hold me in her arms and sing to me, brushing my hair back and kissing my cheeks. I think she liked to pretend I was her own and that my daddy was hers too. ”
“She came to you? You mean like a nanny?”
Genie shook her head, a grave expression on her time-worn face. “Oh no. We couldn’t have afforded that extravagance back then. I thought she was a friend of my daddy’s, but I never saw them together. But she was always here. She’d come every day to see me. I was her friend; her confidante. She couldn’t have children of her own and her husband left her for another woman who could give him some. I remember feeling so sorry for her, even then. Children are such a blessing.”
Elizabeth’s vision blurred as tears pooled behind her lids. She closed her eyes and inwardly counted to ten. Her thoughts went back up to the empty room at the end of the hall. Her hands fluttered down to rest on her equally empty stomach and her throat burned with the force of stifling her cry. The gleam of her wedding band and the smooth expanse of flat tummy reminded her of everything she’d lost – and everything she was trying to forget.
She shook off her feelings of grief and began putting away the tea time accoutrements. “I’m sorry, Genie, but I think you should go. I need to tidy up – a buyer may come soon for a viewing.”
“Oh, I doubt that, dear.” Genie smiled showing all of her teeth, but her eyes didn’t glint the way they had earlier. In fact, they looked full of sorrow as she stared at Elizabeth with that same condescending expression of knowing that got under Elizabeth’s skin. “That’s why I came here today – you can’t sell this house.”
Elizabeth scoffed. She folded her arms in front of her. “And why wouldn’t I be able to sell my house?”
Genie’s smile faded. “Because you belong here. You’ve always been here, dear. Even if you try to forget, it will come back to you.”
The air was sucked out of the room like a vacuum. Elizabeth teetered on her heels and she gripped the kitchen counter to steady herself. Genie was no longer there. In her place sat a little girl with cloudy grey eyes and a bandaged right hand. Elizabeth’s vision blurred and the old woman was back in her place.
“This is your home,” Genie said with a whisper. “You can’t ever leave it, Elizabeth. Never.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elle Chambers has been a lover of horror from the minute she heard the words, “It was a dark and stormy night.” She idolized Stephen King as a child and even attempted to put herself up for adoption in hopes that her hero would come take her under his wing and teach her everything he knew about the craft of dark fiction.
Elle is now a paranormal investigator in Ohio. She lives (mostly) alone with a black cat named Tabs and the occasional visitor from the great beyond.
Connect with Elle:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/indie_spirit
Blog: https://www.indiespiritpress.com
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