Inside Evil

Chapter 4 - Part I

There was a crash and shout from behind her, and Susan was quickly jerked from her indulgent moment. Turning towards the back of the room, Susan saw Sam dangling from the staircase. Having seemingly decided to make his way to join her, Sam had not taken the care that Susan had, and was now hanging through a rotten floorboard, his legs frantically trying to find a foothold.

Susan pushed herself off the wall and grabbed Sam around the legs, trying to offset some of the weight so that he could pull himself free. However, Sam’s heavier frame simply caused more boards to give way as he used his arms to pull himself up. In a matter of moments, both he and Susan were lying on the floor and soaked to the skin, surrounded by broken pieces of staircase. The gap in the steps now meant that there was no way of climbing out, and even as they both looked up, more rotten wood fell away from the masonry.

Susan glared at Sam ferociously. “What the hell are we supposed to do now?”

Susan was curled up on the sofa once again, whilst behind her she could hear Sam flicking through a stack of thick, hard backed books. Though Sam may have come crashing through the rotting wood of the stairway and destroyed their easy exit, his height had meant that getting out wasn’t too hard. A sobered up Susan had managed to sway ungraciously on top of his shoulders and pick away the remaining loose boards which were attached to the masonry. There was just enough floor space between the fireplace and the stairwell for Susan to get a grip, and due to the cellar height being lower than the average room, and with the help of Sam pushing up on her legs, she’d managed to grapple her way back through the gap. Quite helpfully, Susan had a ladder in the back room that she normally used for knocking off the excess snow from the roof, and though she had to break far more of the fireplace brickwork than ever to get the ladder through, there was soon a safe descent into the murky darkness. Susan had returned to the cellar with a torch because though the candles had remained perfectly strong, this time she wanted back up.

Sam, who had been so keen to avoid the cellar previously, was hunched over the table when she returned. He was not looking at either Barry’s journal or Vanessa’s pages, but at the five candles to one side. As Susan stepped off the bottom rung of the ladder and prepared for the icy torrent to once again hit her toes, she peered curiously through the gloom as Sam held out a hand and steadied it over the candle flames.

Susan quickly moved to the table, taking hold of the loose sheets of paper with her fingertips and pushing them into her pocket. She felt the cold sensation of stone and was reminded of the gruesome picture of her daughter that she’d stowed away, a reminder which she chose quickly to forget. Sam seemed not to notice her surreptitious removal until, without looking away from his hand, he said, “I saw that Sue.”

Susan prepared to defend her actions. It was her shop, her premises, her daughter’s very own handwriting on the pages that she’d taken, but there was no need. Sam was absolutely engrossed by the gently flicking flames of the candles.

“Where’s the breeze?” he asked with careful precision.

“What?” Susan replied with uncertainty.

“The candles, they’re flickering. Where’s the breeze to cause it?” But there was no answer. The cellar was dark, damp, musty, with air so still you could practically slice a knife through it.

“I wonder,” Sam muttered to himself, and gently inched the palm of his hand towards the hot flames.

“Sam, you’ll burn yourself, that’s the last thing we nee..” Susan trailer off as Sam brought his hand so close to the flame of the outer-most candle that it was flickering on his palm. Astonished, Susan was about to remark at his pain tolerance, when Sam continued lowering his hand, causing the candle to shimmer slightly as it passed through his flesh and bone and remerge on the other side of his palm.

“They’re not even here Sue, it’s an illusion,” Sam exclaimed, his hair flopping forward over his face as he hunched right over the candle which now had half of its image on either side of Sam’s hand.

“But that’s impossible,” Susan said, quickly pulling back her own sleeve and shoving her hand over another hot flame. “It’s hot I can feel it.”

“You may be able to feel it Sue, to see it, to hear the crackle, but these candles are not here. Yet, you just picked up those papers right off the table without any problem.”

There was no answer, and the pair of them had climbed out of the cellar without a word said between them. Sam disappeared off between the shelves of books, occasionally pulling out a volume or two. He now sat at the coffee table with a mountain of reading, searching through the very literature which he’d come to Ridgewood to expose as false. Searching for some kind of answer. Susan meanwhile curled on the sofa, a hand in her pocket absentmindedly caressing the stony disc with her thumb.

“We say nothing,” Susan said suddenly. “I don’t want anyone knowing about this.”

“Not even Martha?” Sam asked incredulously, looking up from his books. “If there’s one person in this town that won’t think we’re entirely mad, it’s Martha.”

“No, not even Martha,” Susan replied without looking around, her mind trying to organise the tangled web of thoughts. In her pocket, she continued to thumb the stone disc, each caress of her daughter’s face changing the innocent smile into a menacing sneer. 

*I will be posting one or two scenes a week as the story builds. However, if you can't wait that long, Inside Evil is available on Amazon, Kobo, B&N, Smashwords and iBooks.

If you want to know more, visit geoffreywakeling.com, sign up to my newsletter, visit my Facebook or Tweet me. Thanks for reading, I appreciate your support.*