One of the wide boards beneath his feet creaked as he shifted, and he started at the sound. He bent lower. A darker stain sat among the splatters. The knot in the floorboard held the distinct shape of a reaching hand. He heard the whistling sound again and turned toward the entrance of the room, expecting to see something standing there. The doorway was empty and the sound stopped. It had come from nearby, but he couldn’t pinpoint its location.
He turned back to the floorboard and looked at the hand embedded in the wood. His grandfather had put his instruments of torture below this board. He had kept them safe like a young boy’s treasures stored out of sight of parents’ prying eyes. He felt his fingertips sliding along the wet edge of the floorboard until they found enough purchase to grip. He lifted. The board moved, its edge coming free of its brethren. Lance pulled it completely out, exposing a long space nearly a foot wide in the floor. He set the board aside and peered into the gap, as Ellen’s bloodied face turned and leered up at him from below.
“Fuck!” Lance fell back from the opening, and heard the whistling of Ellen’s lungs pulling in a weak breath. The initial shock of seeing her there still reverberating in his bones, he leaned back over the space, his mouth opening in a silent scream.
Her legs and arms had been hacked from her torso and stacked beside her like cordwood. He could see the bloody stumps where the ax had cleaved muscle and bone alike. She had been stuffed into the space like a seamstress’s dummy, and somehow she was still alive. Her eyes bulged at him and her mouth worked soundlessly. The skin of her face looked waxen in the dim light.
“Ellen,” he whispered, watching her eyes blink. Her ruined torso began to spasm within the cramped confines of the hole and Lance reached down to try to pull her up from below. Her skin was sweat-slicked and cold, and as he struggled to find a way to pull her out, she stiffened and her face once more turned toward his. Her mouth opened again and her eyebrows went up. He leaned closer to her and waited. Waited, and began to cry as he heard the air expel from her lungs and saw a final shudder shake her body.
Lance released his hold from around her narrow waist and leaned back, his gorge finally rising in his throat. He choked it down and tried to breath, but the smell of blood was overpowering. It even held sway over the stench of gasoline that began to enter the room. The horror before him made his already taxed mind slip sideways, close to madness. He had caressed the body that now lay in the floor before him. He had held the hands at the end of the arms that now lay in a heap along with the legs below them.
With trembling hands, he reached out to replace the board and cover what was left of Ellen. He couldn’t stand to see her this way anymore. The board had almost slid shut over the space when he saw the coil of a belt and folds of leather tucked into the far corner opposite Ellen’s body. He hesitated and reached down to grasp the sheaths. He could hear the padded clunking of the knife handles bumping together as he drew the belt and its contents out into the open air. He set the board down, covering Ellen completely.
He stared at the belt of knives sitting on the floor beside him and wondered which one had killed Aaron’s parents years ago. He wondered which one Erwin had grasped to part the flesh of his wife, and then his son. He wondered which one would slide through his own skin and end his life.
Gripping the belt as he rose, Lance walked across the tacky floor to the chair and hung the knives from the right armrest. He eased himself onto the cold surface of the chair and sat slumped forward, his elbows resting on his knees, his face in his hands.
A tumult of emotions coursed through him as he sat where so many others had before him. He imagined Aaron’s face, contorted with rage and sorrow before he pulled the trigger to end Erwin’s life. Then his mother appeared, her features obscured with the distance time created, but the feeling of her hands on his shoulders and her words still so clear, like they had been hours ago.
She faded into an image of John, staring out over the lake and the weight of his secrets hanging on his kind face. Then it was Ellen. He had loved her laughter and her energy, untouched by tragedy. The memory faded before he could see what lay beneath the floor a few feet away, and Mary replaced it.