Matthew Promised [PG-16+ Short Story]

[вєgσттєη ιηѕαηιту]

[spoiler=Warning: Wall of Text]

Matthew pulled his father’s small Ford truck up into his grandmother’s driveway. He sat there for a moment, letting the engine run to fill the silence. The house loomed ahead of him and he felt his heart lurch momentarily before he abruptly shut off the engine and stepped out. Matthew approached the building, a simple single story brick house with a half-finished basement. The building was rather old, but the perk was that the building had been paid off and could be handed down for generations to come. Standing before the door he let out one quick sigh before knocking loudly.

Nervously, Matthew adjusted his belt, hair, and shirt repeatedly as he heard shuffling from within the home. This would be the first time he had spoken to his grandmother in nearly thirteen years. He hardly remembered anything about her other than that she was a widower who used to watch him and his cousin Elizabeth when they were kids. Thoughts of his childhood slowly crept into the fringes of his mind, but were abruptly stopped when he heard the locks within the house being clicked open.

The woman behind the door was old; that much was to be expected. But, he was shocked at how frail she appeared. Her skin was pale, wrinkly, and loose around her bones. She didn’t seem sickly; it was more like the life was ever so slowly fading away from her. Matthew grinned, thinking that she must have been putting up one hell of a fight, that fact reminding him of his stubborn mother.

She smiled brightly at him. “Oh my word,” she paused, taking in a deep breath of disbelief. “My my, this isn’t my little Matty before me, is it? Oh my, how you’ve grown!” She smiled again at him cheerily and welcomed him inside by stepping into the home and out of the doorframe.

“Hey, grandma,” Matthew said sheepishly. He wasn’t certain why he felt so nervous. After a moment he corrected himself. It wasn’t nervousness he felt, it was guilt. He hadn’t spoken to her in years, so he figured that it must have just been that he should have spoken to her sooner. Brushing off the feeling, he examined the house. It was exactly as he remembered it, even smelled the same. Cinnamon Gingerbread scented candles burned at nearly every corner of the home, and in the kitchen cooled three pies. One of which his grandmother would give to her neighbors, as she did every week. Another one she would donate to the local orphanage which had a habit of collecting the homemade meals she donated to them. And the third must have been intended for him.

His grandmother never got out of the house much. She had lived off of retirement money and her husband’s life insurance for longer than Matthew had been alive. The only time that she did leave the home, was to go to church. Every Sunday, the church bus would pull into her driveway to take her, and several other patrons without cars, to attend the sermon. This was the same ritual she had followed for years on end. Matthew was actually quite saddened when he realized all of that was being taken away from her. His grandmother had recently suffered a bad fall and a resulting hip injury. Because of that, Matthew’s mother no longer felt comfortable with her mother living alone. So she demanded that his grandmother packed all of her personal belongings and move into a nursing home. Matthew’s mother would leave the furniture behind and rent the home out to friends and family who needed a place to stay.

Matthew followed her into the kitchen and sat down at the table. He observed as his grandmother washed her hands vigorously before cutting up the third pie, as he had suspected.

“I am actually quite sad that your mother couldn’t make it out to help us today,” his grandmother said hesitantly. “I know our relationship has been rocky for who knows how long, but I would have still really loved to see her.” She laid a slice of pie on a plate and carried it, as well as a silver fork, over to Matthew who smiled and thanked her.

“As far as I’m aware, she wanted to be here but was unable to get out of work.”

“I guess that just means more pie for us,” his grandmother winked as she said that.

They ate, nearly in silence except for a few statements or questions made by his grandmother. Simple things like asking how the family was, what was new in their lives, and how college was going for Matthew. Mild chit chat. During this time Matthew examined the house more intently, there was something burning in the back of his mind but he was unable to recall exactly what it was, and suddenly it hit him when his grandmother spoke again.

“I’ve packed nearly all of my things into boxes already. I only have a few more of my cooking supplies in the kitchen that I can get. After this injury though, I’m not sure I could even make it down the basement stairs.” Matthew remembered everything like a sudden lightning flash through his mind. The guilt grew inside of him like a sick twisting inside his stomach. He remembered events and facts from his past that he had long forgotten, like the fact that his grandmother has rarely ever went into the basement since her husband died. All of his tools and workshop equipment were down there and it just depressed her. She had even packed all of his personal belongings and clothes into boxes and had Matthew’s father store them down there as well. He then remembered what had happened to Elizabeth. Oh poor Lizzy…

Matthew did his best to maintain his composure, not wanting to cause his grandmother any dismay. “Don’t worry,” he managed to choke out. “I will take some empty boxes downstairs and pack everything up.” She thanked him as she cleaned up their mess from eating. He sat still for a moment, rebuilding his composure. “Alright, I’m going to head downstairs now, call for me if you need anything.”

