Chapter 6
Shush.
The sound of dragging fabric and scraping nails entered the east room. It wasn’t the slow, shuffling walk of an old woman. It was a heavy, rhythmic slithering, a wet dragging sound punctuated by the sharp click of long nails digging into the wooden floorboards.
The mysterious voice hadn’t lied. Whatever was wearing Grandma’s skin wasn’t walking upright anymore. It was on all fours, or worse.
“Three left,” the raspy, grinding voice whispered.
It sounded closer now, right inside the room.
“My sweet little River, my precious Hope, and my ungrateful son. Where are you?”
The smell hit us first. It wasn’t just the stench of dead rats anymore. It was the heavy, suffocating odor of damp earth, rotting wood, and something metallic, like old dried blood.
River whimpered softly, a tiny, terrified sound that barely left his throat. I clamped both hands over his mouth, pulling his face into my chest, burying his cries in my sweater. My own heart was beating so violently, I was sure the creature could hear it echoing against the floorboards.
Through the tiny gap where the red altar cloth didn’t quite touch the floor, I saw it.
Two pale, withered hands dragged across the floorboards. The fingers were impossibly long, the joints swollen and twisted, ending in blackened, jagged nails. Following the hands was a mass of tangled, filthy gray hair that swept the ground.
It was crawling on its belly.
Its head was twisted at a grotesque, unnatural angle, the chin practically scraping the floor. It was Grandma’s face, but the eyes were entirely pitch-black, devoid of any whites. The jaw hung slack, a thick string of dark drool pooling onto the wood.
“Where are you hiding?” the thing hissed, its head swiveling side to side like a serpent tasting the air.
It was moving directly toward the altar table, toward the red cloth, toward us.
Get out from under there.
The mysterious voice was sharp, urgent, ringing directly in my head.
There is a false panel behind the altar. Push the wood panel directly behind you. Go now.
I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t question how the voice knew or who it belonged to. I just obeyed.
Still keeping one hand over River’s mouth, I reached blindly behind us in the dark. My fingers met solid wood. I felt along the edge until I found a slight groove. With a surge of desperate strength, I pushed hard.
There was a soft click, and the panel gave way, revealing a narrow, pitch-black hollow space inside the wall itself.
I shoved River backward into the dark cavity and scrambled in right behind him, pulling the wooden panel shut just as the red cloth of the altar was violently ripped away.
Through a hairline crack in the wood panel, I could see the dim light of the east room. The creature that looked like Grandma was right there, its horrifying face inches from the crack, sniffing the floorboards where we had been sitting mere seconds ago.
“I smell you,” it croaked, its black eyes darting wildly. “You were here. You were just here.”