UNDER THE STAIRS
By Andrea McDonald
A dying fly buzzed futilely against the grimy window pane as
Susan scanned the yard. She wrapped her
arms tightly around her waist, clutching her knobby green cardigan in her
fists, but one hand found its way up to press tightly against her mouth as her
eyes riveted on the spot at the end of the long lane where the school bus would
stop.
A van approached, and braked. She tensed.
A man with a mailbag slung over his shoulder jumped out, pried open the
mailbox, and pushed in a letter. She
didn’t exhale until his van rumbled down the gravel road out of sight. She chewed her lip and waited.
When the school bus stopped and the doors folded open, she
strained to hear if there was laughter as her daughter stepped down and trudged
up the rutted lane toward the house; the trapped fly buzzed too loudly. She
watched Amy, twelve years old, blonde head down and with arms crossed, kick the
dust as she plodded up the hill. Were the kids making fun of her, and the
house?
Susan didn’t call to Amy to ask her to go back and fetch the
letter. She’d face that herself.
The screen door squealed. “Hey,” Amy said, shaking off her jacket.
Susan glanced down at the murky bruises
on both her daughter’s arms where her husband Derrick had grabbed her. They were fading at least. Soon they’d be gone, and she’d never be hurt
again. She pulled her own sweater
tighter.
“How’d it go?” Susan asked, looking away.
“Okay I guess,” Amy muttered. She turned toward the table. Her shoe caught on a scrap of raised linoleum
and she tripped. “I hate this house,” she mumbled, and shivered. “It gives me
the creeps.”
Susan sighed but said nothing, and after peering across the
yard and into the woods, scurried down to the mailbox. As usual, her thoughts turned back to the day-
the day that had led them here to this run-down house: the day Amy’s twin
Amelia was taken. The girls were only
six then. A man had lured them to the
curb with a lame puppy. Amy had sensed
something wrong and run home, but Amelia stayed and was gone when a frantic Amy
returned with her mother.
Amelia was never found, alive or dead. Amy was cut in half without her twin. Susan never forgave herself for not protecting
the girls. Derrick crumbled, but over the years the evil that had befallen his
child, the evil he couldn’t fathom, somehow crept into him. He began to drink, and then his fury
erupted. The pushing, the grabbing, the
slapping started.
The tin flag on the mailbox squeaked as Susan yanked it down. She peered in the dark box, and pulled out a
letter addressed to her. She turned it
over. No return address.
No one knew she and Amy were there. She’d been so careful not to say a word to
anyone. When her widowed and childless sister died of cancer, Susan kept her
death secret from Derrick, and when the small inheritance came, she knew she
had a way to protect Amy. Strangely, she
had spotted the ad in the newspaper that same day. Private sale. House on two acres. Secluded. Furnished.
Owners transferred. Priced to sell.
It was a shell of a house, grayed, with shreds of old paint
hanging like psoriasis flakes on infected skin. It smelled like old
cheese. Dense, dark woods surrounded it and
it was far from town.
It was all she could afford, but more importantly, it was safe. She and Amy packed up a few belongings when
Derrick was out drinking, and left without telling him their whereabouts. She knew it was cruel, but heartache and
stress and fear had scraped away any love she had felt, and she swore she’d
never see her daughter cower under the stairs again.
The letter burned in her hand as she hurried back up the
hill. Once in the kitchen she slit it
open with a knife and began to read.
“Dear Mrs. Wilson,
My name is Mary. My husband and I sold you the house. He made me swear not to say anything to
anybody, but I haven’t slept since we moved out, since before we moved out in
fact, but when I saw that it was just you and your young daughter who would
live in it, all alone, I knew I had to say something.
Susan slumped into a rickety chair. Her stomach twisted.
I’m so sorry, really I
am. But you see, and I’m sure you can
tell by the house, my husband and me, we don’t have much money. We never got insurance or anything like that. And my husband, he’s a good man, but he got
in trouble with the police a few times, and he couldn’t risk the cops coming
around in case they thought he did it.
He might lose his job, or even go to jail, and then where would we be?
Amy was sitting on the stairs, ripping up the linoleum with
her heel. “What is it Mom?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Susan replied.
We weren’t really
transferred. I can’t tell you where he
works. He made me swear. We couldn’t have a real estate fellow sell
the house because he’d ask questions, and we’d have to tell what we found, and
then he’d have to tell anybody wanting to buy the house, and who’d buy it
then? We’d be stuck in that place, and I
couldn’t live there a minute longer. Not
with what we found.
“You’re sweating Mom.
Are you okay?”
“Yes. Yes Amy. There’s
nothing for you to worry about.”
My husband made me
swear not to tell. He said if we didn’t
get enough money out of the house we’d be broke. He doesn’t make much and I can’t work on
account of my knees. So I’m real sorry
but we had to do it. But I never thought
in a million years that someone like you would buy it.
Susan felt a familiar sick dizziness coming over her. It was the feeling she had when the street
was empty and no matter how loudly she yelled her name, Amelia didn’t
answer. It was the same as when Derrick
hit them, swinging and yelling and crying.
The same as all the times she discovered Amy, wide-eyed and staring from
between the treads of the basement stairs.
Utter helplessness. A fly buzzing against the glass.
“It’s about this house, isn’t it Mom? I can feel it.“
Susan ran her hand through the strings of her hair and looked
at her daughter. She saw Amelia there
too. She dropped her head and tried to
read, but her vision was blurring.
God, I hate to tell
you. It’s just so awful. Promise me you won’t sue us or anything. I know we should have gone to the police but
my husband said no. Just get out, he
said. Let someone else deal with it. So
we did. I’m so sorry. Really I am.
We bought the house
private-like, from a man with a crippled dog, because it was cheap and it was
all we could afford. One day a few months ago, when we were trying to put in a
sump pump under the basement stairs, my husband was digging out the dirt floor
and he found- God I hate to tell you- he found a little skull with long blonde
hair. You know that little girl, the
twin, that was abducted some years back? We think it might be her.
“Mom! What’s the matter?! Mom!”
Susan dropped the letter.
She collapsed onto the floor.
Amy stared in horror at her mother’s face and backed silently toward the
basement stairs.
“Amy!” Susan wailed, as she watched her trip and tumble
backwards.
Amy screamed as she thumped and rolled down the steps. Susan
froze, her mouth gaping open. Then, in a frenzy she crawled to the edge of the
basement stairwell and stared down, straining to see into the dim light.
Amy lay still and silent, at rest in the disturbed dirt by
the bottom step.