Chapter 11 - The Ascent
Sarah did not look back at the mirror as it shattered into a thousand jagged slivers, the frame collapsing against the dining room sideboard. The force of the impact blew out the remaining pilot lights on the stove, filling the room with the faint, hissing odor of gas.
""We go up,"" Sarah said, her voice dropping into an eerily calm register. The panic was gone, burned away by the cold clarity of a mother fighting for her children's lives. She scooped Brendan against her chest, wrapping him tightly in her fleece robe, and grabbed Toby’s small, cold hand. ""Toby, keep that iron nail in your hand. Do not let go of it.""
""I won't, Mom,"" Toby said, though his legs were shaking so hard he stumbled on the first kitchen step.
As they entered the center hallway, the temperature dropped precipitously. Frost began to bloom in delicate, fern-like patterns across the framed family portraits along the wall. In every single photograph, Evelyn's face had changed—her painted eyes rolled back into her head, her mouth warped into a silent, screaming oval.
The staircase groaned before they even touched it. Thick, viscous liquid, smelling of stagnant swamp water, was slowly trickling down the risers from the second floor, dripping rhythmically onto the foyer carpet.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
""Don't look at the stairs. Just climb,"" Sarah commanded.
She took the first step. The wood was slick beneath her feet, the cold seeping through her wool socks like liquid ice. Brendan’s chest was barely moving now; his breathing was shallow, rapid, and punctuated by small, pathetic whimpers. Sarah climbed, her blackened veins burning like liquid fire all the way up to her neck.
Halfway up the flight, the air pressure shifted violently, popping their ears. At the top of the landing, leaning casually against the banister, stood the physical form of Evelyn.
She was no longer just a shadow or a reflection. Her flesh was real, swollen and purple with the decay of four months beneath the wet earth, pieces of dried floral arrangements still tangled in her matted gray hair. She held her withered arms out wide, her long, yellowed fingernails curved like raptor talons.
Give me the weak one, Sarah, the corpse croaked, its vocal cords snapping and rattling with every syllable. Save the boy on your heels. You can only keep one.
Sarah reached the final three steps, stopped, and looked directly into the rotting face of her mother.
May you like
""Neither,"" Sarah whispered.
With all the strength remaining in her burning body, Sarah drove the heel of her heavy winter boot—which she had snatched from the hall tree—straight into Evelyn’s shattered knee joint.
