toward my father shows his tearful smile, and he nods.
I step down and begin my descent into the darkness below. Stone walls close me inside a narrow stairwell, the scent of damp earth crinkling my nose. The temperature feels as if it’s dropped about ten degrees, and a sweeping cold sends goosebumps over my skin. It’s a different kind of cold, though. The kind laced with dread. The same unnerving cold I’ve felt every time I’ve stumbled upon something dead.
Dead.
Don’t look away.
Halfway down the staircase, I come to a stop. Something tells me not to go any further. A deep unsettling sensation in my gut.
Don’t look away.
I keep on, down, down, into the rabbit hole of the unknown.
The stone wall gives way to a cellar, and my lantern sends beams of light over a wide expanse of open space. One I recognize the moment it fully arrives in view. One I thought to be nothing but a dream, a reoccurring dream, in which I’m running through dark rooms in an enclosed space, and I wake up with a strange feeling that I’ve been here before.
It’s real. So real, it damn near has its own heartbeat.
By the time I reach the bottom, I’m smack in the center of it, where the ceiling overhead focalizes into a circular mural. A painting of a black-winged creature with mad, glowing eyes, crouched behind one with pale, luminous skin and almost an effeminate warmth in his expression. The depiction of good and evil. I remember, as a child, staring up at it, feeling almost cheated by good, because evil appeared so much more intimidating. Stronger. More passionate in his cause, somehow.
Which probably explains more about me than I care to explore.
The chamber’s center extends out into four rooms, each separated by archways. It’s then I realize I’m smack in the core of where the house’s cruciform design converges. The center of the cross, confirmed by the perfectly aligned second corner across the room, which is separated by yet another archway.
The heart of the house.
No doors. Only long stretches of wall and partitioned rooms, where furniture and shelves and benches fill the spaces.
The secret chamber.
The house on the other side of the walls. The one I read about, used to hide the slaves during the massacre. A place I remember hiding in, as well. For the first time since I’ve set foot in this estate, a sweeping sense of familiarity overcomes me. Perhaps because this other side of the wall is the only space inside the house that hasn’t been mutilated and defaced.
Visuals of running through the rooms. Reading. Drawing. Wandering, as children do. Whispered words through the walls. Laughter.
My feet carry me through one of the archways, just as in memories when I rushed toward the sound of voices. A small square vent in the wall peers in on an empty room. More memories slip through my head.
Brie.
A girl my age sits in one of the chairs of Daddy’s office, and beside her, an older woman.
“She talks at home with me and her sister, but won’t talk to her teachers, or classmates.”
“Your granddaughter suffers from selective mutism.” My father sits on the other side of the desk, talking with the lady. He always talks to strangers in his office. “Likely due to the trauma of what happened to her mother. Do you mind if I speak with you in private for a moment?”
Nodding, the woman leans toward the little girl beside her. “Baby, I’m gonna step in the hallway for a minute with Doctor Pierce. You stay here, okay?”
The little girl nods in response, and the two adults leave her alone, by herself. Daddy says I’m not supposed to say a word while he works, but the way the girl keeps looking back at the door and the worried look on her face tells me she doesn’t like to be alone.
“Psst!”
She whips her head around.
I tug on the vent to pull it away from the wall, as I’ve done before, and shove my hand through, waving it to get her attention. “Down here!” Pulling my hand back through, I watch the girl frown, but she slides out of her chair and crawls across the floor toward me, anyway.
Just short of the wall, she tips her head, looking in.
“Are you one of my Daddy’s patients?”
The girl nods.
“Well, can’t ya talk?”
She nods again, instead of answering.
“I’m Céleste.” I reach a hand through the hole to shake hers, just like Daddy taught me is the polite thing to