The Lost Among the Living by Donnelly Connor

Author:Donnelly, Connor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-12-10T00:00:00+00:00

3

Cool Down

It sounded like someone was clawing on the other side of the wall. Evelyn couldn’t bring herself to stop listening. The clawing was mesmerizing. Calming. Evelyn felt the scratching getting closer, like it was burrowing through the wall and toward her.

“Evelyn!” Terrence yelled from upstairs.

The lights flickered back on. The power returned to the house.

The scratching noise silenced. Evelyn pulled away from the brick wall. Her head was throbbing. She took inventory of herself. She still held the lamp. She was still wet from her bath. Hurrying upstairs and away from the long shadows of the basement clutter, Evelyn blew out the lamp and rested it on a nearby vase stand.

Terrence, dressed in his briefs and white t-shirt, looked back and forth through the hall until he spotted Evelyn.

“What were you doing down there?” Terrence asked

“Looking for you,” Evelyn replied, holding her towel in place with her free hand.

“I went searching for the breaker box,” Terrence admitted.

“I guess you found it,” Evelyn replied, glancing at the lightbulbs illuminating the hall and foyer beyond.

“Yeah,” Terrence replied “Still, we should get an inspector in here tomorrow. I don’t want to be living in a house with faulty electricity. Even for a month.”

“I heard something down on the other side of the basement,” Evelyn confessed.

“What was it?”

“I don’t know it. An animal maybe. It’s hard to describe.”

Evelyn led Terrence back down to the wall in the basement where she heard the noise. “Here?”

With pursed lips, Evelyn nodded.

Terrence knocked on the brick. “It feels solid.” He put his ear against it. “Weird. I don’t hear anything.”

Always a little superstitious, Evelyn decided to give the basement a wide berth for the remainder of her visit. She reminded herself that she was an adult and should not be scared of such things. Nonetheless, she jogged up the stairs upon leaving the basement. She got dressed into her fitted but comfortable pajamas. As she put on her top, she studied her scars in the bedroom mirror. The deep etchings curved around her ribs just beneath her breast. She could shut her eyes and see the hazy fog lights of the semi-truck blasting toward her. The truck’s horn blared like death’s toll.

“You shouldn’t be alive,” the EMT said when they pulled her from the car that was crushed like a soda can. Terrence, a handsome stranger who stumbled upon the wreckage and called the ambulance, smiled genuinely at Evelyn as the EMTs took her away.

Evelyn curled in next to Terrence on the massive king-sized bed. She didn’t know how old it was, but the mattress was more comfortable than anything she’d ever slept on. Terrence’s snores slowly filled the silent house. Wind rattled the windows. Every time she closed her eyes, she could hear the soft scratching in her ear canal. Before Evelyn knew it, morning birds sang outside the window.

She twisted out of bed and opened the blinds to the acres of rolling land. It was all hers now. From a dingy P.I. office to living like Vivien Leigh, Evelyn could barely make sense of it all.

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