Page 40 of Follow Her Down
No.Color.
In the far corner, farthest from the stairs, half hidden behind a rusted iron boiler that looms like a dormant monster…I make out something pale, something that’s a sickly, waxy yellow in the stark beam.
Hands, I realize, clasped in prayer.
The smell hits me then, and it’s not just rot anymore.It’s like the reek of spoiled meat left in a warm place, mingled with the cloying sweetness of perfume gone bad.It coats my tongue, thick and nauseating.Bile burns the back of my throat.I swallow hard, the sound unnaturally loud in the suffocating quiet.
My shadow daddy’s cold presence surges.It’s no longer just a pressure; it’s an embrace from my back to my front.Shadows boil up from the floor itself, thick and oily, wrapping around my legs, my waist, my chest, trying to pin my arms, to physically haul me backwards.They feel colder than ice, dense and resistant.His distress is a live wire now, sparking against my nerves.
The shadows tighten, pulling me back a step.My bare feet scuff the dirt, but I plant them, leaning into the resistance.
The shadows writhe, protesting, but I push forward, one heavy step at a time, dragging Daddy’s clinging darkness with me.The smell is a living thing now, crawling into my nostrils, my pores.My eyes water, blurring the harsh beam of the flashlight.
Beyond the hands, a shadowy shape resolves into a woman.She’s kneeling, her legs neatly tucked beneath her, against the damp brick wall on a pile of mildewed burlap sacks.She’s wearing a simple cotton dress, once pale blue, now stained nearly black with earth and blood.Her hair may have been blonde at one time, but now it hangs lank and matted, half covering her face.
But it’s the hands that hold my gaze, clasped around what looks like a dead, burnt rose.Her hands are small, delicate.And the fingernails…
Each one is painted a violent, screaming red.Candy-apple red, the kind at cheap drugstores or gas stations.It’s thickly applied, globbed in the cuticles, stark and obscene against the waxy, dead flesh.The polish is chipped slightly on the thumb and index finger of her right hand, like she tried to scratch at something.
Or someone.
I force the beam upward, tracing the line of her arm, over the stained fabric of her dress, to her neck.Faint, dark bruises ring her throat, like a grotesque necklace.Fainter ones circle her thin wrists.No gaping wounds.No overt violence splashed across the scene.Just the bruises, the pose, and the obscene red paint on her nails.
She hasn’t been here long.Weeks, maybe, but not months.The decay is advanced, the skin slipping, the bloating distorting her features, but the damp, cool air of the basement must’ve slowed her decomposition.
And there above her head is a red handprint, too big to be hers.
Red Hands.It has to be.
The name blared out from the radio one day on my way to work and announced that another victim had been found.And I’d found yet another victim.
The realization isn’t a shock.It’s an ice pick driven straight into the base of my skull.I’ve been so focused onhim.Every shadow has his shape.Every threat is filtered through the lens of the revenge I need to carve from his bones.
Red Hands was background noise.A local bogeyman.A problem for Detective Eddie Crowe and his beautiful, haunted eyes.
Wrong.Dead wrong.
Red Hands isn’t background noise.He’s the main event playing right in my fucking basement.He’s not just circling Wichita; he’s been inside my walls before they were truly mine, which means he knows the layout of this house.He brought his art project here.He violated it.He made it part of his stage.
And the ghost?The one who made the footprints?Was it Red Hands’s victim?Did she want me to find her in order to help her find peace?
I stare at the dead girl and at her garish nails.At the faint, almost serene expression frozen on her decomposing face.
The cold, hard knot of fury in my gut, usually reserved solely forhim, shifts.Expands.There’s a new target painted in screaming red nail polish.The threat isn’t just his untouchable power anymore.It’sthis.The intimate violation of my home before it was my home, but also to avenge this stranger in my basement.She didn’t deserve this.No one does.
I take a step closer, ignoring Daddy’s shadowy restraints, ignoring the stench threatening to overwhelm me.I fix my light on her face, on her dirty hair, on her bruises.She looks young.Too young.She must have been so terrified.
I crouch down, my knees pressing into the cold, damp earth with her.Daddy’s shadows writhe around me, a cloak of cold dread.I reach out to brush a strand of hair away from where it sticks to her cheek.My fingers hover inches from her waxy skin while she stares into nothing.
“Guess I’m calling the cops.”My voice comes out flat, low, echoing slightly in the damp basement.
The words hang in the rotten air.Calling the cops.Inviting the law.Invitinghim.
The untouchable Sheriff Vincent Harrow.The architect of my ruin.
If Vincent comes, he wins by walking through my front door, by seeing me vulnerable, by having the power to decide what happens next.He’ll control the narrative.He’ll spin this.
He’ll ask questions.