“Alright honey,” she replied as cheerful as ever.

Matthew stood before the basement door, his stomach churning harder and harder. He broke into a cold sweat as he reached for the doorknob hesitantly. After feeling suspended for what seemed like an eternity he eventually grasped the knob firmly and opened the door in a manner akin to ripping off a band-aid. He did not want to go down there. Matthew thought about something his mother had told him. When he was really little, around the age of two or three, Matthew used to spend an hour just staring at the basement door. He’d hardly move, hardly even blink. While he was in these trances, one of the only things that made him react was when someone walked near the basement door. When they did, he would break into a horrendously loud cry until they moved away from it. As he aged, he would make claims that there was something evil in the basement and, more often than not, he would refuse to go down the stairs. It even advanced to the point that he would plead and beg people not to go down there.

But that wasn’t why he was afraid now. No, he no longer believed in evil spirits or the paranormal. As he stood in the doorframe looking down, he was afraid of what he might find down in the dark. It had been too long, no one had heard anything, something must have happened to her. After another abrupt sigh. He crept his way cautiously down the stairs. Once at the bottom of the wooden staircase, he listened intently. The basement was silent. Not even a scurrying mouse.

Eventually, he drew enough courage to step down onto the concrete floor and walk over to one of the several crawl spaces in the basement. Each crawl space originated as an approximately two foot by two foot square hole at the base of the wall. Each was covered in a wooden door that was hinged at the top, so that it stayed down unless lifted. There were seven of these total, but they were all kept empty. His grandfather refused to use them because he felt the brick that lined them was unstable, and he didn’t want it to collapse on anyone crawling through them. On majority of these he had bolted the wooden doors down, but he died before finishing, leaving two of the crawlspaces unbolted.

Matthew walked through the densely cluttered basement, choking slightly on the humid and musty air. This particular crawlspace was immediately to the right of the staircase, several feet across the basement. He moved a few boxes around; it had been easier to reach when he was younger and smaller. Now, he struggled to maneuver through the clutter. Eventually, he reached the front facing wall of the basement, the one that coincided with the entrance to the home, and he stared at the wooden hatch. Unlike the others, this one had a brass handle. Matthew figured that was the reason Elizabeth had chosen this particular crawl space, but there’s no way he could be certain.

He couldn’t look away from the hatch, and yet he couldn’t open it. He sat down on the ground, his fingers twitched as he rubbed his hands together nervously. He had kept her promise for nearly fifteen years. Would it matter if he broke it now? Could she even find out? What if he did look, and somehow she knew and then could never forgive him? How foolish, he hasn’t seen her in thirteen years. Only God knows where she is anymore.

Yet he remained still, reminiscing about his childhood.

For the first ten years of his life, Matthew lived two doors down from his grandmother. Additionally, his cousin Elizabeth, who was Matthew’s mother’s niece, lived across the street from them. Thus, when Matthew and Elizabeth’s parents were too busy to watch their own children they sent them off to their grandmother’s home just down the street. Their grandmother gladly accepted them. She enjoyed having company and she admired children, but she wasn’t a good caretaker. She would pay very little attention to the children and would spend her time reading books and cooking. The only times she ever really bothered to check on them was when one of the two would tell her that something was wrong or that they needed something, which rarely ever happened anyway.

So together, Matthew and Elizabeth grew up. They would run around playing hide and seek, tag, or various other children’s games. They were best friends. So close in fact that Matthew’s favorite part of every day was going to his grandmother's so that he could spend time with Elizabeth. Over time, he began to feel strongly towards her in ways that he knew weren’t appropriate. Matthew kept his love for his cousin a secret from everyone, knowing it would only ever cause problems. But because of it, he was willing to do anything in the world for Elizabeth.

Matthew spent every single possible minute he could with her. They went away on summer camps. They spent spring break having water balloon fights and sliding on Slip n’ Slides. He would even go to her house on Christmas morning after opening his gifts to compare with Elizabeth. He never wanted to leave her side.

