Delirious, she found herself at the bottom of the stairs shining the flashlight around, looking for somewhere to hide. The window! she thought as she pointed the light up toward the open window in front of her. The bars, she reminded herself. Hide! Behind the stairs, maybe? Weapon! I need a weapon! She shone the flashlight around. There was no weapon.
He was coming down the stairs now, carefully hobbling to avoid his bad foot. Looking would make her nauseous, so she didn't.
Katie scurried into the cubby space to the right. It was dark there and cramped. Maybe he wouldn't think to look there. Maybe at least at first, then she could get away. A stack of boxes was piled in the corner. She turned the flashlight off and pulled them away from the walls, intending to slip behind. Her fingers still didn't hurt. That thought was still foremost in her mind, even above thoughts of her own survival.
Somehow in the darkness she saw a small white door above the concrete wall that only went chest-high. Above the concrete was wood, and the square door was secured with only a simple latch. It looked like it might have led to a crawlspace.
Katie unhooked it and pulled the door open, daring to turn on the flashlight again to shine the light inside. Low rafters, dirt floor, support columns scattered around. It was a crawlspace, all right.
Earl was behind her. And he was laughing. She jumped up, her legs kicking the boxes for traction, knocking them over. She was going to get one of them chopped off; she could feel it. The axe was winding up. And then she was in, crawling through the dirt as fast and as far as she could.
The door closed behind her and she turned onto her back and shone the light. The sound of the latch being hooked was faint. Earl's laughter was louder. But it was still subdued, like he had something in store for her and he wasn't letting her in on the secret yet.
That rotten smell that greeted her when she first arrived at the house was more intense now than she'd ever experienced. It almost made her sick. She had a very bad feeling in the pit of her stomach, but she turned and crawled forward, looking for a way out. And then when she turned to her right and swept the flashlight laterally through the darkness, she did become sick.
In the loose dirt that made up the crawlspace's floor, objects poked out of it. Old, decaying objects: arms, hands, ankles, and faces. They were the faces and bodies of formerly young girls, all with blonde hair, their bodies now hacked apart and mostly buried.
Katie suddenly realized that she was no one special, because she just stumbled upon all of Earl's failed attempts at Elizabeth before her.
System Shock
The dead girls greeted Katie all around her. An eye, half-closed, was peeking out from the dirt and looking at her with complete indifference. As Katie moved, cold fingers brushed against her leg and she shuddered in revulsion. The corpses were covered in not just dirt, but some kind of light powder, probably lye to cover the smell. But the smell was still horrible, crawling into Katie's nostrils like some perverted invader.
Oh God, she thought. She looked around, waving the flashlight and trying to find a way out. But Earl locked the crawlspace's door behind her, and all she saw beyond the bits of bodies was dirt and wood and darkness and eventually a wall. Oh God. I'm just another girl like them. I'm in my grave. I'm in my grave and this is where I'll die. Oh God.
Heavy footsteps came from outside the crawlspace. They were going up the basement stairs. They sounded like dull thumps in the small space. Now they were upstairs—above her.
Katie froze and listened to them. The floorboards creaked directly over her. A thin line of dust fell onto her. Then the footsteps stopped and there was a long moment where the only thing around her was darkness and silence.
The axe plunged through the ceiling and she saw the sharp corner of the blade peeking through the wood in the flashlight's glow.
She screamed and wormed away from it.
It seemed to take a great effort to pry it out of the floor, accompanied by a loud protestation from the wood. It was slammed into her low ceiling again and again. Bursts of splintered wood exploded over her and she couldn't stifle her cry as she tried to get away. With one blow, the sharp edge of the axe cut through the wood and sliced her shoulder as she tried to pull herself through the bodies. Katie cried from the pain but didn't let herself stop.
Earl ripped the axe out of the floor then threw it down again, chopping off the ends of a couple boards and completing a small hole. He stooped down as he saw her ankle dragging by beneath and he tried to grab it, but she pulled it away before he could get a good grip. He walked along the floor, following her sounds.
Katie was at the crawlspace door, shoving on it. It groaned and the frame twisted, but the latch held it in place. Frantic and acting on instinct alone, she pushed and tried to reach through the gap for the hook, but her hands were too clumsy and shaking too much. She tried to twist around in the short space to get her feet at the door to try to kick it open when the axe sank through the floor again an inch away from her face.
She screamed and wiggled away.
With tremendous labor, Earl yanked it out. "I tried again and again," he bellowed. "All those girls, and they were all failures. None of them could be Elizabeth. Just harlots and low-lives. Completely uninteresting!" He swung the axe and chips of wood burst upward. "But you were different, I thought. You came the closest of anyone to being her." He pulled the axe out of the floor. "But in the end..." He held it in the air, tracking her movement under him by the sounds and following along with his eyes. "...you were nothing but a tramp like the rest of them!" He swung down.
The air displaced by the axe head brushed her ear. It was so close she could even hear the sound of the air moving. Katie crawled away, feeling blood drip out of the slice in her shoulder. The pain was throbbing, and now she finally felt the pain in her severed fingers. They hurt bad, especially now that the stumps were being packed with dirt and lye. But she couldn't stop. The axe came down again, this time a foot away from her head. She twisted to the left and pointed the flashlight and saw a bit of moonlight coming down through a hole in the floor he had already cut. She saw Earl give a yank on the axe, but it was firmly wedged in the dense wood and he struggled to pull it out.
