nightly she prayed
he’d stay away,
but childhood demons,
come back to play.
A panel of wood, followed by another one, higher than the last.
Up. And up. Up again.
Framed by two leering walls of stone.
They’re just stairs. I keep telling myself that. Steps. A path to follow. That’s all.
“What is it?” Gowan whispers behind me.
What is it about these stairs that makes him lower his voice? Something about them reduces volume, and that can’t be good.
I shake my head, unable to speak.
“We have to talk to her.”
I put my hand on the banister, but my whole body is rigid with tension. The stairs seem a mile high—they might as well be a mountain. I start to hyperventilate.
“Sill…”
“I can’t.”
I can’t breathe—I can’t breathe! No—nononono I can’t, I can’t—don’t make me—“You can. We have to.”
He takes my hand, and the spell is broken. I move because he is with me.
Step
by
step.
On either side of us, the roots twist and dangle with the stairs and the walls, and when the door swings open, it is to an infestation. Roots have bent and twisted their way into the house, draped along the floor, the windows, the walls—huge, gnarly, strong. Cathy lies trapped in the middle.
She looks like a princess in a fairy tale gone wrong. Her hair, sun-kissed wheat, is splayed over the roots and vines that have her in a stranglehold, choking her body into a smaller shape than it should be. She should be crying out, but she is smiling, a glassy glint in her eyes.
“Silla,” she says, tears in her words but not in her eyes. “Oh, my Silla. At last.”
I fall to my knees with the shock of it. “Auntie Cath…”
“This is…” Cath tries to take a breath, nice and deep, but the roots are so big across her chest, slowly crushing, getting tighter. “… all your fault.”
I choke on the blow. “How? How is this my fault? What did I do?”
“All… your… fault.”
“I didn’t bring the Creeper Man here. You did that, didn’t you? When you were a girl. Tell me the truth!”
“He was our protector… but we were wrong.” She gives a tiny squeak as the roots tighten.
“We have to get her out of there,” Gowan tells me, and he runs from the room. I hear his feet thudding down the steps and I hate that he’s left me here alone.
“Tell me about the Creeper Man. Tell me what you and Mam did when you were girls. Please, Cath, please!”
“We… made a man. From clay and twine and shadow. We… made him in the woods. We summoned a p-protector.”
“But he wasn’t a protector, was he? Was he?”
The slightest shake of her head, and another tiny intake of breath. “Not a protector. A demon. A curse. Anne…”
“Anne? Who’s Anne?”
“Sister. Died. In the woods. Not a protector. A”—another gasp for air—“tormentor.”
“How is that my fault? If you summoned him when you were children, how could I be to blame?”
A tear squeezes out of her eye as the roots, once again, tighten, pulling her toward them like a monster with many arms drawing her into its chest. I hear her ribs crack, and she winces, coughs.
“Silla… it’s going to happen soon. This is all for you.”
Gowan’s feet thunder toward us, and he has brought the ax. He doesn’t even pause, just roars, the ax high, and then brings it down full-strength on the roots holding Cath’s body.
She looks up at him with increasingly vacant eyes. “I know you,” she wheezes. “Don’t… I? But… different. Is… it… different…?”
“Yes,” he says, and somehow that one word calms her.
“Good,” she wheezes. “Oh, good.”
She fades off and her gaze slides to the side.
Cath smiles at me suddenly then, as Gowan chops, and the roots pull her ever farther from us, tangling around her body like some twisted version of a Grimm fairy tale.
“Cathy!” I cry, reaching out for her.
Her fingers are almost gone now, but I can still see a sliver of her face.
“Oh, Silla,” she whispers, and for the first time in years, she sounds like the aunt I came to when I was fourteen. “I’m so sorry.”
And then she is gone.
Nothing but a curling mass of chipped-at roots remains.
There is no sign of Cath now, not even a hair tangled in the roots. I should be horrified to see them moving and bending like no root should do, but instead I am furious.
I spin on my heel and head for the stairs, the flame on my candle nearly going out with the force of my turn. Gowan grabs my free hand.
“Where are you going?”
“If my own family won’t help me,” I snap, “then I’ll deal with the devil.”
I rip my hand from his and rush down the stairs, heading for the entrance hall. To hell with this. To hell with this house, this curse, this nightmare.
I stand at the very edge of the hole, my hands balled into fists at my sides. “Tell me what’s going on!” I yell into the depths. My voice travels into the space but doesn’t return.