“I’m not stopping,” Franky told her, “because if she gets out of here, she’s going to tell the police and everyone what she’s learned. And then you and me, Rose, we are going to be sent away for a long time. And where they put us is going to make Saint Julia’s look like a funhouse. I’m not letting that happen to us.”
I looked at my sister’s contorted face and could see tears rolling down her cheeks, shimmering in the yellow light. “I’m sorry, Sylvie,” she said. “I’m so, so sorry. I never wanted it to be this way. I know you won’t believe that, but I didn’t want any of this.”
What would I have told her if I had the chance? That I forgave her? That I understood? That I would make sure things would turn out okay? But none of those things was true in the moment. The most I knew was that I felt trapped there in the basement, since Franky had made her way around from the back of the stairs and was now holding the hatchet from the massacre at that old New Hampshire farm turned inn. I thought of the Locke family my father talked about in his lectures, the bloody end the mother and children all met, the way their souls were said to haunt that old hotel for years afterward.
As if to warn me that she intended the same fate for me, Franky reached up and whacked the hatchet into the stairs. The blade sunk into the wood and she yanked it back out. It caused Rose to let out a shriek.
And then Franky reached up and used the hatchet to smash the lightbulb. In an instant, the basement grew dark and full of more shadows, lit only by the stray shafts of sunlight that made its way through the casement window. I turned and ran toward the partition. Tangled in the blankets, I saw something I had not noticed before. When I pulled back the covers, there it was: my journal, wide open and facedown. There was no time to reach for it, so I went to the sliding glass door just beyond. When I tried to pull it open, nothing moved. I looked down and saw a broomstick wedged at the base to keep the door from opening. I pulled and pulled on the broomstick, but she must have nailed it there, because it would not budge.
When I turned, Franky was watching me calmly since she knew I could not get out that way. The only thing I could think to do was to reach for those Tupperware containers. I picked them up and hurled them at her, then stumbled toward the dental chair, where I reached into a nearby drawer, grabbed a handful of old dental tools, and hurled them at her too. None of it did anything to keep her from coming closer still, moving steadily, as though nothing would ever stop her from attacking me with that hatchet.
I ran to the hulking bookshelf, thinking I could pull it down to get into the crawl space. Penny and the cage wobbled on top as I reached around the back and began pulling. The bookshelf rocked a bit, but was too heavy. One by one, I began throwing those old tomes about demons and possessed girls my age from so long ago at Franky. She just swatted them away with the hatchet while I exhausted myself. When I cleared the shelves of most of the contents, at last I pulled again and this time knocked the entire piece of furniture over. That shelf and the remaining books and the old rabbit cage and Penny went toppling down in a loud clatter. I wasted no time pulling my body up into the gaping hole in the cinder-block wall that led to the crawl space. Only once did I glance back to see that Penny had come free from her cage and landed, lifeless and still, on the cement floor while Franky stood there looking momentarily stunned by it all.
I kept moving, crawling into the darkness, the only light a small rectangle in the distance created by an air vent on the other side of the house. My hands were grimy with dirt by the time I reached that light. I put my fingers on the metal grate and pulled. Who knew how many years it had been there. Long enough that it wiggled the slightest bit but refused to come loose.
Behind me, I could hear grunting as Franky lifted herself into the crawl space too. It made me tug on the grate even more frantically. Over the sound of the shhhh, I heard her drawing closer with every second. Soon, she will be upon me, I told myself, and it will all come to an end there in the darkness beneath our house.
With every last bit of strength I could muster, I pulled on that vent until it came loose. Fast as I could, I slid my body out into the daylight. As my feet were about to slip free, I felt Franky grab at them. But I kicked and wriggled loose before she could get hold. And when I was standing, I turned to see her hands reaching out from the vent. It would not stop her, I knew, but I stomped my foot on her fingers. The force caused her to release a loud howl, and another when I stomped again.