What Lies Beneath

Chapter Sixty-Seven: I Love You, Goodbye

In the darkest corners of the house walked a woman, slow and silent. She traced the faded walls with her fingerprints as she waited for her time to come. The wait was treacherous and without any foreseeable end, but still she pressed on.

It was the sound of footsteps that echoed through the doorway that broke her sullen dance. Not who she'd been expecting, but who she needed, nonetheless. The pair of aged feet would carry her the rest of the way. To the day she'd long since dreamt of and planned for. The return of the one she loved dear.

With the next few years leading to weeks ticked on, counted by her imaginary clock, the woman watched as the pair of footsteps grew into a thunderous parade. They raced through the halls looking for sweet escape, only to find that they would never feel the sun again. In the darkened crevasses the woman would listen to their shrill screams as the house laid down its poison.

It was one night in particular that drew her presence closer, on the was danced a shadow reaching for a girl. Her voice nonexistent, but her image almost translucent. She was beautiful and her hair shimmered in the distant light. The woman wished to take a step closer to get a better look at the girl before her, but memories from her past kept her away. There was no place for her in that moment of fright, no comfort for the woman to offer the poor girl. There was more to life than the shadows she dwelled in. The woman craved the light that she would never touch, not while trapped within these walls.

Watching from a distance, the woman's eyes followed the girl and her group of unlikely friends as they searched the house for answers. Answers she knew she could provide, but the house never would. Her will to reach out and help was overshadowed by the house's need for secrets. She was there for one reason, to keep the house calm as it executed its plans. She'd lost dominion over it with the birth of another.

Love was a funny thing, in life she felt surrounded by it. It was that feeling that pushed her onward and cradled her in the nights she felt alone. Love was something she found that didn't suffer from an expiration date when it was true. She'd lost her love for the walls she was now imprisoned behind, but the love for her family remained.

The more the house's plans progressed, the more glee it excreted through its constant shaking. It would crumble down before it would see the fruit of its labor. This was knowledge that would have made the woman smile in the past, but there were other here now trapped within its grasp. Others whose hearts pounded within their chests on the small hope that they would see another day of sunshine outside these walls. She could not dash their hopes so frivolously. Instead she patted the walls and soothed it as she used to. It needed to survive a little longer. Just long enough for her message to reach the girl's ears and for her to listen.

There was something almost magical about watching a plan being executed to perfection. Though the bumps in the road were more like massive potholes, the house still couldn't help but marvel at how things were coming through in the end. Charlie had been a disappointment, but Jason would be its victory.

While outsiders plotted and its victims schemed, it tasted freedom in the air. This would be its final hours as a captive to the world that held it trapped within its, confounds of reality. Soon the world would know the torment that it was sentenced to all those years ago.

Every fixture and tile made of plaster and wood was turned to the battle that raged within its battlefield. A serial killer against children. Laughter built up in its shingles as the battered boy took another blow to the back delivered by its champion. The sound of the air whooshing from the boy's lungs was like music in a quiet amphitheater.

Determination set in the kid's eyes as he tried to suck in more air through his gaping mouth. This would be the end of those who stood in the house's path. Those who wished to deny it its dreams and careful plotting. The house shrunk two feet in anticipation for what was to come next.