Chapter 6 – Chap 6

–

I went to the bathroom for only a minute. That’s all.

I return to the breakfast table to see Natasha already eating, still seemingly unaware of what has happened to her hair. The table hosts a carton of cereal in its centre, my empty bowl and spoon by its side.

Where’s my phone? I definitely left it here.

“Tash,” I hiss, careful for my uncle not to hear, “where’s my phone?”

She shrugs, barely looking up from the bowl of Coco Pops she’s lost herself in. My eyes scan the floor around my seat, around Natasha’s seat. Nothing. I definitely brought it down. It’s not in the bathroom, I remember leaving it on the table.

“Looking for something, Em?” my uncle chirps up behind me. I spin around, taken aback by how quietly he had snuck up on me.

“Uh – just my phone?” I say, “Have you seen it?”

“I don’t think so, not recently. Have some breakfast and then we can look together.”

As I eat my cereal, I feel my uncle’s eyes burning into the back of my head. He’s watching me from his office.

–

My phone is nowhere to be found. I KNOW I took it down to breakfast but I’m not sure where it could have gone. I think Uncle Curtis has taken it.

Natasha hands me her phone and I quickly leave a voice recording to my parents.

Mum, dad. It’s Emily. You NEED to come and pick us up. Something- something is happening here. Uncle Curtis he’s not who he says he is. He has a basement with dead people – or something… and he sneaks into our rooms at night and cuts our hair and nails. Please, mum come pick us up.

I begin to quietly sob as I talk.

Mum, dad, please. I’m so scared. So is Tash, we’re –

Our bedroom door opens.

Uncle Curtis stands tall, his frame blocking the exit completely. He wears a smile, but something sinister lurks beneath.

“Emily?” he asks, “What are you doing?”

I’m frozen. I don’t know how to explain it, I just freeze. Fear overhauls my body. I feel nothing but fear.

“Emily. Are your parents on the phone?” He reaches his hand out and takes the phone from my now weak grasp. Upon staring at it for a second, he continues, “Ah, you’ve sent them a recording. May I play it, Emily?”

My mouth opens to speak; no words come out. His smile grows, but it is short-lived. Upon pressing play, his happy facade diminishes. He looks angry; a vein pops from the top of his head, his skin gets progressively redder. He throws the phone to the floor; it smashes upon impact.

“You fucking kids. You don’t understand anything, do you?” his teeth grit, “You don’t understand what she has given you all these years. What she’s going to give you soon.”

With every ‘she’, he points to the ground as if ‘she’ were below us. Soon, his words become a shout.

“You FUCKING kids. Stop trying to RUIN THINGS.”

He grabs my hair and pulls it downward. I drop the my knees as pain sears through my scalp. I’m shocked by this, completely taken by surprise. But it is what happens next that throws me even more.

“LET GO OF HER!” Natasha screams.

The room falls silent.

My uncle, still with a firm grasp on me, turns to face her and his smile returns.

“Well, well, well little one. She speaks,” he murmurs, “Like I said before, all you needed was a little… push.”

As he says this, he pushes my head back in a violent motion and I fall to the ground. The back of my skull bounces off the wooden flooring, dazing me. My vision is blurry; I try to regain my senses but the sudden movement and the blistering pain has made my blood rush. My head drops into my hands and I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment. As I look up, I see Uncle Curtis carrying Natasha over his shoulder and storming out of the bedroom. She screams and helplessly kicks her legs and punches his back.

“S-STOP!” I scream, “P-please, Uncle Curtis! Stop!”

And he does.

I don’t expect him to stop, but he stops dead in his tracks.

He turns to face me once more, the smile still plastered on his scorching red face.

“Uncle Curtis?” his roaring laugh fills the room, “Don’t you get it yet? I’m not your Uncle Curtis.”

His laugh bellows through the house as he turns with a skip in his step and walks out of the room.

Not Uncle Curtis…? What? Then, who is he?

What is he?

I stumble to my feet and manage a few steps before my vision starts to blur once more. I feel a thick liquid trickle down my back; blood. It comes from my head – from where it had hit the floor. I continue to give chase, but by the time I’m at the top of the staircase, my vision begins to fade.

Not even the sound of my uncle’s footsteps bounding back up the staircase below is enough to keep me conscious.

Not even the fear I feel as I see him turn the corner and smile with glee as he skips toward me is enough to keep me awake.

Not even the strong hand that grips the back of my neck and hauls me up onto his shoulders, as if I weighed nothing, is enough to stop everything fading to black.

–

I wake in a dark room. It’s one I soon recognise as the room down the hatch; not the one with the cages, but the one before that.

I’m tied down to a chair, grunting as I weakly pull against the restraints to no avail.

I’m alone in the room, nothing has changed since Natasha and I were last down here. It’s just full of useless junk. I’m facing the ladder, and am unable to spin my head around to see the door that leads to the other room.

I cough. Droplets of blood spray from my mouth and disappear into the dark air before me. A few seconds later, I hear the door behind me open.

The sound of footsteps approach from behind; click-clack, click-clack, click-clack.

Two slender hands rest on my shoulders. They are not the same hands that had grabbed me by the neck, by the hair. They are not the hands of my uncle.

I feel a face lower down beside mine and whisper words directly into my ear.

“Hello, Emily,” a beautiful, soft-spoken woman’s voice cuts through the air like a knife through butter, “I am Orianne… and I am here to… change you.”