She was much more courageous and outgoing than Matthew. She would climb trees, jump into rivers, and play with wild animals all while Matthew stood a safe distance back protesting, yet refusing to leave. She would mock him, appropriately so, calling him a wuss or a coward. He accepted these as facts; deep down he knew he was protecting himself so that if Elizabeth ever needed to be saved, he could be there for her. There was one thing she did that bothered him most, however. She had a habit of exploring the basement. Something about the darkness and the clutter reminded her of a cave and she would tell Matthew that running around down there made her feel like a famous adventurer. Matthew would protest as expected. However, as they grew up he became slowly more and more willing to venture down into the basement with her. While the times he did go were far and few between, sometimes she was able to convince him.

He never enjoyed his time down there, but seeing Matthew venture out of his comfort zone amused Elizabeth and that fact made it okay to him. The last time she had to convince him to go down into the basement, was when she found a box of really old clothes. The kind that people in black and white movies wore was how she put it.

Matthew was minding his own business that day, admiring a red and yellow canary that was perched on a branch on the front porch. He was startled by Elizabeth storming through the front door wearing a deep blue mens tuxedo that was much too big for her. The sleeves dragged the ground and her feet did not even come out of the bottom of the leg holes. With a giggle, She tipped her fedora at him as he jumped to his feet.

"Elizabeth!" He whispered as aggressively as he could muster. "What are you doing? You're going to get caught going in and out of the basement."

She shrugged at him nonchalantly. "Grandma is taking a nap, besides she hasn't caught me yet." Elizabeth rested her hand on her hip and struck a pose that screamed I can do whatever I want. Try and stop me.

Matthew rolled his eyes. "You should probably put that back. I doubt Grandma would appreciate you wearing Grandpa's old clothes."

"These aren't Grandpa's," she corrected.

"What do you mean?"

"They belonged to the people who lived here before Grandma and Grandpa moved in."

"How do you know."

Elizabeth grinned, "Guess you'll have to come down stairs and find out!" And with that, she ran off back down the stairs.

She had come close to dragging him downstairs before, and occasionally was successful.  She understood that Matthew had an overwhelming curiosity that he often struggled to defeat. This time, as he crept up to the open basement door, he realized that Elizabeth had beaten him. Exasperated, he climbed down the staircase, mumbling obscenities much too vulgar for his age.

"You really should be more careful, Lizzy," he told her for the hundredth time.

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Come here, look at this stuff." She was holding up old jewelry, snow-white scarves, and some women's lingerie that made Matthew uncomfortable. Blushing, Matthew looked into the box himself. The items inside were rather old, Matthew would have guessed around thirty years old at the time. Very fancy and proper.

The two of them laughed quietly as Elizabeth turned her usual tomboyish self into a fashionista. While stylistically her choices were sound, everything was way too big on her, making it even harder for them to stifle their laughter. Underneath the layers of clothes there were several small wooden boxes. Elizabeth took them out with a wild fascination, opening, examining, and closing them faster than Matthew could even get ahold of one.

Eventually, he grabbed a box that Elizabeth had not yet gotten to, and he opened it. Inside were letters. Nearly a hundred letters were packed tightly into the box. He examined one of them and noticed that they were sealed but not marked. There was no writing on the outsides of the letters. After filing through a couple of them he ran across a newspaper clipping. Man found murdered in the forest. The article detailed a story of a man who was discovered by some hikers. He had been stabbed several times in the stomach and left for dead. His wife was missing, and while many believed her to be a victim, the police were skeptical and believed her to be the culprit.

Matthew stuffed the letters back in the box and sat the box aside, highly curious. He decided that he would take the box home with him that night and read as many of those letters as he could. After closing the box he looked up at Elizabeth who appeared to be hiding a different wooden box behind her back. She seemed unaware of his, so he chose not to question her.

It was getting close to time for them to leave so they stuffed mostly everything back into the cardboard box, both attempting to hide their treasures from the other. Before they left, however, Matthew caught a glimpse of Elizabeth's box and after a moment, felt a cold chill run down his spine. He couldn't explain the phenomenon and after some consideration he thought wise to get out of the basement as quickly as possible.

