At first I didn't even realize what was happening. They started so slowly I never really stood a chance at protecting myself. Caring for others has been my role since I was young. My parents left me with my illness riddled Great Aunt. Taking care of her was the sole reason she didn't just leave me outside to starve to death. Her own kids left her and never looked back. If she gave me a roof and the occasional meal I would have to keep her at least alive enough to put the checks in her bank account. Living with that evil old hag was significantly easier than raising my parents. My aunt at least looked at our relationship as transactional, I'm not convinced my parents ever even thought of me.
When he started coming over the extra help was annoying and unneeded. Personally I never even let him into the house he sketched me out so badly. But it was like he knew my aunt was weak for tall demons that really needed to learn how to wash properly. He made me sick with all the lies he told her to worm his way inside. She most definitely was not quite the catch and a delight to be around. She was crude and coughed up black sticky stuff since she was a lifelong smoker. She spat it into this poor old rag that was kept inside her housecoat pocket. I'd never seen her wash it, every night it was pulled from its crusty cave and set out to dry till she needed it later in the night.
She had let him inside the house, apparently it was an emergency. He was in desperate need of something she just couldn't remember when she retold the story to me. After knowing he had tarnished my space with his precious I could not rest inside the house anymore. All of the deranged possibilities of what he could've done while here kept me up at night. I looked for anything odd or missing since he visited and came up empty. That didn't stop my guts from screaming at me.
The old bag thought I was just paranoid and jealous she was giving her attention to someone besides me. Which couldn't be farther from the truth, I did my best to avoid her. I applied for home carers for her, begged a few even, none would take her. She had been put on some list to warn workers not to take these jobs. Not that I can blame them, I'm also trying to be anywhere but under her thumb. The physical work I can handle just fine, the cleaning of the home and her was no issue. Her words and actions were enough to make anyone cold inside. If his attention was what she wanted then fine. He can clean her and fix all her problems like I had done. But I had a feeling that wasn't what he wanted from us. Too bad I didn't want to stick around to find out his plans.
It was such a wild coincidence when he started to show up at the only place she ever left the house to go to. He had newly found the righteous path and decided this church was the correct fit for him. This church was a long drive from our house. It was once a week and the only way to get her outside of the yard, I tried to make it happen. She was going to be married here once according to her. Left at the altar was one of her sad stories she told when someone else was having a special moment. Ever since that day she has been coming all the way out here for church just in case he had a good reason for not showing up and wants her back. The church would have been very hard to stumble upon like he said he did. It is nowhere near a town like he said he was wandering through and there was no beautiful choir singing like he choked up over. My Aunt was the only one that sang there since the preacher's wife died and she was tone deaf.
A few weeks after he had been invited in, he began to drive her out to church. She even let him stop after for a meal on the way home. In all the years I'd been with her not once had we been out to eat, he gets to in a matter of weeks. Still I suffered quietly continuing to perform my chores that kept that ill mannered virus of an Aunt alive. At this point I'm sure she didn't even remember how to care for herself. It had been years since she had looked at her own medicines or had to prepare her own injections. She was unsure of what ailments she even had currently. Everything was done by me, paying bills, buying groceries according to her health conditions, making sure the trash goes out on trash day. Everyday her only responsibility was to be the legal adult, she barely did that.
John began to bring food home for me after they came back on Sundays. Allegedly it made him feel guilty to not include me on these trips. I pressed him to see if my Aunt also had similar feelings about the situation to which he only awkwardly chuckled and said of course. That was his last chance and he failed miserably. He wasn't even a good liar, weird usually my Aunts friends are great at lying. My Aunt would never admit she liked me let alone missed me when she was away.
I never ate any of the food he brought for me, I didn't want to owe him anything. Since John was around so often the unease I felt when he was around lessened. Or at least I noticed it less. I didn't engage back with him when he tried to have a conversation, I felt my Aunts eyes blazing through my head. I knew better than to try to be friends with the people she had around. They were never good people and she made sure I knew they were for her only. Selfish little worms like me do not deserve friends, she said, apparently no sensible person would dare associate with the likes of me. Speaking to her friends was a direct disrespect to all the work she had put into hiding my worthless existence from the rest of the world. John had tried saying my Aunt spoke highly of me in church and to the community, that I had chosen a better path than my good for nothing parents.
