no helpless handprints.
Abbie walked out into the hallway. She had walked into hundreds of empty houses over the years, but she had never felt anything quite like this. The very walls seemed to be holding their breath, waiting, but waiting for what? It had not felt this way a moment before, of that Abbie was sure. She tried to shake the feeling but it would not leave. The best thing to do was finish the inspection quickly and get out of the house.
Unfortunately, all that was left was the basement.
She had been reluctant to go down there before, but with the air riding with expectation she didn’t want to go down. But if she couldn’t even stand to inspect the house, how could she possibly sell it?
She walked purposefully through the house, ignoring the bloodstained carpet and the hand-printed door.
But by ignoring them she became more aware of them. Death, especially violent death, was not easily dismissed.
Rust-brown carpet led down the steps to the closed door. And for some reason Abbie found the closed door menacing. She went down.
She hesitated with her hand almost over the doorknob and then opened it quickly. The cool dampness of the basement was unchanged. It was like any other basement except this one had no windows. Mr. Garner had requested that, no one knew why.
The bare concrete floor stretched gray and unbroken to the gray concrete walls. Pipes from upstairs hung from the ceiling and plunged out of sight under the floor. The sump pump in one corner was still in working order. The water heater was cold and waiting for someone to light it.
Abbie pulled on all three of the hanging chains and illuminated all the shadows away. But the bare lightbulbs cast shadows of their own as they gently swung, disturbed by her passing. And there in the far corner was the first stain.
The stain was small, but considering it had been a five-year-old boy, it was big enough.
There was a trail of stains leading round the back of the staircase. They were smeared and oddly shaped as if he had bled and someone dragged him along.
The last stain was in the shape of a bloody pentagram, rough, but recognizable. A sacrifice then.
There was a spattering on one wall, high up without a lower source. Probably where Phillip Garner had put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
Abbie turned off two of the lights and then stood there with her hand on the last cord, the one nearest the door. That air of expectation had left. She would have thought that the basement where the boy was brutalized would have felt worse, but it didn’t. It seemed emptier and more normal than upstairs. Abbie didn’t know why but made a note of it. She would tell the psychic who would be visiting the house.
She turned off the light and left, closing the door quietly behind her. The stairs were just stairs like so many other houses had. And the kitchen looked cheerful with its off-white walls. Abbie closed the window over the sink; it wouldn’t do to have rain come in.
She had actually stepped into the living room when she turned back. The handprint on the back door bothered her. It seemed such a mute appeal for help, safety, escape.
She whispered to the sun-warmed silence, “Oh, I can’t stand to leave it.” She fished Kleenex from her pocket and dampened them in the sink. She knelt by the door and wiped across the brownish stain.
It smeared fresh and bloody, crimson as new blood. Abbie gasped and half-fell away from the door. The Kleenex was soaked with blood. She dropped it to the floor.
The handprint bled, slowly, down the white door.
She whispered, “Brian.” There was a sound of small feet running. The sound hushed down the carpeted stairs to the basement. And Abbie heard the door swing open and close with a small click.
There was a silence so heavy that she couldn’t breathe. And then it was gone, whatever it was. She got to her feet and walked to the living room. So there’s a ghost, she told herself, you’ve sold houses with ghosts before. But she didn’t pick up the soggy Kleenex and she didn’t look back to see how far down the blood would go before it stopped.
She was out the door and locking it as fast as she could and still maintain some decorum. It wouldn’t help things at all if the neighbors saw the real estate agent