Mother and Father were in the living room with the television playing softly. They smiled at the screen, didn’t even glance at me as I walked by.

Then I was in the kitchen. The dark kitchen, staring down into the dark basement where no one went anymore. My body carried me down without so much as a pause on the top step. My mind, however, clawed at the back of my skull, desperate for the clean air upstairs. But down, down, down I went. Down into that darkness where the dust settled over everything and orphaned noises drifted without cause.
In the basement, the rest of the house was muted. All I could hear was my own breathing, my bare feet against the carpet. There were no working lights down there, just the moon- and lamplight from outside through the glass block windows. All I could see was the space in front of me. Everything else was a black funnel directing me forward, toward the door that we always kept shut.

I reached that door and placed my hand on the knob. Now even my body rebelled. My joints locked up. My hand felt like lead, my veins like tangles of rusty wire. I knew what waited in that empty bedroom; I wasn’t sure I could take seeing it one more time.

But I knew the rules, and my fear could only keep me paralyzed for so long.