Now this was something I was interested in. Not only did she never say anything nice about me, but she never brought up my parents to anyone. The only thing she hated more than me was them. She hated that she had to take me. She never said that to anyone though with the way they were treating her. To them she was a savior for scooping me up and taking me away from the drug filled alley they found us living in. I didn't know how much I would miss the bitter cold nights and bites from rodents. My parents may not have cared but at least they didn't go out of their way to make me suffer.
I wanted him to keep telling me things so I changed my behavior. I warmed myself up a little so he would feel more comfortable bringing me tidbits of her conversations. Maybe I could even get him to ask some things I want to know without her being suspicious. For the first time in a while I was excited for the next day, excited for the next thing John would tell me about my life. The days passed slowly when I had to wait for new bits of gossip from him. The thrill of new information plucked me from my usual boredom.
I invited him in. She had left for an appointment, one of the rare ones they wouldn't let minors attend. I asked John the previous day if he was interested in sharing a meal at our kitchen table. I should've pulled back when I saw how excited he got. I should've said oh wait I'm sorry my Aunt said I must come to this appointment to help her with whatever. Instead I set a time and lied that I looked forward to the occasion. I made the food too hot to eat to force room for John to talk. I'd learned he loved to hear himself talk. He would talk about anything, even if he knew nothing about what he was saying. Thankfully he was as good at listening as he was talking. I showed him pieces of my past life so he would be naturally curious and ask my Aunt questions I couldn't. I let him have a preview of my situation with my Aunt. John was more sympathetic than I had expected. He usually wasn't one for decent conversation, most topics were chit chat at best. Then sometimes recently he seemed like he cared about what I had to say. These interactions were noted in the back of my mind. He just as quickly switch into conversation in favor of her, filling my mouth with a bitter taste that I hated to swallow.
With barely any prompting John began to word vomit all over the table in the kitchen. All useless nonsense I couldn't care less about, I already knew my Aunt was depressed and lonely. That was her own fault for being a nasty person. I wanted to know things I could use against her and to help me escape from her. She held knowledge about my life above my head as leverage, she knew I'd never stay if I had a choice. With my manipulation of John I would learn more than I wanted to know. Things that would rid me of her forever, like she’s a wanted bank robber from thirty years ago with a hefty reward for whoever turned her in.
John said that for all his prodding my Aunt seemed to talk only about was the man that never came back for her. He was worried she was projecting her feelings from her past onto him and thought she might not be well mentally. There was no question she was a mental mystery but lately she was even bothering me with the frequency of her long lost love stories. John seemed to think there was more to look into. I tried to convince him of her disagreeable demeanor no matter what was happening , he wasn't having it. Then he showed me something I had not noticed my entire time here. One of the rusty tokens of her past she kept in the cabinet above the sink was a key to the basement door I had never realized was a door. It had no knob and looked like a panel of wood until you moved a ceramic plate that hid a small metal lock. Seeing my reaction he hesitated to share how he had learned more about this house than I knew.
My Aunt had not shown him the door or the key. John was nosy just like I thought. He had been snooping and learning our house throughout his visits here. Now I needed to know what else he had found. Later I would ask why he looked so closely at the house. He said he hadn't used the key yet, he wanted to know if my Aunt even knew about the door. He thought she was unaware of the oddities of the house. That someone before her set this place up like a haunted house with traps ready to take victims. She must've done a number on him for him to be so unaware of how evil she is. She probably did everything herself out of spite for anyone who was ever in her house. If the house was full of insidious traps waiting to be sprung I would have found one a long time ago, right?
I made him show me the keys and hold the plate to the side while I unlocked it. It clicked easily and John barely touched it with his finger and it started to open. No creak or dust, someone used this often. It led to a tiny pantry with a single stack of shelves against the back wall. Dusty canning supplies were stacked haphazardly waiting to fall to the floor. The shelves held a thick dust but the floor was spotless. Someone was hiding this place just to clean the floor and collect dusty lids for caning? John stepped inside to poke around, looking from the shelves to the walls then back again. We looked a few minutes then decided it was useless and closed the door before we were caught.
Seeing my down face must've made John feel like my expectations weren't met. He said he would keep looking around and let me know what he finds. He doesn't understand our dynamic, but he wants to help my aunt and I grow closer. He shared that he wishes he had been closer to his family before they died. I feigned a smile like he had figured me out. I thanked him and suggested whenever my aunt has these appointments that we meet for lunch and to sneak around. He seemed content when he left, no tension or suspicion that I could sense from him.