Matthew and Elizabeth remained quiet for the short remainder of their day together. They had adopted their own little secrets that neither of them felt like sharing. Once Matthew got home, his anxiety became overwhelming. The curiosity of what was inside those letters was tormenting. He couldn't stop thinking about them all through dinner. By the time his parents had gone to bed, and he managed to sneak the box into his room, he was nearly exploding. He spent almost the entire night awake, reading each letter carefully.

What he read scared him to the core. He desperately did not want to believe the words that he read on the pages. Each envelop held a single-paged letter that the woman who previously lived in his grandmother's house had written to her husband, both before and after his death. Matthew assumed that the husband had never read any of these letters. They detailed out the woman's descriptions of her life as she was slowly possessed by something she couldn't fully explain. She spent a lot of the page apologizing to her husband for weird behavior that she claimed to have no control over. These weird behaviors included waking up in the middle of the night, and standing at the back door for hours. Randomly erupting into fits of rage, and terrorizing her husband. Even as haunting as waking up to find dead animals in their bed, which she assumed she had killed in her trances.

She went on to beg and plead him not to leave her, that she wouldn't know how to function on her own. Simultaneously, however, she understood the turmoil she was putting him through, and expected him to divorce her. These encounters grew worse and worse. Eventually she began hurting her husband, herself, and at one point she had killed their dog. The letter immediately after the newspaper clipping described how he attempted to leave her and how she couldn't accept that. This letter had dried blood smeared on it as she explained how she blacked out, only to wake up over his dead body.

The subsequent letters were her attempts to understand what had happened to her and why she was acting the way she was. She spent nearly a week on the run from police force before she was found and brought to a station. They had no evidence on her, so she simply said she was visiting a friend out of state and left it at that. Once she was home the encounters only grew worse. She woke up with her body in scars. She broke every single mirror in the household. She was losing her mind.

She deduced that the root of her problems was in a pearl necklace that her husband had bought her on a business trip to Japan. Every time she had an encounter she would wake up with that necklace strung around her neck. Her last letter explained how she was going to end it. Burning was her last hope. She had tried destroying the necklace in many ways but none of them were successful. Her last option was to throw the damned thing into the fireplace and hopefully die with it as she strung her body up in the ceiling fan.

She was afraid, however. In all the time that these events have been happening she felt as if her own soul was tied to the necklace. She worried that if she died, she would be trapped, attached to it permanently and never able to pass. On the last letter she apologized to her husband and explained how dearly she loved him before saying her final goodbye.

The next day, Matthew arrived to his grandmother's before Elizabeth did, and he quickly returned the wooden box to where it belonged. He wanted nothing to do with that woman's past, so he put the cardboard box as far into the corner of the basement as possible. Once Elizabeth arrived she was giddy and decided she wanted to build a castle with the boxes in the basement. Matthew agreed reluctantly, making her promise not to go through anymore of the items. He felt like it was disrespectful to the dead, and she agreed. After they had just finished building what Matthew would describe as a fort, rather than a castle, Elizabeth looked at him very seriously. “Matty, look me in the eyes.”

This statement caught the boy off guard, he had been busy constructing the walls of the fort and they hadn’t really spoken while they were building.

“Matty,” she repeated.

“Oh, right,” he replied awkwardly as he turned and looked her in the eyes.

“Remember that box of old stuff, the one that the lady who lived her before left behind? Well, I found something really cool in the box. I know we said we wouldn't mess with the stuff anymore, but this I really want to keep.”

This intrigued and worried Matthew simultaneously. He decided that whatever it was, it couldn't be the necklace because it was destroyed. Calmly he asked her, “What did you find?”

“It’s a secret,” she placed a finger over her lips for emphasis. “I’m telling you now so that I don’t have to carry the secret alone, it makes it much easier to carry when someone shares it.”

Matthew nodded cautiously.

“I’m not going to tell you what it is yet, but I want you to know where I hid it.” She pointed at the crawlspace on the wall at the back of their fort. “I put it inside there. I’m going to keep my secret in there until I can sneak it home with me.” She paused for a moment, making sure that Matthew was looking at her. “I want you to promise me two things.”

“Anything,” he replied anxiously.

“One. You will not tell anyone about my secret. And two. You will not go looking for it. I want you to stay out of the crawlspace, at least until I take the secret home.”

Matthew felt slightly unnerved by this, but he promised. He knew how attentive her parents were and that it would be rather difficult for her to sneak whatever she found home. These promises would be easy for him to keep. He hated the basement anyway and wasn’t likely to look on his own.

