The taxi pulled into the driveway, she had finally arrived. It had been a long trip, travelling all the way from the Cape to Natal. Trafalgar seemed like a small overgrown little area. Fey hadn't seen this house since she was a little child, but she remembered it well. Her oupa had built this house with his own two hands. This was the house mom had grown up in. From the front, it looked like a relatively small house with a small front garden, like every other house in this street, but it was in fact built on a natural embankment - this area is full of ups and downs - so the house was actually a 4 story building, with a back yard that stretched out all the way to a crocodile infested swamp. Fey remembered that the top floor, the one seen from the street, was the only one she'd ever seen. There was a gate where the stairwell led down, that prevented anyone from accessing the other floors. Not even ouma went down there. Fey remembered looking down the dark stairwell - after the gate the rest of the stairwell was pretty much consumed by darkness - in between the mountain of crap piled up all the way to the gate, was an old mannequin. It was missing it's arms, it's face was in a poor state and it was leaning up against the gate with it's head pressed up against the bars. As a child, that image alone kept Fey far away from the staircase.
Fey got out the taxi, grabbed her bag, and paid the driver. She walked right through, the front gate had rusted so badly that it was stuck and couldn't be closed. As she approached the front door, she noticed that the windows were broken, the burglar gate was off it's hinges, and the wooden door as well as the wooden shutters were rotting. It looked pretty creepy, but oupa had passed away after many years in an old-age home and mom was sick, so she had to come and assess the damage, so that they knew if it was worth trying to fix up. As soon as Fey stepped in, she knew, she should have booked herself into a hotel, but it was too late now. This place was going to be impossible to live in. She'd have to find out about a b&b tomorrow.
After she had put her bag down in the guest room, she decided to take a quick look around. There was a long passageway that went right through the house. There were a few doors on either side, almost like what you could expect to see if you were staying in a hotel. On the right hand side, there were 3 doors. Two of them lead to a guest bedroom, and the last one, right at the end, lead to a little reception area, which had two more doors, one that lead to a shower - strange, but that's how oupa built the house - and another that lead to the bathroom, which had a bath, toilet and basin. She remembered that there was an old child mannequin in the shower, and how much it used to scare her, so she didn't even bother looking there, but she opened the door to the bathroom. Inside, she saw the old barbies ouma had used to make toilet-roll holders with, and soap bottle holders. They consisted of the upper torso of a barbie, put into a dress knitted in such a fashion that it looked like a ballroom gown, where the bottom half had a space to fit a toilet roll or bottle in. By now the babies looked like they had been through world war 3. They were hanging in their dresses, filthy and half eaten away by rats. The bathroom tiles were broken. The bath was filthy. Fey opened the basin tap. It made a gargling sound, and then brown water came shooting out, spitting all over the place and into Fey's face. She stepped back wiping her face off with her sleeve and spitting the disgusting old water out. This was going to be fun.
Fey stepped back into the passage. This time standing on the opposite side, she once again analyzed the doors on the right. There were 3 doors again and a door right at the end of the passageway. She knew the door at the end led to the living room, the same room she'd seen when she first entered the house. The first door on the right led to the main bedroom. She remembered it as a large bedroom, with large windows that overlooked the back yard and swamp. It also had it's on ensuite bathroom. The 2nd door led to a room she'd never been in. It was always looked up and ouma kept the key. The 3rd door led into an area where the dark stairwell was on the right, another door to the kitchen was on the left, and then the rest of the area was open, like a big empty room. Her grandparents kept huge cages in this area with cockatiels that would sing Jan Pierewiet every morning. At the end was another door to the right, which led to the main bedroom again, and another door on the left that led to a storage area for ouma's needlework - she made creepy dolls with left over doll parts that oupa would bring home from the junk yard and scraps of material that was left from the huge church dresses she would make for extra money.
Fey decided the check the second door, since she'd never seen what was in that room before. She pulled the handle down and pushed - it was locked. How disappointing. She decided to check the 3rd door. To her surprise, the stairwell gate was wide open. The mannequin was still there, along with all kinds of other junk, and yes, it was still pitch black. Fey couldn't contain herself, and decided to go down. She stepped down the first flight of stairs, and then stood face to face with the dark at the gate. She pulled out the torch she'd brought with and turned it on. She shined it into the black area. It was so full of junk that she couldn't really make out what the area was for. It looked like a storage space of some sort. She stepped forward, there was web and rat poop everywhere. Her heart started to beat a little faster, she didn't know what she would find in here. As she progressed through the little passages made through the piles of junk, she noticed another stairwell that leads further down. She had to climb over piles of old newspapers to get to it. Fey put the torch down on the newspapers, placed both her palms flat down onto the pile, and pulled herself up. She heard scattering, but was too scared to look, she knew it would be rats and cockroaches, and she didn't want to see them. She twisted herself around and leaned her left foot down, searching for the floor. Fey let out a sharp scream; she had stood on something soft and squishy and couldn't help picturing a dead homeless man decomposing between all this garbage - it sure smelt like a possibility, which she'd previously dismissed as dead rats and cats. She grabbed the torch and jumped back, to get away from the potential dead body and tripped over something hard, she fell back and started to roll down the stairs.
