By J. L. Thurston

She scrambled on her knees away from me as though I’d cut her. I watched her in stunned silence as she screamed and pulled her shirt off. Blood was pouring down her back from three long gashes.

The floorboards by the windows began to creak. Shirtless, bleeding, Nyla ran to the front door. I grabbed Jane, now screaming in a confused wail, and nearly forgot to move around the hole in the floor in the entryway. Nyla was twisting the knob, crying, making sounds I’d never heard people make before. Terror sounds. The door wasn’t opening. I pushed her aside and tried the knob. It wouldn’t turn.

Nyla was babbling. She was going on about the shadow creature and how it was going to kill us all. Jane was crying, pulling at my hair and my shirt. I felt like she was trying to get away.

I didn’t know what to do. I could hardly breathe. There was a tension around my ribs that wouldn’t let me inhale all the way.

Slowly, the once-hidden door in the entry hallway opened. The door had been locked. The door had been hidden behind a cabinet until Nyla’s brothers helped me move it.

I held my breath. I thought for a wild moment that my mother was going to come out from behind the door.

A smell filled my senses. Pungent, sharp, brackish. It was the smell of mold and dust and dead things. Nyla gagged through her sobs. I walked forward. She begged me to return to her.

I was sleepwalking. Dreaming. I was completely detached from my body. I knew I held my baby in my arms, and that I was supposed to protect her, but I also wanted to see where the door led. Part of me already had a solid guess.

Wooden steps leading down into the basement were illuminated by a light bulb on a chain. Hanging just above the bulb, tied by what was left of his tail, was Scarecrow. His single eye bulged. He had died with a look of surprise on his unfortunate face.

Pressing my wrist to my nose, I wished I didn’t have to smell the stench of my most unlucky little kitty. Part of me was horrified for him. Part of me knew this basement held more than just a dead cat.

I could see a table from the top of the stairs once I tore my eyes away from poor Scarecrow. The table wasn’t large. Probably one of those foldable card tables. It was draped with a black cloth. White sigils were smeared upon it. A bowl of salt, bundles of herbs, and crystals were placed strategically on the table.

Willow, don’t forget to say the blessing.

A decorative knife gleamed in the lights. The athame. A witch’s knife, for cutting and crushing ingredients. There was a bundle on the table. Familiar though I’d never seen it like that before. It was a small bundle, wrapped in black velvet cloth. Even from the top of the stairs I could see the smudges, telltale signs that at one point the bundle had been wet and the viscous fluid had seeped all around it on the table and dried.

It was the source of the worst of the smell.

I was moving forward. Jane was fighting to get away, Nyla was begging for me to come back. I was at the bottom of the stairs before she raised enough courage to follow me. She yanked on my arm. Her hands were cold. I thought that was odd, considering how hard her heart must have been pumping. Real fear had struck her cold. Her face was ashen. A small thought inside me wondered if she would pass out.

I was in shock. I see that now. But at the time, I could do nothing but follow my body as it operated on its own.

I was reaching toward the bundle on the table. My mother’s altar. Her sacrificial place.

Just the legs of the spider, Willow. It’s best to pluck them while the creature is still alive.

The basement door shut. I turned, feeling as though I was waking from a dream. Aunt Pat was there. I hadn’t even heard her come in.

Nyla was thanking her endlessly. “Thank God, you’re here. Thank God, thank God.”

Aunt Pat went down the steps, eyes going from the bundle on the altar to me, to Jane, to Nyla. Sweet, strong, smart Nyla. She was better than me. She knew what was best for us. She ran up the steps and tried to get out. But Aunt Pat had locked the basement door. I watched her slide the old skeleton key into her jeans pocket.

I was cold. So cold with all my cold thoughts. I could hear the floorboards above our heads in that dank, smelly basement creak, creak, creaking. But Nyla was not going to roll over and die. She ran to Aunt Pat. Her color had returned. She was shouting, demanding to be let out. Demanding to go home.

Aunt Pat was already holding the athame. She plunged it into Nyla’s chest, using the same motion a boxer would use to punch. It hit Nyla so hard she fell down, her face slackening.

I screamed. I almost dropped Jane. Aunt Pat ripped the baby from my arms.

“You stay right there or I’ll slit her throat!” she shouted at me.

I realized I was saying, “Okay, okay, okay.”

Confusion. Utter, complete confusion. My mind couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing. I was trying to focus, trying to think. Aunt Pat had killed Nyla. She pulled the athame from my dear, sweet Nyla’s chest and held it to Jane’s tiny, vulnerable neck. Nyla’s blood was all over Pat’s hands, all over Jane’s onesie.

I shivered. I watched Pat lower Jane to the altar. Pat’s fingers smeared blood on Jane’s face.

Sacrifices must be anointed with blood, Willow. Never forget that.

But Pat was going back to Nyla, pushing her fingers into my sweet Nyla’s wound and rubbing the blood on her own face.

“I anoint my flesh,” Pat said, returning to the altar. “So, I prepare this vessel for your taking, Lord. Possess me and give me what I ask. In return, I will give you the life of this mother, the one who’s infant you’ve already claimed.”

Pat reached forward and pulled the smudged velvet cloth away. I already knew what was there. The poor, tiny thing. Green and blackened flesh, falling away from the delicate little bones. The largest part of it was the head, still somewhat discernable. I could still see tufts of her baby fine blonde hair.

