Caged in Darkness (Caged #1)(16)

Maye pulled a key from the chain around her neck and opened the front door. I stepped forward, prepared to enter when the faint smell of sandalwood incense wafted through the opening to tease my memories.

The door opened into a dark foyer with a small den to the right and a large dining room to the left. I thought that once I was inside, the panic would consume me, but instead I felt detached. I couldn’t hear the younger version of me screaming in horror or my parents’ victims begging for mercy. The house was barren, and I was vacant of emotion. My parents had taken everything from me. They hadn’t even left me enough to react to the destruction of my innocence.

The den was where my cage had been kept; it was gone now. Most of the furniture had been sold, but a few items remained. The books were still housed in wall sized bookcases, my parents’ altar was still in the dining room, and a rocking chair leaned in the far corner of their library. These were the only pieces of evidence that someone had lived here.

“I’m going to look around in the basement. I am sure you would rather not go in there.” Maye cupped my cheek with her palm and looked me in the eyes. “If it gets to be too much for you shout out for me. I’ll understand.”

I nodded. “I think I’ll be okay. Um, what kind of items should I be looking for?” I bit my lip and gazed around in puzzlement.

“Just follow your instincts. Your blood will lead you to what is rightly yours. Don’t worry about the books. I’m going to have them transferred to the Meadow Falls library in the morning.”

I watched Maye’s retreating back, as she opened a door and descended towards the basement. The idea of her being in that torture chamber gave me the chills. Maye was the essence of everything my parents had not been. The idea of someone I love entering a place filled with such hate, did not sit well with me.

She wanted me to follow my instincts, but there weren’t any to be had. I considered what to do first. I could go room to room, floor to floor, or just randomly pick rooms until I had seen them all. One thing was for sure, the kitchen would be my last stop. I wouldn’t be able to look at the tile without imagining my parents’ blood flowing between the cracks. Though their deaths did not haunt me; I had enough death to last a lifetime.

Turning right, I entered the den. It was a bland room with wooden floors. I could make out the scratch marks my nails had left on the finish, and shivered. From what I remembered of this room, there wasn’t anything special about it. Now, without any furniture to give it a lived in air, it was even drearier. Trailing my fingers across the dusty drapes, I followed the length of the walls all the way around until I approached the library door. Maye had said not to worry about the books, but in truth the library was the only room I had fond memories of.

Before my parents became the embodiment of evil, my mother occasionally had a maternal side. The memories were faint, but I remembered her reading to me beside the fireplace. As I aged, my mother’s mental state deteriorated and her chaotic mood swings came more often. Eventually, her sanity was completely immersed in evil, and there was no sign of the mother who taught me to read.

The rocking chair we used to curl up on was in the corner now. The fireplace was dead, and the floor contained scorch marks. I sat down on the burgundy rocking chair. My horrible memories crashed down around me. The tears came quickly and drifted down my cheeks to land on the velvet chair. Not wanting to stain the velvet, I leaned forward to bury my face in my hands and let forth a keening cry. It was the cry of a wounded animal, a woman who just buried her child, and a little one who lost their first pet. It was a cry from my wounded soul.

My breath came in pants, as I tried to stifle my tears. Brushing the salty moisture from my flesh, I looked down at the rug beneath the chair. When I leaned forward, my only thought was to save the chairs fabric, but I hadn’t noticed the rug enough to protect it. The strange thing was that I didn’t remember seeing the rug, until after my tears fell onto it. A memory teased my mind and I vaguely recalled learning about the royal lines among witches.

There were ten royal families who were the first witches. The Cross family was one of the most powerful of the royals. Maye had told me during one of my lessons that the royal lines had learned to protect their secrets by ensuring that only one of theirs could find them. They used blood, sweat, saliva, and…tears to do this.

I pulled the chair toward the middle of the room and knelt beside the rug. From a distance the rug looked Persian, but up close it was more like pixels that didn’t quite blend together. It was like looking at a photograph so closely that it no longer resembles a picture, just fragments of random colors.

I half expected my fingers to pass straight through the rug, but they felt solid wood when I touched it. There was a board on top of the real floor that was half an inch high, and camouflaged by the rug. Why would my parents go through this much trouble to hide something and yet make it so obvious that it was there?

The board wasn’t difficult to pry away, and once it was removed from the space, it looked like an ordinary board. In its place was a tiny indentation in the floor. It revealed a small lever resembling an elongated door knob. I didn’t hesitate; I reached to pull the lever, and the bookcase against the wall, glided forward and to the left. It left a hole that was barely big enough for an adult to fit through.

I vaguely wondered if finding this lever had been the type of instinctual feelings Maye had talked of. The secret pathway was jet-black. It was difficult to imagine light ever being held within its walls.