Page 30 of They Say a Girl Died Here

She smiled then, razor-sharp, and he flinched as if it were truly cutting into him. She didn’t move, staring him out, and eventually he backed up.

“You really are a piece of work.” He looked afraid, and for the first time in a long time Anna felt a rush of something close to power.

“And you really are a piece of shit. So sleep well, then make your excuses and get out of here.”

She waited until he vanished upstairs, unnerved, and only then did she let out the breath held deep in the pit of her lungs, the rage inside evaporating almost immediately as if escaping with the air.

Fuck you, Lucas, she thought as she finally got to the kitchen and drained a large glass of water. Fuck you and your shitty little town. Back in the hallway, she listened out for the murmur of conversation upstairs, but there was only silence. She was about to turn out the light when she looked at the basement door. What had Lucas heard down there?

She suddenly remembered what Melissa had said when she’d showed her the party video—that the kids used to get in through the basement window that didn’t close properly. It made her shiver, the idea that someone could creep into their house at night, loitering down there, maybe waiting for the right moment to strike. It was bad enough knowing there was a man upstairs; she couldn’t take the worry that there was someone downstairs too.

Shit. She needed to check it out for herself.

34

It was cooler in the basement, although the dust in the air was as dry as the earth outside. Anna turned on the feeble light and crept carefully down the uneven wooden stairs. Even though the sensible part of her brain knew that there couldn’t be anyone down here because Lucas had just come out, she jittered with nerves. There was only one bare bulb, washing the space in a dirty yellow light, old cobwebs and dirt stuck to its glass. She hadn’t been down here since they’d arrived, and there were stacks of unpacked boxes up against the walls and in untidy piles across the floor.

Most of it was Grandma’s stuff she hadn’t wanted to get rid of even though it would probably all rot down here before she ever looked at it again. There were a few pieces of her furniture too, heavy, dark wood that made Anna feel more spooked out than she did already. It was furniture as ominous as this house felt at night. The kind you expected to creak even without anyone touching it.

She could see the window, a horizontal rectangle at the top of the far wall, and she figured it must open out somewhere under the deck at the side of the house. Maybe the lock had been repaired in the run up to the sale, but she doubted it if the faucets upstairs had been left dripping and various other home repairs were left undone. She moved a few boxes out of the way and climbed onto one of Grandma’s mahogany chairs to get a closer look.

Long-dead flies and spiders littered dusty webs around the window’s edges, undisturbed. At least no one had come in this way for a while. The handle that locked the window was loose, and even though it was technically working, a couple of rattles from the other side would shake it open quickly enough. There were gaps around it too that maybe even a bobby pin could be pushed through to twist it open.

One thing Grandma hadn’t been short of in her old life was books, and, getting back off the chair, Anna opened some boxes until she found a few heavy ones, densely packed with hardbacks that should have gone to the thrift store. She took one that looked about the right width and heft, a large plain copy of Huckleberry Finn, the title embossed in gold letters on the spine, the kind they probably printed eighty years or so ago, and got back on the chair. Ignoring the dead bugs, she wedged the book under the window’s clasp. She tried wiggling the handle, but it was stuck solid. There was no way anyone could get in that way. Or even see through the glass. Satisfied, she got back down. No pervert or Farmhand would be getting into their house via the basement.

It was only as she moved the boxes back to where they’d been, in case Mom or Grandma thought she’d been rifling through her things, that she saw the stain on the floor, round and dark and the size of a penny. Was that paint? She crouched to look closer, another thought striking her. Or blood?

She shone her cell phone flashlight on it and stared. It was definitely blood, rust-colored and old. It looked like it had been there a while, all bright freshness lost. She glanced back at the window. Maybe from one of the movers or even one of the kids when they broke in. Cut themselves on the windowsill or something. It was nothing, but it unsettled her and she was glad to leave the basement behind and get back up to the main house.