“Good.” She smiled at him and they continued to fix their fort.

A couple of hours passed and it was time for Matthew to leave, he smiled and said goodbye to Elizabeth, promising that he would keep her secret. She joked, saying that he better or she would be forced to use their castle’s guillotine on him. And then he left, leaving her alone to play in the basement. Matthew was eight at the time, and for a couple months that was the last that he saw of Elizabeth.

Later that evening, Matthew overheard a phone conversation between Matthew’s mother and her brother, Elizabeth’s father. From what Matthew was able to gather, Elizabeth had gone missing. Apparently, Elizabeth had gone outside to play, shortly after Matthew left, and never came back to the house. Of course, Matthew knew how easily Elizabeth could have slipped in and out of that house without anyone knowing, so he was unsure of what actually happened. All that he knew was that Elizabeth was missing.

When the adults asked Matthew about where Elizabeth may have gone, he told them he didn’t have a clue. He promised Elizabeth that he wouldn’t tell anyone about her secret. He felt conflicted, confused, and extremely guilty but he wanted to keep his promise to her.

It was mid-winter when Elizabeth went missing, but there hadn’t been any snow yet. Every single night after her disappearance, Elizabeth’s parents went out searching the woods for their daughter. The woods behind their neighborhood were dense and huge. There were several parking lots connecting to main roads that outlined the woods which were used for hikers and joggers to leave their cars when traversing the trails. Matthew’s aunt and uncle would go to a different parking lot every night and walk as many trails as they could, believing that their daughter was somewhere in the woods.

One night, the first snowfall of the year, there was a heavy snowstorm. The ground covered in snow very quickly. Against the protests of Matthew’s mother, his aunt and uncle went out again that night. No one is sure exactly how the accident happened. All that was certain was that Elizabeth’s parents slid in the snow, crashed through a guardrail, and plummeted off of a bridge into the dark freezing waters below. Their bodies were never recovered, believed to be swept away in the river.

Just like that, an entire family was gone, missing, wiped out. A funeral was held a month later, after the police declared that Elizabeth was presumed dead. Everyone at the funeral cried, said their words, and gave their condolences to one another. But as Matthew sat in the pews of his aunt and uncle's church, he couldn’t fight off the feeling that Elizabeth was still alive. He remembered her as the adventurous child she was and refused to accept that someone as stubborn as her could die so suddenly, without a trace. Due to her nature he always imagined her dying in some glorious manner that made her immortally famous, or infamous. He never really pinned her as the most moral person.

He tried sharing his opinion with people at the funeral, but no one cared to listen to him. What would an eight year old boy know about life or death? Everyone assured him that they were, in fact, gone. Several times he was told that he just needed to move on. But for some reason, he refused to accept that fact.

Matthew felt like his life was in constant motion. The world around him spun with a haze of events. He was certainly traumatized, overwhelmed, and depressed. Due to how busy his parents were, with work piling on top of the tragedies, Matthew was spending even more time than ever with his grandmother. For the first couple weeks his grandmother had paid extra attention to him. Together they baked, read stories, knitted, and occasionally she would even play hide and seek with him. But as the world around him died down, so did the attention. The loneliness began to tear away at him. He missed Elizabeth tremendously and every day considered the possibility that she was alive. Those thoughts only made him feel worse. On occasion he caught himself staring at the basement door, her last words to him repeating in his mind. The curiosity ate at him like a fever, but he refused to open the door. He refused to go down the stairs. He made a promise to her and he intended to keep it.

At least, until he heard the laughter.

It was a week before his ninth birthday. He was alone in his grandmother's living room, only a few feet from the basement door, setting up a war scene with his toy army men. He heard what sounded like something glass rolling across the concrete floor of the basement. A cold chill ran down his spine. In all of the years that he was afraid of the basement, he hadn’t heard or seen anything down there. It was only a feeling with no evidence to match it. But once that noise reached his ears he imagined all kinds of ghosts and ghouls. His muscles tightened and he sat perfectly still. He wasn’t sure that he could move, even if he wanted to. Staring at the basement door, he listened carefully for another sound.

It was difficult for him to listen, the sound of his own heartbeat thundered from his chest. An aching headache began to form as he willed himself to his feet. He approached the door, his hand shaking vigorously as he reached for the knob. The sound came again, almost an exact echo of the original. Matthew flinched and yanked his hand away from the door. He was tempted to go back to his army men, tempted to ignore the sounds coming from the basement, but then he heard laughter.

