Nothing jumped out at me.
Just a yawning mouth of darkness and a steep wooden staircase that disappeared into the void. The smell was stronger here—a thick, inky stench that made my eyes water.
I aimed the flashlight down. The beam cut through the dust motes, revealing unfinished concrete floors and exposed insulation.
"Hello?" I called out.
Silence. Not even the settling of the house. Just the muffled roar of the wind outside, sounding miles away.
I took the first step. The wood groaned under my weight.
Creak.
I paused, heart hammering against my ribs, waiting for a reaction. Nothing.
I descended slowly, sweeping the light left and right. The basement was essentially a concrete box filled with the detritus of previous renters: broken ski poles, a foosball table with missing players, stacks of old National Geographic magazines.
When my boots hit the concrete floor, the cold seeped right through the soles. It was freezing down here. Unnaturally so.
I moved toward the far wall where the gray metal breaker panel was mounted. The beam of my flashlight jittered across the room.
That's when I saw the floor.
It wasn't gray concrete anymore. It was a Jackson Pollock painting of madness. Splatters of black ink covered the ground in chaotic arcs, as if someone had been swinging a wet brush—or a bleeding limb—around the room.
I stepped over a particularly large puddle, my boots sticking slightly to the floor. Sticky. Like drying blood.
I reached the breaker box. The metal door was hanging off one hinge, twisted and mangled.
I shone the light inside.
The breakers hadn't tripped. They had been smashed.
Someone had taken a blunt object—probably a rock or a hammer—and pulverized the switches. Plastic shards and copper wire were matted together with that same black sludge.
"Okay," I whispered, my breath pluming in the air. "So, no lights. Message received."
I turned to leave, desperate to get back to the warmth of the pantry and my daughter. But as I swept the light back across the room, the beam caught something in the corner I had missed.
A table. An old, dust-covered card table.
But it wasn't dusty anymore.
I walked toward it, drawn by a morbid gravity I couldn't resist.
On the table sat a collection of books. My books.
I recognized the frayed spines immediately. These were my sketchbooks from three years ago. The ones I thought I had burned. The ones from the hospital. The ones filled with the things I saw when the meds stopped working.
They were torn open, pages ripped out and pinned to the wooden studs of the wall with rusty nails.
It was a shrine. A gallery of my own mental breakdown.
I stepped closer, the flashlight trembling in my hand.
There was a drawing of a man with no face, just a swirling vortex of charcoal.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqBHZibeLD4
There was a sketch of a dog with too many teeth.14Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7J09GuCAuC
And in the center, pinned with a large, serrated hunting knife, was a drawing I didn't remember making.
It was a snowman.
But not a cartoon snowman. It was detailed, anatomical. The ice looked like muscle fibers. The eyes were weeping. And underneath, in my own jagged handwriting, were the words: THE COLD PRESERVES.
I reached out to touch the paper. The ink on the page was still wet.
"I didn't draw this," I said aloud. "I didn't bring these."
This wasn't just a monster. This was someone who had gone through my trash. Someone who had been watching me for a long time. Someone who knew exactly what buttons to push to make Elias Thorne unravel.
Crack.
The sound came from above.
I froze.
ns216.73.216.10da2
and then Add to home screen.