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I know a little something about picking locks and I don’t know if the pin will work but it’s worth a try.
I reach for it, turning my head towards my right hand, my fingers straining to grasp onto the pin. Just as I manage to curl them around the delicate piece of metal, I hear a muffled groan coming from the corner of the basement, “Uncle Raymond!”
The person doesn’t reply but I can hear the small sounds being made.
“It’s Halley,” I say, urgently. “Hit your foot on the floor if you’re—?”
The door opens and I look up, squinting my eyes at the bright flashlight aimed at my eyes. The sound of a click and then the small hanging bulb on the ceiling flickers to life.
I blink and see Uncle Raymond standing there and hope and relief fills me, “Oh, thank God, you’re all right! We need to get out of here. There’s someone…” I turn my head to the right and my words fade as I see two men tied and gagged in the corner. I recognize Detective David and my breakfast comes up to my throat.
His skin has a deathly pallor and his eyes are blank and unseeing.
He’s dead.
The man next to him gives me a horrified look.
My lips tremble as I ask, “Cam?”
He tries to say something, but aside from unintelligible sounds, I can hear nothing.
I look towards Uncle Raymond, who’s just standing there, and I cry out, “What are you doing? Help him!”
But he doesn’t say anything, instead closing the door behind him and leaning against it. “You look just like her, you know,” he says, his tone gentle.
I blink, starting to sense that something is off. “W-what? Like who? What are you talking about?”
His eyes move to my left and the sight has me freezing.
I’ve never seen a rotting corpse before, and as my eyes take in the sight before me, I feel faint with an emotion I can’t identify. It’s beyond horror. It feels like somebody has reached into my chest and is squeezing my heart so hard that I can’t breathe.
‘Run, Halley! Run!’
I stumble over a man I know who is no longer breathing, his body twisted recognition.
My mother is struggling with somebody, desperation and grief in her voice as she keeps screaming, “Keep running!”
My hands are over my ears as I weave through the woods, the rain almost blinding in its fervor.
The screams are now filled with agony and I run faster, trying to outrun the sound of my mother being murdered.
The bodies look like they have been here for a very long time, leaning against each other like lovers would, and I don’t hear my quickened breathing as I see the limp red hair on the smaller one, hair that I had loved to play with as a child.
“No.” The anguished moan is torn from my throat. “No. No. No. Mom!” I scream out, pulling at my shackles, trying to reach her, dimly aware that she can no longer hear me. “Mom, no!”
Somebody is making horrific animalistic sounds, keening in heart-shattering misery. It takes me a minute to realize that the sounds are coming from me as tears trail down my cheeks. I can’t reach her. She’s been here all this time.
“She shouldn’t have tried to leave,” Uncle Raymond says, his tone deceptively soft.
I stare at him, bewildered, my mind unable to comprehend the words coming out of his mouth. “What?” I say, hoarsely.
“I told her to stay. All she had to do was stay.” He walks over and gently cups my cheek as he’d done thousands of times.
Only now, do I see the twisted love in his eyes, tainted with a hint of insanity.
And I remember.
I remember my mother waking me up, crying.