That was somehow my lucky day. The appointment did not go well and my aunt had to stay longer than we thought, a creepy call from the doctor somehow made me feel giddy. They would try to get her home quickly, but I insisted they take their time to properly check her out. After our conversation they were convinced she was worse than they thought. For my conscience to be clear I had to explain her new symptoms. She stayed in the hospital that night. I was all alone for the first time at night in that house. Once it was dark I thought it would be safe enough to go back to that door in the kitchen.
The key wasn't in the cabinet of rust. It wasn't left in the lock or on the table next to John's seat. I didn't remember seeing him take it or put it back. I was frustrated and huffing around wasting minutes looking for that key. My heart started to sink with disappointment while I imagined my Aunt coming home in the morning and getting rid of the key. When I remembered he handed it to me. It was in the sweater I had been wearing to feel more covered when John was here, I never liked the way his eyes seemed to watch my body. Thankfully, the old key was inside the pocket and I could breathe normally again. I floated over to the wall with the ceramic plates and took the pale blue one with little yellow flowers off to expose the keyhole.
Earlier I had noticed something John seemed to miss. One side of the shelves was clean. Dust free and stuck out from the wall in a way you could only see when I wasn't blocking the kitchen light. It gleamed when I had moved over to allow more light in. I moved back and watched to see if he had noticed it. He hadn't, I was free to come back on my own and see what my Aunt had hidden away. I would come back with John once I had thoroughly examined whatever was behind the shelf. Suddenly I felt a pit in my stomach, technically my Aunt had never done anything to cause my demise. I felt the urge to turn around and just go back to bed. Whatever lame secret she had hidden in here shouldn't interest me anyway.
The only thing is I was always with her and had never seen her go in there. She never opened cabinets either. I did everything for her. She couldn't bathe herself no way she was cleaning the floor and moving a wood panel around to sneak about. As far as I knew she was the only one to ever even live in this house. The man that built it moved to a warmer spot before the house was done and my Aunt bought it for half its worth. She didn't need the extra house to deal with anyway she said. The unfinished section was torn down and she had thorny rose bushes planted in the spot to cover the ruined ground. She never had an interest in being outside and had a phobia of dirt therefore no need for a garden.
I used the light from the kitchen to find the spot that stuck out on the shelf. I slide my fingers in the gap finding a grip to pull it back. Only I couldn't, the shelves wouldn't budge no matter how hard I pulled or pushed against them. Even a screwdriver stuck behind the shelf couldn't pop it open. I was missing something, maybe John had left this part out so he could come back and I would need him again. Maybe John built this area, it could be why he was friends with an unlikable person. That wasn't a good enough reason in my mind to put up with my Aunts company.
I ran my hand over the clean walls next to the shelf. Who was taking the time to hide this space so well, how did they get in here? I slumped against the wall ready to give up. As I did, I hit the door with my foot and sent it flying closed. I leaped up yelling like it would hear me and open back up. When the lock clicked back into place in the wall the shelf sighed back into its place. A small slice of light peeked through the gap. I took the screwdriver and pulled it open just enough to look through the crack.
At first I just saw the orange light of the fire at the top of the candle. When my eyes adjusted, I saw a steep set of worn out wooden steps. The candle was sitting at the top of the steps, the wax had started to hit the wood it was placed on. That meant someone was down there. Candles don't stay lit and the wax meant they had been down there a while. I waited for any sound or sense of movement, until my breathing was so loud in my ears I was ready to scream. My heart thumping in my throat was all I could hear. I held the screwdriver to my chest tightly, I didn't know if it really would protect me against whatever was down there, it made me feel brave enough to pull the door back to crawl through to the steps. Crouching at the top of the stairs I could see the entrance to a room. A small amount of warm light was illuminating the broken bottom step. When I started down, I got the feeling I wasn't alone.
All of the hairs on my body were standing straight up begging for me to turn and hide. Every alarm in my head was going off trying to end this crazy nighttime exploration. Looking at the steps, down was my only option. Each step towards the unknown was terrifying, but somehow exhilarating. I needed to know what was down there if my Aunt was involved. This would be the most interesting thing about her made even better by finding out against her knowledge. I always thought if she was mean she would just be a boring person. She had no depth to her personality besides meanness, just a shallow shell of what would be the grouchiest woman alive. As shocked as I'd be at discovering this about her, I'd be more impressed she was capable of being this interesting.
