Image Courtesy of Silas Plum
There was one rule to the simple orphanage and that was, “We don’t go down in the cellar.” Ginger, an old woman with hair like a fading sunset, had told Charlie the rule while standing in front of the doorless basement. A breeze, warm and damp, issued out of it. There was nothing about the darkness beyond that made him want to go down, so he had obeyed the rule.
Until Chrissy had disappeared. And then Jonathan. Charlie began looking for a way to leave, but Ginger locked all the doors and windows whenever she left and somehow watched everyone when present.
So one night, when Ginger was in a sleep so deep she might have been dead, Charlie grabbed his hat and coat. He stood at the top of the stairs, looking into the cellar, open like a throat. He went down, uncertain of what he would find, paralyzed into stillness when his foot hit the bottom with a sound like a wet sponge.
“I’m sorry,” he heard Ginger say from the top of the stairs. “But it’s not a house Charlie,” and she closed the door. There was a gurgle and the floor moved beneath his feet.
He knew then, in the dark, that she was right.
See the author’s published work here.
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