What Lies Beneath

Two

Before

As soon as I saw the room, I knew I could kiss my peace goodbye. Last week, we had just moved into a small affordable house on the South end of Lake Bellinor—a quiet, small town, upstate, New York with a predominantly White population—my mother's words.

I hated it already.

My anxiety was higher than usual today, due to the discomfort crawling into the corners of my spine. The eerie silence bouncing around didn't help my shrieking skin. It caused my blood to run cold, and my bones to want to flip inside and out, so that I could hide in a shell of myself.

"Tyler! Are you finished yet? Come help us move the rest of these boxes!" I could hear my mother's words but I wasn't comprehending what she said to me. I'd lost track of how long my eyes had been glued to the door at the other end of the hallway.

Icy cool air swept over me from head to toe—enough to strike fear through me that stilled my feet in place. I'd never gotten chills as strong as the ones invading my body, at the moment. Not even when my older brother, Christian, convinced me to watch Wrong Turn when I'd just turned nine-years-old. That was only two years ago, yet my paranoia, that everyone around me was a cannibal still sat heavy on my mind.

"Tyler!" A hand yanked on my shoulder blade, forcing me around. I immediately shrunk back under my mother's glare. Her hands rested on her hips; fingers tapping hard against the bone.

"Didn't you hear me calling you!?" She scowled.

I stood up straight, ignoring the tingle in my nerves. "Um, n-no. Sorry, what did you say?"

I could see the vein in her forehead throbbing. Crap. I hit a nerve.

"The boxes," she spoke slowly, "we need help."

"Oh, right! Of course!" I rushed past her before she could lecture me any further.

The room had only gotten worse from there in the time span of just a few days. The next few days, to be exact. Every night, a draft so cold, it was burning revolved around the crack of my room door. I could hear my name in the chills—a whisper so captivating, the urgency to go open the door and figure out all its darkest secrets bloomed stronger.

So long as I kept my distance from the room, nothing too heavy for my fragile mind to handle, happened. At least, until the fourth night of torture in that house was upon me. I remembered tossing myself out of bed, after having tried wrapping my blanket over my head, burying myself in a cocoon, moments before.

"Stupid, dumb room," I spat through gritted teeth. I'd have loved for my body to be normal for once. Of course, that was too much to ask. I instead found myself standing outside my bedroom, in the middle of the hallway.

The floorboards clenched in agony; a squeaky noise echoing beneath my feet as I walked forward. Now that I had gotten closer to the room, I could no longer feel the chills. My heartbeat rose within each second that passed and my mind was unable to focus. The ticking of the clock on the wall began to mess with my mind, giving me an awful headache.

"You can do this, Tyler. . ." I whispered to myself. The brass door knob was within reach yet it felt so far. I shut my eyes and leaned in closer. And closer. And closer. Then, something happened. I barely had a chance to react as I was now looking into a different reality. A reality that was on the other side of the door, displaying for me to watch.

There was a lady.

No, an old woman. Mid-seventies, curly gray hair, wrinkles sagging into her face.

I didn't recognize her.

"A-ah!" I grasped the side of my head.

Another image blinded me. The old woman was smiling now. Clearly in pain, but smiling such a wide smile that her teeth showed. I didn't understand what was going on. How did I get inside the room? Who was this woman? Question after question filled my head. Soon, I'd found my answers when they appeared before me in the next terrifying image I saw.

"Time of death, 6:00 PM," a voice announced.

Once again, I took notice of the woman, but this time, she was lying in her queen-sized bed lifeless. Her hands were at her sides, her skin pale and wrinkled, and the same smile I saw before sitting on her face as if she couldn't wait to die. Dressed down in an all-red silk gown, there was no sign of a struggle or any blood splatter to indicate so.

"Cause of death seems to be an overdose. We're ruling it as a suicide then," the voice, that I now noticed belonged to a detective, continued to speak. He stood over her body, her unresponsive wrist in his hands as he checked her pulse.

Before I could grasp what was happening any further, a scream penetrated my ears, causing my body to flail forward. I felt my knees hit the ground with a loud thud. The vibration shot through my limbs and I stared at the ground, unable to move. My heavy breathing was joined by the sound of silence in the hallway that made my skin crawl.

My attention was on the door once more, eyebrows scrunched up. What was that? I had no idea but I didn't think I wanted to find out. I never went near that room again. At least, until my mom claimed it as her new bedroom a few weeks later. Then, I had no choice.