In the hall she turned the lamp off and was about to head upstairs but found she couldn’t, frozen on the first stair. All her bravery had left her. She’d threatened a strange man and he was down the corridor from her bedroom. She wished she’d told Lucas to get dressed and leave straightaway, leaving her able to go to bed and relax, but right now she couldn’t imagine getting undressed with him in Mom’s room. She couldn’t go upstairs at all. Not until she was sure he was asleep. Neither did she want to try to sleep on the sofa. What if he came back downstairs again? Where else was there? She looked to her right, into the darkness of the corridor.

35

Grandma didn’t stir as Anna tiptoed into her bedroom. She was fast asleep, curled into a ball on her side, her face half-covered by the sheet that rippled with each shallow breath. The curtains were open and a puddle of moonlight splashed the floor as Anna crept over to the small sofa under the window. She was glad for the light. She would be safe in here. Grandma’s room was forgotten down the corridor at the back of the house, hidden away as if she was an embarrassment, separate from the rest of them because she sometimes struggled on the stairs. Maybe she and Grandma were both embarrassments. Something else they had in common other than empty spaces in their heads.

The sofa blanket was cozy as Anna tucked it under her chin, and she was immediately reminded of when Grandma finished making it, back when Anna had been younger than Caroline was now, the neat embroidery squares, patches of flowers carefully sewn in. They’d taken her longer to do than the whole rest of the blanket. So much patience. As her fingers traced over the neat stitching, she had a flash of memory of watching Grandma, rapt. Two stitches forward, one stitch back. Maybe it hadn’t always been bad between them. She didn’t need the cover for warmth, but it was comforting, protective around her. She’d wait here for an hour, maybe. Until she was sure he was asleep. An hour. That was all.

She shifted, the sofa uncomfortable. Something was digging into her, and after rooting around under the sagging cushions, she found the cause. A small hard notebook had been wedged under the seat. She sat up straighter. There was a beautiful embossed silver cross on the front, with The Lord is my shepherd in silver calligraphy underneath. This was a precious thing, chosen with care. Why would Grandma hide a notebook?

With a glance up to check she hadn’t stirred, Anna opened the book to the expensive linen pages within, the paleness of them almost glowing in the strong moonlight. As she’d half expected, there were prayers and hymns written out in careful, neat cursive, the kind of handwriting forged in a time of letter-writing rather than email or text. They were written in blue ink, and while the prayers themselves were of no interest to Anna, she found the effort in their reproduction quite beautiful.

She flicked forward a few pages, to see more of the same before the paper fell empty, and was about to put the book down when she saw something at the bottom of the last written page. A tiny, shaky arrow so small it was barely visible and so low it was almost dropping off the paper.

She sat up straighter and scanned the next few pages, but they were all clean. She turned to the back and her eyes widened. There was more writing here, but she had to hold the book upside down to read it, the jagged ink scrawl barely recognizable as Grandma’s neat cursive, the letters large and not sticking to the lines.

I’m afraid, I’m so afraid, the girls inside me and I can’t make it stop. Maybe Anna knows. Will she remember? Anna, Anna, Anna, Anna. Help us, Father, thy will be done. They say a girl died here HIS WILL BE DONE, help me, George, please help me, I can’t hold it all much longer. It’s bleeding out of me. Anna’s helping but it’s going to push me out soon and she doesn’t ever remember and I won’t remember anything soon help me, George, please help me.

Anna stared at her own name amid the terrified words, this rambling plea to her long-dead grandfather, unable to make any sense of it. Why did Grandma care if Anna remembered the thing or not? And what was inside Grandma that she was so afraid of? She turned to the next page. At the top, still in the scrawl, a Bible verse was scratched in.

The Lord will not leave the guilty unpunished.

His way is in the whirlwind and the storm,

and clouds are the dust of his feet.

Anna ignored it, staring at what was written below.

It was chili and then it was lasagna and I am not mad. It was chili before.