The stairs opened to a set of rooms with a candle on a table in-between the doors. Wax was pooling at the bottom of this one as well . If someone was here then they were in one of these rooms. I looked around quietly to see if there was any way to get out of here. A door leading outside or to another part of the kitchen. The only doors were the same as the wall in the kitchen. A single panel with one metal keyhole and no knob. There weren't any rusty keys above the sink and none anywhere I could see down here. I lifted my hand to push against the closest door and heard a metallic scraping freezing me in my spot. Then it happened again, metal grinding against something.
I shot back up the stairs and into the dark dusty room of shelves. I tried to breathe as quietly as possible. Tucked under one of the shelves, I waited to hear someone coming after me. A few minutes of quiet pass and I have to move. I can't stay trapped in here any longer. I had lost sense of time and my Aunt could be back any minute. I still didn't know if she knew about this yet and I didn't want to find out in this position. This time I looked closer at everything. There had to be a way out. I was just not seeing it. I was staring at the door as I walked down the steps, not paying attention and put a foot on the last step. It was sticky and cold against my foot. When I looked down I saw that it wasn't rot that broke the step. It looked like a heavy rough object hit the step leaving it caved in. I moved my foot towards the candle at the top step and saw the sticky stuff was turning from a reddish to deep brown. But worst of all, a clump of black hair was stuck in the goo on the bottom of my foot.
I'm not a queasy person, blood is the only thing I can't handle. I'd never seen blood be this thick and gooey, how does that even happen? After I saw the blood on the step I noticed a trail leading to the closest door. What if it was a hurt animal that was also trapped in here? That thought gave me the strength to gather up the ability to move. I looked at the door for a way inside the room. The door creaked against the pressure and someone on the other side said please don't not again in between loud sobs. I could hear the snot in their mouth as they begged. I tried reassuring them I wasn't there to hurt them, but at the sound of me speaking they began to yell and plead for mercy and their freedom. They went on about how they were sorry and would never try to leave again. They wanted to be here, it was just a mistake. Then the voice said my Aunt's name. They reached out with a loving tone saying they loved her and would never want to leave her. That they meant it when they promised to spend their life loving her. When I tried to speak again they spoke to me like I was her. I never thought we sounded alike, but this person thought so. While I looked for the key I tried to keep them talking. I didn't have to say much, they didn't seem to be able to stop begging.
There was no chance at helpful communication. I explained calmly who I was and what I was doing down here. Of course at first they thought it was another cruel form of torture from my Aunt. After the yelling died down they finally heard the difference in the voices. Not enough to fully put them at ease. Just enough to quiet the pleading so I could think. When I got them talking about what this place was I kept looking for any way for us to get out.
He started by asking when it was, I told him nighttime and he laughed a dry laugh. He meant the year. The last time he was outside this cellar was on his way to the church to get married. He went early because he was so excited. He said he thought he could help get things prepared, he couldn't sit around and wait any longer. He had met a kind young lady that had just become a widow after a short marriage. Before he could feel sad for her she told him how lucky she was he died. She told a tale of abuse and infidelity, just enough to keep herself respectable and to make this man feel the need to protect her. He was the one that needed protection, he said. After two weeks of blissful stupidity they were going to be married at his church. On the walk from his family's home to the church she drove up to him disheveled, falling to his feet. She said she was pregnant. She wrapped her arms around her torso and put her face in the road screeching like a dying bird.
This news crushed him, her reaction scared him. She had said her husband had died over a year ago, she had been celabate while in mourning. He was heavily involved in his church, there was no possibility it could be his. At that moment he fell out of infatuation with her. She sensed this and he explained it like a switch had flipped inside her and the Aunt I knew came out. He woke up in this room, his head was in her lap while she twisted his hair in her fingertips. She was cooing at him about having a child together. He started to remember what he was doing, that he was getting married and needed to go to her quickly. As the memories kept coming he realized she had hit him over the head and brought him here.
When he got to what happened today, his voice grew softer. Fear was creeping back up inside him. My Aunt was down here this morning to feed him for the week when she heard my footsteps. She had been poisoning me, I had just chalked it up to exhaustion from dealing with her. I was up earlier than I was supposed to be and she had to leave everything down there in a rush. She wasn't able to make it back before her appointment. Everything was the same as she had left it. The candles burning with enough light to see, his plate of bread with jam on the tray in his room, and the key to his door hanging on the hook on the back of the door.
