Peripheral Vision: A Supernatural Thriller(30)
The woman stared back at Sarah, stuck out her lower lip and slowly bit down on it with her teeth. It looked ridiculous and sad, all at the same time. Sarah, now slowly becoming aware of her appendages again, suddenly noticed that her right fist was clenched and ready to smash the old woman’s face. She took a deep breath and relaxed it. The old woman blinked hard and then turned and walked toward the back of the store. Sarah was left standing next to the island of sewing machines wondering what the hell just happened.
Another 5 minutes passed before she felt like she could even move again. What broke her trance was the sound of the bell from the store’s front door. An escape! Sarah thought and quickly ran to her freedom out the front door.
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The library was cold. Sarah looked up and noticed she was sitting directly below the air vent. Good spot, Sarah. Her eyes scanned around the large room with high windows. Every vent was open. She got up and moved closer to the bean bag section.
The kids’ corner seemed familiar to her. She remembered visiting a library with her foster mother as a child. It had always seemed warm and safe. This, however did not. She took a long look around the room. It looked as though she was the only one there. The thought made her shiver and gooseflesh rose up on her arms. She slowly turned her head from side to side as if to tell herself “no” and at the same time shake the thought from her mind. There was work to be done, and she was the girl to do it.
The first look through the microfiche resulted in absolutely nothing, but on her second scroll through she saw something that made her wonder how she could have possibly missed it the first time.
Father of Three Gunned Down in His Own Kitchen
The newspaper headline was from October 17, 1965. She pushed her chair back from the glowing screen and pressed the palms of her hands against her eyes. The article described the murder of her Grandfather in the house she now was calling home. At least for now anyway, she thought and then her head started spinning and everything started to slip, and turn grey. She reached out toward the monitor with her left hand to steady herself. But the second her hand touched the screen her body seized backwards in her chair. Her hand, however, stuck to the lit screen like it was glued to the glass. From the outside it looked as though she was being electrocuted, but on the inside, Sarah was not in pain. She was dreaming.
She again found herself at the bottom of the stairs in the dark cellar. The air was heavy with must and dank, and made it hard for Sarah to breathe. She looked down at her legs and realized that from the waist down, she was soaking wet like she’d been wading in the river. Her bare feet were black with mud. From behind her, Sarah heard something move on the stairs, but when she tried to turn in that direction she found that she couldn’t move her legs. Her eyes however, strained in their sockets as far as they could go. She saw something stir in the shadows and then it was gone and her eyes instead came to rest on the odd little door in the middle of the far cellar wall. She again felt the urge to open it. The edges of the door glowed bright in the basement, and then it slowly started to open. Sarah shook with anticipation. Then the little door swung wide open. There was a blinding bright flash of light…
Sarah awoke and found herself once again in the library, slumped back in her chair, and staring up at the high ceiling.
Chapter 10
Time Slips Now
Sarah dropped her keys twice while trying to get into the house. By the time she finally got the front door open, she’d already decided what she needed to do. In the kitchen, she found a hammer and a flashlight inside a random junk drawer. It was time to finish exploring her house.
Sarah opened the door to the basement stairs. Her nostrils immediately filled with must and earth. Her dreams, the feeling, had been intensifying and it was time, she’d decided, to start listening instead of looking the other way. Sarah flicked on the lone light switch at the bottom of the steps. The electrical wires hung carelessly from the unfinished floor beams above her head. Her eyes were having a hard time adjusting, so she turned on the flashlight for help. The light traced along the cracked cinder block walls, washing away the shadows, and revealing the cobweb covered relics. Two rusted bicycles, a broken pump organ, and an artificial Christmas tree rested along the wall.
At the back of the room, Sarah could just make out the stairs leading up to the exterior sloping cellar door. The wind from the outside seemed to rattle the door with each small breeze. Next to that, on the other side of the pillar, she saw what she was looking for. In the far south corner of the room, almost completely hidden by a wooden desk piled with broken sewing machines- an island of sewing machines- was a crooked door jam and another set of stairs down. Sarah’s footfalls echoed throughout the basement as she approached the staircase which she knew would lead down to an attached cellar. The below below, Sarah thought. The desk scraped loudly across the floor as she pushed it away from the doorway. Sarah pointed her light down the staircase, took a deep breath, and headed down into the darkness.
It didn’t take her long to find the odd little door from her dream. It was directly across from the bottom cellar step. And it didn’t surprise her to find it looking almost exactly the same. This was her talent, and she had finally accepted it. She shone the circle of artificial light all around the narrow room. It was empty minus a few cardboard boxes stacked in a corner and three rows of shelves attached haphazardly to the wall above them. Sarah spied the lone lightbulb with a long pull string dangling from the ceiling just a few feet from the bottom step. She reached up and pulled the string. The light that emerged from the bulb flickered for a moment and then cast a feeble but steady light across the room. Sarah pulled her flashlight back to the little door and examined it. The door was about two feet or so up from the floor, made of a dark brown and relatively sturdy looking wood, hinged on the left and about two by two feet, she guessed.