse. Sometimes, though, it didn't matter.
Teeth set, she took the next step, then another. She emerged in the basement, the only light cast by the propped door behind her and the faint glimmer of sunlight.
Fear faded slowly as she stood in the old basement. The ceiling felt lower than she remembered it. The couch was gone, as were the sleeping bags. No sign of the cages either, or the old bookcase where all their study materials had been kept.
Mostly just trash, and some rubble and what looked like the skeleton of a dead raccoon in one corner. The scent of the creature, though, had long since faded, the maggots and bacteria having done their work.
What had she expected to find down here?
Memories? Clues?
To the accomplice? To her father? To what had happened all those years ago?
Perhaps all of it.
She didn't move further into the basement, though, somehow feeling rooted to the bottom of the stairwell. One hand braced against the concrete wall, finding some sort of solace in the rough grain of the surface.
The wooden rail pressed against her ribs, also providing a strange sort of tactile comfort.
She glanced around the abandoned space, her eyes tracing towards the window in the wall across from the stairs. The same window she'd wriggled through nearly two decades ago.
Now, though, the basement seemed so much smaller than she remembered. So much more...
Dull.
What a strange thought, but there it was.
Nothing stood out, just trash, just old leaves that had been swept down the steps by breeze and muddy boots. The raccoon skeleton didn't even belong here.
Why had she come?
Some sort of penance? A desire to self-punish?
Ilse breathed softly, glancing around a moment longer, a slow prickle spreading up her spine. More cobwebs down here. For a moment, she felt her skin crawl, and she slapped at her arm, worried a spider had found its way beneath her sleeve.
At the mere thought, now, everything began to prickle and itch. She scratched at her head, her cheek, wincing and shifting a bit, shaking her arms rapidly, grateful no one was there to witness the unusual motion.
The prickling sensation gave way as she scanned the scattered leaves, the old trash and rubble; for a moment, there beneath a pile of what looked like charred sticks, she thought she spotted something glint.
Loath to leave the stairs, Ilse frowned, peering closer.
And just then, she heard a bang. The light from upstairs suddenly cut short, plunging the basement into darkness.
Something skittered in the corner of the room, moving towards her.
Ilse screamed and spun, scrambling back up the stairs with no desire for decorum. Panting, desperate, she yanked at the railing, propelling herself forward.
Memories came fast now. Days... days... days… locked in darkness. No sunlight, no sound. Days in darkness. Alone. So alone. The cages—the cages with the tarp. No sight, no sound. Only quiet. Sometimes... the worst punishments led to the shed.
More darkness. As a child, sobbing, pleading, but her voice only met by the creak of wood and the whisper of leaves above.
Alone. Darkness.
Alone. Alone.
Days.
Ilse yanked at the rail again, trying to take three steps in one lunge. But the rotten wood broke. She screamed, stumbling forward suddenly and nearly collapsing through the rail back into the basement. She caught herself, barely, her arm scraping against rough, splintered wood, her hand slamming into concrete.
A prickle of pain along her arm, along her cheek and up her wrist.
Gasping, trembling, she tried to rise once more.
Another bang. The door above, caught by the wind. Sun streamed back through, warm against her cheeks, illuminating where she cowered, trembling on the middle step, the platform between the escape and the dungeon.
She lay there for a moment, breathing heavily, her fear dissipating like raindrops beneath sunlight.
No sound of movement below her. No further motion. Just a mouse, or a leaf caught in a breeze.
Why had she come to this cursed place?
She shivered, her chest heaving, her sweater now slick against her form from sweat. She gritted her teeth, panting, pushing aside memories as best she could, or, at the very least, cataloging them to be recollected later.
She got shakily to her feet, using the wall to push up now and avoiding the shattered rail, splintered sections dangling on either side and jutting up like spears.
“Coming here was a mistake,” she murmured out loud. Not because anyone else could hear her, but almost as if the home itself, the basement itself, deserved some sort of response.
Even as she said it, turning to hurry back up the final steps, her eyes were attracted once more by the small pile of kindling.
She frowned, staring, the light once again over her shoulder, illumining the basement.
And there... amidst ashen sticks and old broken shelves, she spotted...
Her eyes narrowed... She took, against every instinct, a step back down the stairs, back towards the basement. Another hesitant step.
Another.
She paused in front of the pile of kindling.
Bending over, her hand trembling and still numb from where it had scraped the stairs, she slowly picked up...
A doll? No. A half-broken tchotchke of a little child lost in the rubble. A tiny, porcelain thing, with blotted features from a poor paint job. Her hand still shaking, she slowly picked up the collectible, staring at it. Half broken, part missing, streaked with dust and mold...
And yet...
Another memory. One of the few smiles she remembered on her father's lips. She frowned, her fingers closing slowly around the collectible. Yes... He used to love these things, hadn't he?
Her father had collected the dolls. Her pulse quickened now as she remembered something else.
On the few occasions they'd gone into town, sometimes, very rarely, she'd been allowed to visit the town over with him. Also left in the truck, also locked away from actually stepping foot in society.
But they would stop out front of an antique store where her father would look for more such tchotchkes... Yes... What had that store's name been again?
She frowned, slowly pocketing the doll, and turning back towards the stairs.
That was right... Vogel Antiquitäten. She could still picture the peeling white letters against that dusty sign...
Her father had loved those tchotchkes...
Perhaps Freiburg was more modernized, the stores changed. But an antique store? The longevity was in the name itself.
Was Vogel Antiquitäten still in operation?
What could it hurt to check? She still didn't quite now if any of this was worth it...
But what could it hurt to visit a small antique store? Just to stop by... Peruse some items. Perhaps even talk to the owner and see if they remembered anything from twenty years ago.
She left the doll in her pocket, removing her trembling fingers and then, with ever quickening steps, made her way back up the stairs. She paused, glancing along the mudroom, down the hall to the first floor of the house. Her expression flickered into a frown. She winced, taking a flurry of hesitant steps forward, lest she lose her nerve, before pausing between an open frame leading to a kitchen, and another to a bedroom.
But like the basement, the rooms were empty. Even the wallpaper looked to have been peeled off. Only dust and dirt and refuse. She stared at the empty kitchen counters, the missing metal sink. One of the windows was smashed above the counters... Dust and dirt and forgotten memories. Nothing upstairs either. Nothing to jog her memory—she'd rarely been upstairs, anyway. Ilse stared down the hall a moment longer, towards the open front door, and the scattered pine needles, and then she clenched her fists, turned and hurried out the back door, leaving the old, dilapidated dungeon behind her.
- Writer