She had forgotten to lock his door and take the key with her. I tried to find a spot to pull the door back, like the other, every edge was flush with the wall. There were no gaps to stick my fingertips in or the screwdriver. I asked if he was close enough to kick the door to see if it opened. He laughed, she had built this room small enough he couldn't be away from her when she was in there. It was the size of a small room or big closet. The metal sound of scraping happened and then the door snapped back knocking dust into the air.
I saw him slumped against the wall chained to the floor. He was covered in blood, dried and new. The new blood was slowly coming from a thick gash on his forehead. He said she was not able to come back down once she was pulled away. The blood gave the tiny room a rusty scent that only made the musk of wet mold worsen. It was cold in his room with no lighting, a space was made in the wall to hang a candle. Based on the layer of dust on the hook she never used it. The man was old and gray haired with a spine shaped like a claw. I had seen the photo of him she had hidden in her photobooks in her room, he looked normal then. Now he was a shriveled husk covered in his own dirt.
As I looked around for some way to free him, he started talking again. No way out but the way I came in, he had always heard them come from the top of those steps. They never made as much noise as I did though. That he was surprised by, the new little helper my aunt had been bringing down with her lately was a massive guy. Tall enough to crouch when he was in the hidden cellar. My Aunt joked she would need to widen out the next room if he was going to be the new occupant. The helper thought this was hilarious and stated he would not even need to be chained because he wanted to stay with her. What a lunatic, I knew then he was talking about John. He was so quick to latch on to her and obsessed over every detail of her life. I thought at that point he could list her schedule out as well as me.
That grimey loser lied about how he found this place. Worse yet I believed him, even unwillingly changed my opinion of him. Of course that couldn't even last a night. The stench of a trap must've been hidden by his body odor. Once this realization that I had put myself right in the middle of their trap. I needed to get out of here, maybe even out of this house. My Aunt had to know what he was planning. I hated her, never thought she would set me up to be tortured by some random weirdo. I shot him an apologetic look as I closed the door back. I had to tune out his begging. I had no way of knowing if he really knew how to get out of the chains, I just didn't have the time to save him too.
I ran up the stairs hitting the back of the shelves hard. It gave just a little, the cans rattled slightly. I didn't need to care about the noise right now. I slammed into it again using my shoulder then again. The sounds of him screaming and losing his mind pushed me to a part of myself I had never found. I was at his door opening it yelling how I just wanted him to tell me how to unchain him. I could help him and focus on my own way out. He was thinner than when he was first kidnapped, the cuff was loosening with time and he patiently waited till it was just right. He just couldn't do it to himself. He had tried and his body stopped him each time. Earlier that day after he noticed the key still in the lock, he slipped out of the chain only taking off just a little of his ankle meat.
His bones were the issue now. He placed some of the chain in my hand and asked me not to count, just do it. I had already lost so much time I couldn't give up any more. I felt my hand rise and fall, heard the crushing of bone and ripping of his tendons as I pulled the cuff off. Tears were pouring from his eyes, but he didn't make a sound that I could hear. When the cuff was thrown onto the floor he used my dangling arm to start to pull himself up. If he could move then he could come with me. I hooked my arm around his back and tucked my hand under his armpit to hold onto him. He weighed barely anything, I still had to drag him up the stairs leaving a trail of his blood with each step. I had to make sure I didn't slip in the blood dripping onto the steps from his new ankle wound. If he dies he will get heavier then I'd have to drop him. For now his weight could be just enough for me to get us through the door. My arms and legs were on fire and full of energy.
At the top step I moved us so my shoulder would hit the back of the shelves and squished us into it as hard as I could. A small crack finally was enough for my screwdriver. A few of the cans hit the floor and shattered leaving a ringing crash in the hidden pantry. When I pulled back the door I drug the man through with me into the pantry and set him down. I leaned back against the opposite wall and allowed myself one deep breath. Then we heard the click of the key in the lock, not a chance that was anything good. As I started to spin back towards the stairs we looked at the grinning faces of John and my Aunt. Happy Birthday my boy she laughed and he started inside the room towards me with a thick metal chain shining in the light from the kitchen when he moved just right.
