Chapter 7 - The Empty Kitchen
The house on North Ridge Road was dead silent when I went back inside later that evening to pack up a bag of clothes and favorite toys for Drew and Sissy.
The state police had removed the yellow crime scene tape from the front door, leaving only a small white paper seal across the doorframe with a case number scrawled in black marker. Inside, the air smelled stale and cold, as if the heat hadn't run through the floor vents in days.
I walked through the kitchen. The breakfast dishes from yesterday morning were still sitting in the metal sink—two plastic bowls with dried crusts of oatmeal, a chipped coffee mug, and a butter knife smeared with yellow margarine.
It looked so normal. That was the most terrifying part of it all. Evil doesn't wear horns or live in a cave; sometimes it wears a black turtleneck, smells like lavender soap, and packs school lunches with a handwritten note on a pink napkin.
I opened the door leading down to the fruit cellar.
The lightbulb overhead was burned out, casting the wooden steps in deep, velvety shadow. I didn't need to go down there. I didn't need to see the cold concrete floor, the empty shelves, or the heavy oak door with the slide-bolt installed at the eye-level of an adult who wanted to make sure the world outside didn't exist.
I pulled the door shut, locked it with my own key, and dropped the key into my pocket.
Then I walked down the hallway to the children’s bedroom.
It was a small, cramped room with faded yellow wallpaper patterned with marching teddy bears. Two twin beds stood against opposite walls. Sissy’s bed had a pile of stuffed animals heaped in the corner—a pink rabbit with one missing ear, a faded teddy bear with a ribbon around its neck.
Drew’s bed was made with military precision—the gray wool blanket tucked so tightly under the mattress you could bounce a quarter off it. On the wooden nightstand beside his pillow lay a single item: a small, smooth river stone with a white quartz stripe running through the middle.
I picked it up. It was cold to the touch, heavy for its size.
I knew that stone. Drew had shown it to me two summers ago down by the river when I took them for ice cream while Thomas was working late. He had kept it in his pocket like a talisman, something real he could touch when the world got too loud or too dark.
I slipped the stone into my pocket alongside the cellar key.
Then I grabbed a blue canvas duffel bag from the closet, tossed in three pairs of clean jeans, a stack of dinosaur t-shirts, a box of colored pencils, and the pink rabbit with the missing ear.
As I zipped the bag shut, something small fell out of the side pocket and clattered against the hardwood floor.
It was a plastic toy soldier—green, headless, its base melted slightly on one side as if it had been dropped too close to a wood stove.
I knelt down, picked it up, and held it in the palm of my hand.
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I remembered giving that soldier to Drew on his fifth birthday. I had told him that infantrymen were trained to hold their ground no matter how hard the wind blew or how dark the night got, because their job was to protect the people behind them.
He had remembered that lesson better than any of us.
