Phobic by Cortney Pearson Page B

rug.
    I’m nearly to the door, and I reach for it, but it’s as if cement gets injected into my chest, weighing me down, making it impossible for me to
want
to move. Something traps me in place. I’m incapable of even running.
    The room temperature drops and chills tiptoe from the bottom of my spine to my neck. Out of the corner of my eye a figure creeps closer and closer to the forbidden door. It’s blurred around the edges and flurries like wind through a thin piece of fabric. The hair on my arms stands on end, and voices play in my head, eerie and entrancing.
    Open the door lift off the floor open the door lose your soul open the door open it open open your mind will be mine open the door—
    I slam my lids shut. No one is there, it’s nothing. I can’t—
open the door your soul is mine—
think, can’t—
open
—hear anymore.
Open open
…
    The figure passes through the door, and the thickness in my chest shatters. My limbs are free once more. With a frantic cry, I dart from the room as quickly as possible, practically slamming the French doors shut. The panes of glass rattle.
    Shivers needle all over my skin again. I feel disjointed and betrayed, like the fluffy pet dog just turned rabid and grew giant fangs.
    I’ve always thought my house has been protective of me, but I wonder if it’s possible that something else entirely is going on. As if the house knows what I’m thinking, the lights flicker again. My skin crawls, but I set my jaw and stomp into the kitchen.
    I’ve lived in this house for fifteen years. Noises have cajoled me at all hours of the day or night. Secrets have barricaded me in and kept me in ignorance. Objects have moved on their own. And for the most part I’ve accepted things without question. But I’m done floating along in the dark.
    “I’ll show you, you can’t get to me,” I say. “I won’t let you get to me.”
    My pulse smacks my throat, shooting along my arms, but I draw a knife from the bamboo block on the counter—like it can protect me—and force my feet to The Spot. I bend to lift the heavy ornate rug from the shiny hardwood.
    I don’t want to do it. Everything in me is telling me to lower the rug, to go hide in my room like always. But after the memory of my father, after hearing that voice and the ghost, after being antagonized by Sierra, by Jordan and mostly by my brother, I have to check.
    I’m through with not knowing what happened in the past, or what’s going on now. For some reason, it feels like opening this will be like unlocking my own personal cage and providing release.
    The latch stares up at me like a cycloptic beast. The floorboards groan, but I bend. Hook my fingers under the latch.
    My tongue swells with the pressure of lifting the heavy door. I haven’t approached this since they found him. Since my mom went to prison.
    I heft the door. Musty, cool air creeps up from the hole, biting at my legs and the bare skin of my arms. Three wooden steps lead down into the five-by-five or so space, just large enough to shove a body—living or dead—into. But it’s empty. Except for—
    I lean in and nearly lose my balance. The knife drops from my grip and lands with a clang in the hole below.
    A huge stain the size of a small blanket leers up at me, dyeing the concrete an abysmal blackish-red. Dry heaving, I jerk up, slam the door shut, and kick the rug over it, hurting my injured leg in the process.
    Blood. It’s the only logical thing that stain could be. My stomach won’t stop curdling, and the image won’t get out of my head. My mother, dragging the body. Dropping it in. The body. Dropping. Splatting.
    I dash for the bathroom, but my stomach settles by the time I get there. I already know why there are no bloodstains on the wood or anywhere else in our house. The house won’t stand for it. It doesn’t fit that the stains are still in that hole.
    I wish I’d never looked.
    I head up the stairs, though I keep glancing behind me every few seconds,