Now! she told herself. Go!
She stuffed the flashlight under the neckline of her dress, knowing it would be contained by the sash around her waist, and scurried like a lizard for the hole. While Earl was distracted in the opposite direction, she pulled herself out of the narrow gap in the wood and found herself in the front hallway near the kitchen.
Earl got it out at last and wheeled around. He approached her crouched figure, sizing up the exact spot on her back where he was going to bury it. "And I didn't just rape Elizabeth either," he said. "I killed her with this very axe, then I cut down the ironwood tree she was sitting under and used it to build this hallway. She didn't give me what I wanted and she paid the price. But she's been slowly learning to be better ever since. You on the other hand... I'll just get rid of you and try again with the next girl!" He raised the weapon.
Katie turned around and threw a handful of broken glass at him. The shards hit him like a shotgun blast to the face, one of them puncturing his left eye and burying itself into it.
Earl screamed and stumbled backward, dropping the axe. He fell to one knee then immediately pushed himself up again, staggering around like a drunken bull. He scooped up the axe and began swinging it insanely, his mouth foaming with animalistic anger.
Katie took an uncertain step back, losing her head for a moment, and stepped on more glass. She shrieked and fell before the open basement door.
Earl came for her, blood running down his face. His good eye may as well have been like the gaze of Medusa for the way it immobilized her so. He squeezed the axe's handle so hard that his fingers were white and now he charged into something of a terrifying hobbling run as he hoisted the weapon above his head with a great and mighty scream and swung it down on her.
She rolled out of the way onto the l
anding at the top of the basement stairs, and with another swing of his axe, trying to get out of its arc, she tumbled down the stairs, her bones and skin bashing against the hard edges of the ironwood steps until she finally came to rest on the even harder cement floor.
Earl wasted no time in stomping down the stairs the best he could. His face was red even without the blood running down it. "I'll kill you!" he shrieked. "I'll cut you into little pieces! I'll eat you! You little bitch!"
Katie pulled herself across the cold floor. Everything hurt. Her hand felt like it was about to explode from the pain of her missing fingers. Everything was bruised and aching. She didn't know where she was going; she wasn't even thinking. She just knew she had to get away. Get away from him now. But she crawled so slowly.
She moved into the other section of the basement near the chained door and the fuse box. She could hear him right behind her. This was it. It was all over now. But at least she wouldn't die in that monstrous crawlspace.
No, that's right. He'll just chop me up here and then dump me in the crawlspace with all the others.
His footsteps ended behind her. A low grunt bellowed from deep in his chest as he hoisted the axe.
Katie was done. She was out of strength. She couldn't move and there was nothing she could do anyway. She knew she was never worthy of being anything but someone's servant, always kowtowing to the demands of others, never standing up for herself.
But then a small voice spoke up inside of her. She didn't know where it came from, and it was unrecognizable to her. But it told her to do something unthinkable.
Stand up. Stand up to him right now. If you're going to die, don't die on the ground. Katie, stand up!
Like the voice itself was animating her body, she pushed herself onto her feet and turned around to face him.
There was a momentary lapse in the expression on his face as he held the axe above his head, almost like he was stunned that she would take such an action. But in the next moment the expression was gone and he unleashed a long and sustained scream as he shifted his weight forward and swung the axe at her head with all his might.
Katie tensed up and instinctively leaned out of the way, losing her balance and falling to the floor.
The axe struck the fuse box. An explosion of electricity and bright sparks came out of it, and Earl became frozen like a statue. His hands were clamped onto the wooden handle of the axe and he was unable to pry himself off as the electricity surged through his body. He shook as the waves of current fried him. His scream tuned up in pitch until it matched the oscillating vibrato of a soprano.
More sparks burst out of the fuse box. The dingy yellow light bulb above waned as the power in the house was quickly being sucked out. Smoke began pouring out of the fuse box and then out of Earl's ears. The air smelled like cooking flesh. His skin began to blacken, except on his hands where it was still pure white. The axe's handle burst into flames and cooked his knuckles as the last bit of electricity surged into them.
Then the juice gave out and the sparks stopped flowing, giving a final puttering gasp of dull flame, and Earl's rigid body finally released the axe and fell to the floor like a slab of stone. His scream faded and then he was silent and still as his skin continued to cook.
The light in the basement blinked out, leaving Katie in only the moonlight coming in through the two windows. The hum of electricity flowing to the mysterious device in the chained room stopped and the whispering voices ("You are subservient to me", "You are deeply in love with me", "Everything you do, you do for me") ceased.
There was only a moment of reprieve where an unfamiliar sense of calm and peace settled over the house.
And then the chains burst and the door swung open.
Katie was fishing a set of keys out of Earl's pocket when a shining blue specter drifted out from the darkened room, a trailing wisp of its energy coming out of the mysterious device sitting on the milk crates.
Katie stared in awe of the being, realizing that she recognized it all too well.
