Chapter 8 - The Line of Salt
Sarah moved faster than thought. She lunged from the nursery doorway, grabbed Toby and Brendan together in an embrace, and hauled them away from the open hallway back toward the stairs. She didn't look at whatever had shifted in the dark; she focused solely on the front door on the first floor. Escape was the only option left. The car keys were on the kitchen counter. They would drive to a hotel, to a police station, anywhere beyond the boundaries of this cursed property.
She tore down the main staircase, her sock-clad feet almost slipping on the polished hardwood. She reached the foyer, lunged for the front door, and grabbed the heavy deadbolt.
She turned the lock and pulled the handle. The door didn't move.
She rattled it violently, throwing her shoulder against the solid oak. It was as if the door had been welded into the frame. The brass latch pulled cleanly, the deadbolt was fully retracted, but the door refused to yield even a fraction of a millimeter. Sarah swung around toward the kitchen to reach the back exit, but as she entered the open doorway, she skidded to a halt.
Poured across every threshold—the front door, the back kitchen entry, the windows, and even the fireplace—was a thick, unbroken barrier of coarse white rock salt and pulverized bone ash.
Evelyn had not been trying to break out. She had spent her final living days sealing the perimeter of the house from the inside.
""She didn't want us to leave,"" Toby whispered, shivering in Sarah’s arms. ""She said if we leave before the new moon, it follows us anyway, but outside there are no walls to slow it down.""
""Stop saying what she said!"" Sarah cried, tears finally spilling over her cheeks as she collapsed onto the kitchen tiles, holding both children close. Brendan squirmed in her lap, letting out a small, breathless wheeze. Sarah placed her palm against the infant’s chest. His heartbeat was erratically fast, fluttering erratically against her skin like the wings of a trapped insect.
Suddenly, the kitchen lights flickered violently and died. The hum of the refrigerator ceased. The entire house plunged into absolute silence, save for the dragging sound of heavy woolen socks shuffling across the bare floorboards of the second floor directly above their heads.
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Step. Drag. Step. Drag.
The footsteps were coming down the stairs.