Fey groaned, as she attempted to get up, she had hurt her leg in the fall. She'd also hit her head and she wasn't sure if she'd lost consciousness or not, and if so, for how long. It was even darker down here, if that's even possible. She grabbed her torch, which was still on and shined it around. The wooden floor was rotting away, parts of the floor was missing completely. There was a couch in the distance, with a coffee table and a TV unit - no TV, was probably stolen. She figured that this floor was some sort of man cave for her oupa. She decided that it was too risky to look around, she'd have to go back up and face what ever was rotting in the darkness upstairs - it was big, too big to be an animal and the idea frightened her to death. Fey tried to stand up, but a sharp pain shot through her injured leg, and she collapsed backwards, landing smack bang on the rotting floor, which instantly gave way. In that split second, Fey knew she would not survive this fall, she was going to land on the bottom floor which was sure to have a cement base and she'd snap her neck for sure. Fey hit the ground, but to her surprise, it wasn't that hard. Her leg hurt, but other than that, she seemed to be okay. Fey felt around, and realised that she had fallen on a mattress. Her torch had come down with her, but it had bounced off the mattress and rolled over to the other side of the room. She'd need to get up to go fetch it so that she could see her surroundings. Fey was gathering the courage to get up on that injured leg, when something grabbed her attention; the faintly lit area that the torch was shining on. It was a brick face wall, with huge metal chains and cuffs dangling from the ceiling.
Fey's heart pounded in her throat. What the hell? She couldn't see much but immediately figured that she was in a torture chamber of some sort. Who was her oupa? What did he do here? She couldn't get up right away, so she got on all fours and crawled toward the torch. The floor was cement, as she'd expected, and she was very lucky to land on the mattress. The cement was cold and hard. The floor was sticky and damp, with small sharp objects scattered across, probably stones. Fey grabbed the torch and had a quick look around. The batteries were dying and this level was dark! She was searching for a stairwell. Shining the light from the left and slowly making her way to her right, she spotted more chains bolted to the floor with cuffs at the end. The mattress was in the corner, and standing all alone, was a single chair in the middle of the floor and then there it was, the stairwell, but then Fey suddenly spotted somebody on the chair, she shined the light back on the chair and this time, there was a little white piece of material draped over the seat. She figured she'd seen a little girl, no more than 7 years old and assumed that the white piece of material that she was looking at must have been the little white dress she thought she saw the little girl wearing. Fey was petrified. She started to crawl toward the stairwell. When she got to the first step, she realised that she was going to suck up the pain if she wanted to get out of here. As she climbed on the first step, she heard something. She'd been shuffling and groaning and the sound of her weight on the wooden step had caused the wood to creek, so she stopped, trying to breathe as softly as possible so that she could listen carefully - had she heard something? And then there it was, a soft, muffled voice of a child; "Don't go".
Fey's heart stopped. She had heard that voice very clearly, but she knew that it was impossible for anyone to be down here. Her instinct told her to ignore it and get out NOW, she bit her lip and started to crawl up the stairs with meaning, when she felt something grab her injured leg... She screamed so loud that she thought her own eardrums would burst. She looked back and saw decomposed hand latched around her ankle, it was coming from underneath the stairs. She started to scream "LET GO, LET GO" and shined the torch up the stairs, looking to see how far she need to climb still to get out of this basement, when she saw the gate. "SHIT". She was locked in. Suddenly Fey fell forward. She'd been released. She practically ran up the stairs to the gate, forgetting all about her sore leg - it wasn't that big a deal anymore in comparison to the situation - she shook the gate, it was locked and she wasn't going to get out this way. Fey sank down to the step and started to cry. The sound of Fey's sobs filled the air. Soon, the sound of another woman's sob started to join in and then another. Soon Fey's sobs were drowned out by the sound of a dozen women all sobbing. Fey looked down the stairs and in the dark, could see beaten battered women, all sitting on the stairs, reaching for the gate, crying for help - like her, they too were trapped. Fey closed her eyes and shut herself up. It was quiet. She looked down again and the stairway was clear. She picked up the torch and shined it down the stairs and at the bottom was a group of mannequins all standing in the basement facing the stairwell. Fey wet herself, she couldn't contain her fear. She heard the sound of a key in the gate, she turned her head to see who was there. "Ouma?"
"You fucking little whore. Did he really think I wouldn't find you here?" "No ouma, please, it's me, please help me" Fey knew it was pointless to plead for help. This wasn't ouma. Ouma died when she was 12. This looked like ouma, but this thing had an evil look in it's eye, and when it spoke, it did so with the voice of a demon. Ouma lifted her right hand over her head; she was holding a kitchen knife. She thrusted the knife into Fey's back, Fey screamed in pain and fear. Ouma stabbed again, and again, and again, till Fey's lifeless body was laying on the stairs, her warm blood dripping through the rotten wood and softly tapping the basement floor beneath. Ouma turned around and vanished into the darkness.
Fey stood in the corner of the dark basement. She stood there next to countless other women and children, all dripping in blood, watching the gate, waiting. Waiting for the gate to open. Waiting for oupa to come, come see what ouma has done. Come let us out, just our lifeless bodies, so that we may find rest.
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