It was Elizabeth.
Her spirit swooped into the basement and gazed around. Her long and flowing blonde hair looked white now in her ghostly light. She wore the same blue dress with white spots that Katie wore, though that too was white now on her. It was the dress that she had died in when Earl killed her. Her eyes caught sight of Earl's smoking body on the floor and she pulled her hand up to her mouth and gasped. She swooped down and rested her ghostly hands on him, trying to shake him awake. Spectral tears dripped from her eyes when she realized he was dead, and then, rage washing over her face, she turned her hateful gaze on Katie.
The Truth
Elizabeth's ghost glided through the air toward her. Murder was in her eyes. Her white lips peeled back into a scowl and she reached out for Katie.
There was a hiss from somewhere below and Katie looked down to see the black cat standing by her legs, back arched and fur standing on end as he glared and hissed at the malevolent spirit.
Katie was stunned by the specter, unable to move. All this time she thought Earl was just trying to brainwash her into thinking she was someone else, but when he said he was conditioning her to be able to accept Elizabeth's spirit, that was exactly what he meant.
She turned and ran, clutching the keys she'd swiped from Earl. Elizabeth cut through the air like speed was some imaginary concept. The cat cried and bounded away up the basement stairs. Katie only made it halfway up before she felt something cold wrap around her ankle. Her leg was yanked out from under her and she was dragged all the way down the stairs, thumping over each step with her arms stretched out like a kid futilely trying to resist bedtime.
Her chin smacked the last step as she was pulled onto the cement floor, and she lay there groaning as the unbearably icy touch clutched onto her. She rolled onto her back, hoisting her arms in the air to try to defend herself. "No," she muttered.
She saw Elizabeth's frightful face in front of hers for only a moment and then her entire form dissolved into a thin, trailing wisp of white light. The cold light slithered over her, reaching her face, then slipped up her nostrils.
Katie sat up like she'd been jolted by an electric shock. Her whole face was in agony, like she had the worst case of brain freeze ever. She felt the coldness wash over her entire body and her brain went fuzzy.
A dizzying flurry of thoughts and memories flashed across her mind's eye, memories unfamiliar to her. But some of them crossed over with dreams she'd been having and stories Earl made her read about Elizabeth, and she realized that all of Elizabeth's thoughts and experience was filling her brain. She tried to think of a memory of her own, but it was difficult, like they were fading, being taken over. Images of Earl danced in her head, and to her surprise feelings of sadness, loss and love accompanied them; Earl hadn't just killed her, he entrapped her soul as well in that strange boxlike device. He had been brainwashing her ever since with subliminal messages just like he had done to Katie. Elizabeth was actually in love with Earl and furious with Katie for killing him; she could feel it. Intense hatred was bubbling inside of her, but it wasn't her own feeling. It was a foreign invader, but there were no antibodies to fight it. Earl had broken her down and conditioned her well enough to accept Elizabeth's spirit as her own, and now the replacement was happening.
"No, stop..." Katie uttered, trying to crawl back up the stairs. She could feel in the core of her being that Elizabeth wanted to destroy her. Katie wanted to escape this house, but she knew it wouldn't do any good; Elizabeth would still be inside of her and no one would be able to help her. She had to think and think fast before she could no longer think for herself at all. That small voice in her head that had been telling her to fight back was growing weaker and weaker. Now she heard the shouts, but couldn't tell what they were saying. Just before the voice was snuffed out completely, she made out one word: scrapbook.
The scrapbook. Upstairs in Earl's hidden room. It showed what he did to Elizabeth. She had to go. Look at scrapbook. Difficu
lt to think now.
When Katie reached the ground floor she tried to get up to her feet, but it was difficult. Her body was weak and sore, but most of all it was slow like she was trying to wade through a pool. She crawled along the edge of the hallway next to the broken glass. And suddenly a foreign feeling came over her and she found herself picking up a large shard.
What am I doing? Katie tried to think.
She felt herself bring the shard toward her. A strange sensation happened in her arm where it felt like she was trying to pull something toward her with all her might and at the same time push it away with all her might, creating tremendous tension. But the pulling won out and she dragged the edge of the shard across her own cheek, cutting deep into the tissue and drawing blood.
Katie screamed and then whimpered from the pain, but she couldn't stop. She pulled the glass toward her lip and began digging into it with the glass. The pain was intense. Before she dug too deep, she flung her arm out suddenly and the shard of glass broke against the wall.
With tremendous effort, she took her hand and slammed it on the floor and forced herself to crawl forward. As she made her way to the stairs her mind was filled with a multitude of ideas on how to kill herself. She tried to ignore them, but now the thoughts were her own and not just someone else's anymore. They were desires and needs now; she wanted to do it. She wanted to kill herself and she wanted it to be as slow and painful as possible. Oh yes, that would be very enjoyable to her. The desire was so potent and lustful that it almost took on a sexual quality.
No!
Yes!
Somehow she got to her feet and made her way up the stairs, wrapping both of her arms around the banister so she didn't fall. Her legs worked against her, stiffening out like pistons and trying to throw her down the stairs.
The Haunting of Ironwood Page 16