It sounded exactly like Elizabeth, the way she would laugh while getting into trouble. Matthew felt his heart leap in his chest. No longer did it pulse with fear, but rather with joy. He opened the door wide and sprinted down the steep wooden steps. He nearly tripped on his way down, and once he was at the bottom he looked around expectantly. Only to his dismay, Elizabeth was not in sight.

A large marble sat in the middle of the basement, one used for sport as the target players attempted to knock out of a ring. He was shocked for a moment, not only that there was no little girl in the basement, but also that he was able to hear something so small rolling across the floor from ten feet above. He picked up the glass ball and examined it. It was in fact Elizabeth's marble. To make matters worse it was the marble she always carried in her pockets, her prized possession.

“Lizzy?” Matthew called out, half expecting a response and half not.

The basement remained silent.

“Elizabeth, are you down here?” He wanted so desperately for her to be alive. He felt an aching deep within himself that he couldn't describe if he wanted to. Oh, how he loved her so. He had felt so lonely, he prayed that she was still alive and in this basement for him to find. The crawlspace with the brass handle came into his mind. He walked over to it, and looked at it expectantly. Just as he was about to reach down he was startled by a voice.

“I hope you weren't about to break your promise,” Elizabeth whispered from across the room.

Matthew had to fight back tears as he stood and turned around. Elizabeth was crouched behind a barricade of boxes across the basement from him and she stood as he did. For a moment he felt like he was floating in place, unaware of where his body was in relation to the world around him. Once he fully understood the situation he ran to her and hugged her tightly, this time allowing the tears to run down his face.

“Everyone thinks you're dead…” He sobbed into her shirt.

“I know…” She replied, her voice shrouded in sorrow. “I know about my parents too…”

Matthew rebuilt his composure. “What are you doing down here?”

“I’m worried that if I am found hiding, I’ll be taken away to some orphanage or an adoptive family… I don’t want to leave all of you.” Elizabeth looked down at the ground and kicked some dust with her shoe. “Matty… I’m scared.”

Matthew always imagined one day that he would be protecting Elizabeth from some harm, but at no point did he ever expect something like this. All that mattered to him at this point was being strong for her, protecting her. “Don’t worry. No one is going to come and take you away,” he replied, hugging her tighter.

“You can’t tell anyone I’m down here,” she quickly stated.

While he hated it, Matthew understood. His parents were much too busy to take another child under their care and their grandmother was in no physical state to be the primary caregiver for her. If anyone found out, Elizabeth would go away for sure. So they agreed to keep it a secret.

“Promise me?” Elizabeth asked.

“I promise.”

And so, like that they played. Whenever Matthew would visit he would wait until his grandmother was preoccupied and then he would say he was going outside, only to make a secret run to the basement. He had learned this from Elizabeth years ago, and up until then had never done it on his own. Matthew was very curious about how Elizabeth was living, she was always wearing the same clothes but never seemed to be losing or gaining any weight. Actually, much to Matthew’s surprise her appearance never seemed to change at all. This didn’t bother him however, he found her beautiful and wished that the two of them could remain the exact same for ever.

She assured him that she was eating. “Whenever grandma goes to sleep I just sneak upstairs and eat. She’s a heavy sleeper, and not very attentive to her groceries or what goes missing. I am careful to only take what I need and I always sleep in the basement, where I know she won’t come looking. Also, if I hear anyone coming I hide and wait until they are gone before coming back out.”

Matthew felt like this was a good plan but he was concerned that she wasn’t going to school, so when he visited they would spend some time working on his homework together and he taught her as much as he could. After working on homework they would play marbles, build forts with the boxes, and various other things together until Matthew needed to go back upstairs again to eat. He had to be very careful not to be caught sneaking around in the basement so he would head upstairs an hour before dinner every day.

They followed this routine nearly every day for a year and a half. Sometimes Matthew would beg Elizabeth to sneak outside and play in the woods with him, but she would always refuse. She did not want to risk being seen by someone who could recognize her. One day however, Elizabeth asked him a question that caught him off guard.

“Do you want to know what my secret is? I still have it hidden.”

Matthew was confused, he considered the possibility that she was testing him, that she was trying to see how loyal he truly was. So he refused. “No, I made a promise to you and I intend to keep it.”

