Chapter 13 - Down into the Dark
The downstairs hallway was empty of police officers, who had taken Arthur outside to the patrol car idling by the curb, its blue and red lights painting rhythmic pulses of color across the wallpaper. Clara ignored the open front door, cutting sharply to the left and heading down the narrow, descending flight of wooden stairs that led into the unfinished basement.
The air down here was thick with the smell of damp concrete, old cardboard, and rusted iron pipes. Clara flipped the wall switch, but the overhead fluorescent bulb flickered twice before dying completely with a dull hum, leaving the basement illuminated only by the pale, eerie glow of lightning flashing through the high, barred cellar windows.
"Clara! Stop right there!" Marcus’s voice echoed anxiously from the top of the stairwell as he hurried down after her, his footsteps heavy and desperate.
"Stay back, Dad!" Clara yelled over her shoulder, her hands fumbling along the row of heavy winter garments hanging on the iron pipe rack against the back wall.
Her fingers brushed against wool, canvas, and tweed until they hit a heavy, mothballed trench coat that smelled distinctly of pipe tobacco and old cedar—the coat Marcus had worn the night they first arrived in this town sixteen years ago.
Clara gripped the heavy fabric of the coat, pulling it off the hanger and dragging it over to the small workbench lit by the pale light of the storm outside.
"Clara, please," Maya pleaded, reaching the bottom of the stairs and stopping a few feet away, her hands clasped tightly together in front of her orange shirt. "If you cut that lining, you are going to destroy whatever is left of this family."
"This family was destroyed the day you decided to lie to me about who I am," Clara said, her voice shaking with a mixture of fear and fierce determination.
She reached into the pocket of her dark denim jacket, pulled out a small, sharp pocketknife she had kept since her camping trip last summer, and flicked the blade open with a sharp click.
"Clara, no!" Marcus shouted, lunging forward to grab her arm.
May you like
Clara sidestepped her father with catlike agility, pressed the tip of the blade against the inner hem of the old winter coat, and sliced upward with a single, decisive stroke.
---
