Chapter 1 - The Dust in the Floorboards
The floorboards beneath the master bed in my house at 412 Elm Street had not been swept in eleven months. I knew this because I had built the subflooring myself in the summer of 2011, laid the oak planks with a three-inch pneumatic nailer, and sealed them with two coats of clear polyurethane before Rebecca bought the rugs.
When I pulled my shoulders under the low pine frame at twenty-four minutes past nine on a Thursday morning, the dust tasted like dry plaster and old lint. My heavy work boots stuck out slightly from beneath the hem of the hanging navy bedspread, so I pulled my knees up toward my chest, wedging my forty-three-year-old frame into the six-inch clearance between the slats and the floor. My right elbow pressed against a forgotten plastic storage bin filled with Rebecca’s old winter scarves; my left ear rested directly against the cold oak surface.
Outside, the neighborhood was completely silent. Brookline was a quiet grid of two-story wooden homes, aged oak trees, and narrow driveways where people minded their own business unless they were seventy-two-year-old widows like Martha Gable.
For twenty minutes, the only sound in the house was the faint, rhythmic ticking of the water meter in the basement utility room and the hum of the refrigerator three rooms away.
Then the front door deadbolt clicked.
It wasn't a forced entry. There was no rattle of the handle, no hesitation at the threshold. The brass key entered the cylinder, turned smoothly, and the heavy oak door swung open, hitting the rubber bumper on the baseboard with a soft, familiar thud.
Footsteps crossed the linoleum of the foyer. They were light, uneven, dragging slightly on the right heel—a gait I had known since 2011, when those tiny feet had first learned to balance on the rug in the living room.
The steps came up the carpeted staircase. One, two, three... seven, eight, nine, ten. The sixth step squeaked—the tread was loose because I had meant to drive a couple of countersunk screws into it three winters ago and had never found the time between twelve-hour shifts on the highway expansion project.
The bedroom door opened.
A pair of white canvas high-top sneakers, stained with mud around the rubber toe caps, came into my narrow field of vision beneath the hanging blue bedspread. They stopped two inches from the edge of the mattress.
The bed above me creaked as a weight settled onto the springs. The mattress dipped down three inches, pressing the pine slats directly against the small of my back.
Then came the breath. It wasn't a normal breath; it was a jagged, desperate gasp for air, followed immediately by a wet, muffled sob that was swallowed by a throw pillow.
My chest locked. The dust on the floorboards burned in my throat, but I didn't dare swallow. My knuckles turned white where I gripped the edge of the pine bed frame.
"Please..." Josephine whispered into the empty room, her voice breaking into three distinct, trembling syllables that sounded small and shredded. "Please... stop."
She was alone.
I stared at the white canvas sneakers dangling six inches from my eyes. There was no second pair of boots in the doorway. There was no shadow standing in the hallway. The door to the corridor remained wide open, showing only the yellow wallpaper of the upper landing and the dusty mirror hanging beside the bathroom door.
Josephine pulled her knees up to her chest on top of the mattress. The springs groaned under the shift in her weight.
She took another ragged, shuddering breath. Her hand reached down to her small navy school bag, unzipping the main pocket with a quick, metallic rasped sound. Plastic blister packs clinked against glass.
"I won't lose..." she whispered to the empty air, her voice dropping into a flat, terrifying monotone that I had never heard from her before. "I won't... I won't let them destroy me. I’m almost there. Just three more weeks."
May you like
I lay under the bed, the cold oak floorboards pressing against my cheek, and realized that the monster Mrs. Gable had heard screaming inside my house every afternoon was not a stranger who had broken through the lock.
It was something my fifteen-year-old daughter was doing to herself in the dark, while her mother pretended not to notice and her father worked twelve hours a day to pay for a mortgage on a house he didn't know.