Creak, creak, creak. On the basement stairs. Pat was grunting. A shadow passed through the room. I didn’t care. I couldn’t look away from the baby’s corpse, right next to the living baby, now beet-faced from her unanswered wailing.

The shadow passed over the walls to Pat. For a moment, she stood in total darkness, enveloped by the blackness. She was statuesque, arms out, absorbing the demon that haunted the house.

I knew so many things, so many cold thoughts. I knew that the living infant crying on the altar was not my Jane. The rotting corpse was my baby. I knew that Pat had killed her, sacrificed her, and she needed me to complete her offering to the demon.

I also knew that if I just stood there and let it happen, the living baby would be the next to die.

I rushed forward and wrapped my arms around Pat’s waist. We hit the floor so hard I heard her head smack against the cement. My fingers were in her pocket, extracting the skeleton key. I snatched the crying baby from the altar and pushed myself up the stairs with all my strength.

I needed my keys. They were in my purse on the living room floor. I almost fell into the hole I’d created in the floor, but I dodged it in time. I grabbed my purse and fled to the door. The knob wouldn’t turn.

An inhuman scream erupted from the basement.

It almost sounded like Pat.

I slammed my shoulder into the door. It wouldn’t budge. The giant oval window was my only escape. I pulled my shirt over the crying baby and threw myself through the glass. A thousand cuts slashed across my flesh, and I felt several shards dig deep inside me as I hit the porch floor.

Cold night air blessed me. I was on my feet, running across the yard, towards my truck.

My mind flashed a mental image of every horror movie I’d ever seen when the victim, unable to function properly enough to hold her keys steady, would drop them at the most inopportune moment.

I was not that victim. I was in the truck in a heartbeat. It started right away, and my foot slammed on the pedal so hard that I threw gravel all over the house on my way to the road.

That was the last time I ever saw the house on Deer Creek Road.

***

I did not go to Nyla’s funeral.

I did, however, have to go to court. Several times. The sensational case of the Witch Woman took the nation by storm. While America followed the news feed, I had to watch evidence be presented against the woman who raised me. I had to watch as authorities did everything they could to locate Jane’s real family. I had to testify when all I wanted to do was slit my wrists.

My baby was dead. She had died soon after I gave her to Pat. I was never told exactly what day it would have been, but I do know that it was after my mother’s death. Think about it. That means Pat had gone to the house, she had stepped over her twin sister’s dead body, she had gone down into the basement, and she had sacrificed my baby to a demon.

Then, when I called three months later for my baby back, she panicked and kidnapped someone else’s child. Why? To buy time. To get me in the house. Because the baby wasn’t enough. She needed the blood of the mother, too.

She didn’t tell anyone this. In fact, after that fateful night in the basement, Pat never spoke again. Well, except that one time to me. Hold on, I’m getting there.

The detectives figured out a lot of it, but I knew the rest. I knew that my mother and Pat had conjured a demon. I knew the demon wanted blood. I knew that my life and Jane- the real Jane- would have been payment enough for something big. Pat would have been given a demon’s blessing. Riches, health, magic.

I knew all those things because I was born of a witch, and I was raised of a witch.

And I really hate witches.

But, at the behest of my therapist, I did attempt to speak to Pat once. About a year after she’d been sentenced to the nuthouse prison, I paid her a visit. Only one reporter had found out about it, thank God, but she and her cameraman followed me in. They were buzzed right passed security and allowed as close as Pat’s room door. They couldn’t be let in with all their equipment, but they forced a microphone on me and recorded through the glass. You’ve seen the footage. It’s grainy because the little triangles in the window kept drawing the camera’s focus.

You can’t see from that footage the bugs that lined the walls, but you can hear the tech say, “We just can’t get them to stop coming in. She… calls them.”

Pat never looked at me, that much is clear. But I still could see her eyes. They weren’t Pat’s eyes. I stood in there for a few minutes, breathing, staring, trying to prevent myself from rushing forward and wrapping my hands around her throat. I completely forgot why my therapist said this would be good for me.

This was the last time Pat ever spoke. “Help,” she said. “Help me.”

My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth.

“It’s still in me,” she breathed. That part was unclear on the microphone, but to this day I can still hear her words as though she just said them. “We’re trapped. I can’t get it out. I didn’t finish it, so it’s stuck. He won’t let me sleep.”

That was all I could bear. It was time to lower to coffin containing the remains of my former life and move on.

The last thing she ever said, and this got picked up by the mic but because we were opening her room door the camera missed it and that’s why everyone said it’s faked, was, “See you in your dreams.”

It wasn’t the words that got everyone obsessively streaming and discussing the audio. It was the way she said it. The voice wasn’t human at all. No one has ever heard a sound like it. Except me. It was just like the scream I heard from the basement that night. It was the demon’s voice.

So, that’s it. That’s what I went through. It’s been a while, but I still see the therapist. I’m on enough pills to numb most of it, but there are many nights that the cold thoughts won’t go away and I’m stuck with them. Sometimes it helps to light incense. Sometimes it helps to burn lavender. Really, all I care about, all I want you listeners to do for me is, when you go visit the house on Deer Creek Road, call for Bones. If anyone sees him, or catches him, please bring him to me. I really miss my dog.

Thank you, dear reader, for following along this dark and twisted path. May your attic be silent, and may you never feel those soulless eyes as they look upon your sleeping face