I cross-examined my ankle and stared at the ceiling knowing this was going to hurt. Her eyes widened when she saw me struggle to bend the knee. Some of the dried blood started to crack around my ankle. I hissed and clenched my teeth muttering every curse I could muster to stretch my hand and yank the necklace. My hand reached the nearest and barely tangible object. I was a few centimeters from getting my fingers around the chain. There we go, just a little more. Nice and easy. I almost got it, damn it slipped. Sweat dripped down my brow, irritating my eyes. I huffed. You can do this Ray, come on! Ignore the pain. I heard a slight crack down my ankle and yelled all the way down. Wrapped the chain around my finger and slipped to my side. My head knocked onto chunks of wood and stood my groan. I gasped in and out and focused on Mrs. Hatchet’s weak attempt at catching the necklace.

“Is this what you want?”

I waved the necklace. She groaned and mumbled on and on about dying. I didn’t want to taunt her—she looked pretty tired herself, drained out of her mind—you and me both, lady. The pendant happened to be a locket, I clicked it open, and saw a picture of a family of three; a woman whom I believed could be a younger version of Mrs. Hatchet, a man, a bit older than my Dad, and a little girl in the middle. They were so happy. I regarded Mrs. Hatchet and began to wonder—what happened to her? My finger grazed the photo and my mind started to lose focus.

The next thing I knew, I was sitting in a grey recliner chair and a room full of old newspapers in a living room. My ankle didn’t hurt, everything was grey as if I fell into one of those old black and white films, there were plates filled with moldy food: leftovers, flies buzzing on the edge of bowls and chipped mugs, and wiggling worms crawling inside. I heaved, caught by the smell of mildew and something else I couldn’t quite place. It smelled like something died here. I covered my nose and breathed to the side; it didn’t make a difference, I still tasted the smell of something rotten.

I shuffled my way through piles of old-musty books: garbage bags, unopened mailboxes at every corner, crinkled letters with peeling postage stamps. No matter where I turned, things took up space, and something deep inside me was telling me I shouldn’t be here—it was personal. I squared myself against a rusted kitchen window screen and gasped. No wonder I knew I shouldn’t be here. I was inside Mrs. Hatchet’s home, but how? Suddenly, I heard a sound, kind of like something was scratching against the wall. Mouse? No, mice hardly made noise. The place reminded me of a maze, I shifted left, had to turn back, only to shift right and take another left when the scratching got louder. There stood a towering figure of empty milk bottles in blue plastic boxes. I cringed because I had to move them out of the way and it was going to make a lot of noise. Bit by bit, I climbed over some shoe boxes and buckets of paint.

“Ok, one step at a time,” I said to myself.

I wobbled slightly, “Woah,” phew, a close was, too close for comfort. One box down and a hundred more to go. I groaned, pinching the bridge of my nose. After who knows how long, I got to the mid-box, and behind it were stairs.

“Finally!” I cheered, breaking into a relieved smile.

The door to the house shouldn’t be too far from there. I left the last box laying on the carpet floor and leaned over it to see whether the door was visible from here. There was no door, a plain wall, covered in more junk. There was the scratching again, it came from up the stairs. I swallowed the lump in my throat, licked my chapped lips, and moved my molten feet towards the sound. The scratching grew desperate, the stairs protested under my lightweight, my heartbeat broke through my ribcage: desperate, louder, alarming. I reached the top floor, a hall covered in peeling rose wallpaper, had open doors except for the one on the far left. I knew I was playing right into a trap or appearance-wise, like it. My mind probed, telling me to look, search for the sound, and find out the why?

Mrs. Hatchet was never the nicest neighbor. Come to think of it, she wasn’t nice at all. Having checked this house, the garbage, waste of years mounting up; something had to give. No one became like this for no good reason. Farther and farther and closer and closer I got to the door, its pale, yellow paint remained even; clean, too clean, no spec of dust in spite of the rest of the house. A cloud-shaped label with the name Lily had been inscribed, carved, and traced with mint green paint. I pressed my ear on the door.

Scratch-scratch-scratch!

My ear glued to the door and despite the fact I was shivering in a cold sweat, I nudged my hand to the door, and twisted the knob open. The door neither hinged nor squeaked, dark and freezing amid the sound of scratching against a wall. I coughed and gagged, catching a whiff of a strange rancid odor from earlier. My hand searched for a light, a switch, a bulb coiled to a chain. The scratching forlorn in the dark until my hand caught the feel of the switch and flicked it on. I sighed and tumbled against the wall, gluing myself to it.

“Mrs. Hatchet?”

Curled up in a ball in a corner of the room, she’d been scratching a frame. My eyes drew back to the walls of the flowery room filled with frames, the same one, a family portrait of three. All their faces scratched except for… the girl from the locket! The name on the door, locket, and girly bedroom—Lily. I closed my eyes, no one had to guess.

“Lily.”

She stopped, dropped the frame.

“It said you’d come,” she said.

“Who said I’d come?”

She turned her head. My heart would have stopped from what I saw. Her face was all bone, no eyes, hollow of bones. The pit of my stomach protested and I reeled back.

“The eater,” she mumbled, her voice soft yet pitched.