“Your loss,” she replied mockingly.

This happened multiple times, and every single time he refused.

The last time Matthew saw Elizabeth was a day like any other. There was nothing special prior to that day that could have warned him about what was going to happen. He was picked up by his mother after having lost at marbles to Elizabeth three to one. Once he was home his mother informed him that his father was promoted and that they would be moving. Matthew asked if he was going to still go over to his grandmother’s and they said probably not. They were moving too far away for it to be logical. To make matters worse, they were moving the next day. His parents had hired movers who pack, move, and unpack everything in the house over a two day span.

Matthew was devastated. He wanted a chance to say goodbye to Elizabeth but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to. He was depressed for months after the move. It was difficult for him to make friends at his new school and his grades slowly began to slip. But as time went by, it became easier to accept. Slowly, as the years passed, Matthew began to forget about his secret playdates in the basement. After a decade, he had entirely forgotten about her being alive. He had accepted, just like the rest of his family, the idea that she was dead like her parents.

That was, until he agreed to help his grandmother move. He took a deep breath, as if coming out of a trance, and stared intently at the hatch before him. Part of him felt like he absolutely needed to know what Elizabeth’s big secret was. So he finally got over his anxiety, opened the hatch, and crawled in. The crawl space was even dustier than the rest of the basement, making it difficult to breathe, but it was also intensely dark. He stuck a box underneath the hatch to hold it up, allowing some light through, but he was still unable to see. Pulling out his phone, he turned on the flashlight feature and nearly vomited when he saw what was in front of him.

Before him Elizabeth lied, rotting and decaying. It appeared as if the bricks that lined the wall of the crawl space had collapsed, just as his grandfather had feared. Matthew fought back tears of anxiety and guilt as he examined her body. She was still so young, she couldn’t have died much later than when Matthew had moved away. He tormented himself emotionally, realizing that if he had broken his promise, maybe if he had just told someone that she was down there, then maybe she would still be alive. That’s when he noticed something odd, she was clutching tightly onto a small, finished wooden box. He pulled it out of her arms, covering his mouth with his shirt sleeve of his other arm. It was a jewelry box. Inside of the box was a single pearl necklace.

Instantly his body went cold. He had taken the necklace out of the box and was examining it when he heard the sound of a little girl laughing from behind him. He kept still, stricken with fear. His mouth filled with the taste of copper and blood and his pulse quickened.

“But Matty, you promised,” Elizabeth whined behind him. He turned around and saw her peeking her head into the crawlspace. The eight year old girl who had went missing fifteen years ago stared at him, blatantly upset at her broken promise. Her face slowly changed from a sadden frown, to a cold grin. She appeared to Matthew like an animal looking into the eyes of its prey. And then, as suddenly as she appeared before him, she disappeared, dancing away towards the other side of the basement, humming quietly to herself.

The eerie sensation that had always haunted Matthew about the basement came back as strong as ever. He began to question the time he spent with Elizabeth after the accident as he crawled out of the crawlspace. He stood and looked to where he expected Elizabeth to be but standing there was an older woman, appearing to be in her early forties. She stood tall, her long, blonde hair draping the back of her silk nightgown. She had rope burn marks on her neck and she looked at him expectantly.

It was her. The same woman from the letters and newspaper clipping. Matthew assumed that the woman in front of him was the evil presence he had always felt as a child. And if not, she was a trapped victim of whatever was there.

He traced her eyes down toward the pearl necklace he held in his hands. The woman outstretched her arm as if requesting the necklace from him. He stood still, attempting to piece together the memories of his past. Elizabeth had no reason to run away from home. There was no reason for her to be hiding in their grandmother's basement, especially during the months prior to her parents deaths. That meant that she must have died before her parents. Matthew felt himself being swallowed by guilt. If he had only shown her the letters then maybe she would be alive. Then another question rose in his mind, during his last couple years before moving, was he really playing with Elizabeth, or was it this woman pretending to be her?

His thoughts were quickly cut off as the woman dropped her arm, apparently growing impatient with him. Matthew didn’t know whether or not he was afraid as the woman suddenly launched at him with a menacing growl. He didn't move. All this woman wanted was to be free from the torment that kept her bound. He couldn't save Elizabeth, this much he understood. So to make up for it, he allowed this woman her freedom from the hell she was living. Even if it meant being trapped in it himself.