Dark Keys of Uncomplacency

Chapter 20: Respect Your Elders

Anne Faukner was an early riser most days. But today was different. Today she rolled over and felt constant tension in her temples. With the amount of medication prescribed to her, she imagined it could be a side effect of any one of them. Another reminder of why getting old sucked, regardless of who you asked. She was a prisoner to her own lack of mobility. What little movement she did was all for the end goal of reaching the couch or the bathroom. Her hands had begun to fail her, so much so that she couldn't even make the tea she and Connor shared most mornings. Das ist alles falsch, this is all wrong, she muttered. The bills were overdue, the house was in shambles. The outside world had become more foreign than it had been decades ago, when she first arrived with her infant son. They had escaped a stringent life of confinement, from a country destroyed by a world at war and subsequently taken over by the Russian victors to the east.

Now they were being held captive by a new type of force, one of paranormal proportions. She hadn't believed it at first though, neither did Connor's mother. The deal was Connor's father would continue working until they saved up enough to move elsewhere. By the time he had found out about the piano in the basement, property values in the neighborhood were on the climb and he'd be damned if he let a ghost story roust them out of the market gains they would receive. But that didn't matter anymore, her son was gone—he and his wife—in a freak car accident. That was when she became a believer. Whatever was down in that basement had claimed its victims. And with no money and a young man, her grandson, fit to take care of her, she found no reason to leave. Whatever lurked in the crawlspace beneath them had gone dormant it seemed.

Anne felt the chilling, newly-repaired A/C sink through her skin and rest on her brittle bones. Her bedroom door was completely shut, but she could tell no one was there. Her ceiling did not shake as it did when Connor was in his room doing God knows what. She rolled back over towards her night table. 9:34am. "Connor! Wo sind sie, where are you?!"

No reply. Just the painful reverberation of her headache rattling around behind her forehead. Then, like clockwork, she heard the front door open and close. Not alone after all. Usually she got mad at Connor for not locking the door and putting the chain up, but today she didn't care. The sound of footsteps echoed through the staircase as they got louder, then progressively quieter, going up towards the attic. She expected the door upstairs to creak open, but it didn't. Instead the sound of footsteps outside her door persisted, downstairs and back up again, at the same cadence each time without rest. On the fifth or sixth trip, she called out again for Connor, with no reply, no break in the footsteps. Anne shed the comforter revealing her wrinkled, bowed legs. She reached for the edge of the bed, which was fortified with rails, and helped herself out of the bed. The minute she peaked her out of the bedroom, the footsteps stopped and the house was silent again.

Thanks to the ribbed railing and carpeted steps, she made her way downstairs with minimal effort. When she reached the bottom, she looked back up the stairs thinking of how much of bitch it would be to get back up there. Down is better than up. The headache had subsided somewhat, but her stomach was beginning to crumble. She made a promise to herself to resist taking any pills at all today, especially on an empty stomach. Today she wanted to go outside, without the pain in her knees pulling her back in. She wanted to eat a full meal, without worrying about the sodium and sugar content. Most of all she wanted to be there for her grandson—the only known, living relative she had—without wondering if he was going to succeed in life. God knows he hadn't started with the same advantages most kids do.

"Connor, are you there?". Her voice was shaky now, like she was laying down on one of those vibrating mattresses. She looked up and down the front door, at the three locks. They were all locked and secured. Could her hearing and/or memory be failing her that much? She recalled hearing the door open and close. But not the clap of the bolt as it slid into place, or the rattle of the chain as it was placed through the brass latch on the doorframe. Then she heard it as clear as before: the footsteps walking up and downstairs. She propped herself up on the couch to give her legs a break and turned around as fast as she could to catch Connor's gaze and reprimand him for scaring her. But there was no one. She listened even harder at the persisting footsteps and noticed that they were more creaky than before, as if they were coming from the other—