blood, and there were streaks of blood on her face. Her long blond hair hung loose. She looked so young. Nothing like the woman who was now serving a life sentence in prison.
It had been an open-and-shut case. It seemed to have a certain logic to it that everyone simply accepted. Yet Erica had a strong feeling that something wasn’t right, and six months ago she had decided to write a book about the crime. She’d first heard about the case when she was a child, listening to people talk about the murder of Vladek and the family’s terrible secret. The events that took place in the House of Horrors had grown into a legend as the years passed. The house became a place where children could test their mettle, a haunted house they used to scare their friends, where they could show off their bravery and defy their fear of the evil within those walls.
Erica turned away from the family’s old living room. It was time to go upstairs. The chill inside the house was making her joints stiff, so she jumped up and down a few times to get warm before heading for the stairs. She carefully tested each step before proceeding upwards. She hadn’t told anyone that she was coming here, so she didn’t want to crash through a rotting step and end up lying here with her back broken.
The stairs held, but she was equally cautious about deciding to cross the floor on the second level. The floorboards creaked loudly, but they seemed able to bear her weight, so she continued on with greater confidence as she looked about. It was a small house, so there were only three rooms upstairs along with a short hallway. Directly across from the stairway was the larger bedroom that had belonged to Vladek and Laila. The furniture had been removed or stolen, so all that remained were the tattered and dirty curtains. Here too Erica found discarded beer cans. An old mattress indicated that someone had either slept in the empty house or used it for amorous activities far away from watchful parental eyes.
She squinted, trying to visualize the room based on the photographs she’d seen. An orange rug on the floor, a double bed with a pine bedstead and duvet covers with big green flowers. The room screamed the 1970s, and judging by the pictures the police took after the murder, it had been immaculate. Erica was surprised the first time she looked at the photos. Based on what she knew, she had expected to see a home in shambles, dirty and messy and neglected.
She left the parents’ bedroom and entered the next one, which was a little smaller. It had once been Peter’s. Erica found the relevant photo from the file. His room was also nice and tidy, though the bed was unmade. It was traditionally furnished, with blue wallpaper decorated with tiny circus figures. Happy clowns, elephants with plumed headdresses, a seal balancing a red ball on its nose. Lovely wallpaper for a child’s room, and Erica could understand why they had chosen that particular pattern. She raised her eyes from the photograph to study the room. Bits and pieces of the wallpaper were still there, but most of it had flaked off or been covered with graffiti. There was no trace of the thick wall-to-wall carpet except for a few patches of glue on the dirty wooden floor. The bookcase that had held toys and books was gone, as were the two small chairs and the table that were just the right size for a child to sit there and draw pictures. The bed that had stood in the corner to the left of the window was also long gone. Erica shivered. Here too the windowpanes were broken and snow had blown in to whirl across the floor.
She had purposely left the one remaining upstairs room for last. Louise’s bedroom. It was next to Peter’s, and when she took out the photo, she had to steel herself for what she knew she would see. The contrast was so bizarre. While Peter’s room had been so nice, Louise’s room looked like a prison cell, and it had essentially been just that. Erica ran her finger over the big bolt that was still on the door, although it hung loose from several screws. A bolt that had been installed to keep the door securely locked from the outside. To keep the child in.
Erica held up the photo as she stepped inside. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. The room had an eerie air about it, but she knew this had to be her imagination. Rooms and houses possessed no memory, no capacity for recalling the past. No doubt it was the knowledge of what had happened in this house that was making her feel so uneasy in Louise’s room.
The room had been virtually empty. The only thing inside was a mattress on the floor. No toys, not even a proper bed. Erica went over to the window. Boards had been nailed across it, and if she hadn’t known better, she would have guessed this had been done after the house was abandoned. She glanced at the photograph. The same boards were evident back then. Here a child had been locked inside her own room. Tragically, that was not the worst thing the police had discovered when they came to the house after being notified of Vladek’s murder. Erica shuddered. It felt as if a cold wind was sweeping over her, but this time it wasn’t because of a broken window. The chill seemed to be coming from the room itself.
She forced herself to stay there a while longer, refusing to succumb to the strange mood. But she couldn’t help breathing a sigh of relief when she emerged into the hall. Cautiously she made her way down the stairs. There was only one more place to see. She went into the kitchen where she found the cupboards empty and gaping, all the doors having been removed. The cooker and fridge were gone, and the mouse droppings in the spaces where they had once stood showed that rodents had been roaming freely, both inside the house and out.
Erica’s fingers trembled as she pressed down the handle on the cellar door to open it, encountering the same strange chill she’d noticed in Louise’s room. She cursed as she peered into the intense darkness, realizing that she hadn’t thought to bring along a torch. She might have to wait until another time to explore the cellar. But she fumbled her hand over the wall and finally located an old-fashioned switch. When she turned the knob, by some miracle, the cellar light came on. It was impossible for a light bulb from the seventies to be still functioning, so someone must have replaced it.
Her heart was pounding as she went down the stairs. She had to duck to avoid cobwebs, and she tried to ignore the creepy feeling on her skin as she imagined spiders slipping under her clothes.
When she reached the cement floor, she took a few deep breaths to calm her nerves. This was just an empty cellar inside an abandoned house. Nothing more. And it did look like an ordinary basement. A few shelves remained, and an old work bench that had belonged to Vladek, but no tools. Next to it stood an empty oil can, and several crumpled old newspapers had been tossed in a corner. Nothing startling to look at. Except for one small detail: the chain, about three metres in length, which had been fastened with screws to the wall.
Erica’s hands shook badly as she searched for the right photograph. The chain was the same as back then, merely rustier. But the shackles were missing. The police had taken them. And in the police report, she’d read that they had been forced to saw them off, because they couldn’t find the key. She squatted down and picked up the chain, weighing it in her hand. It was heavy and solid, clearly sturdy enough to have restrained a much larger person than a thin and undernourished seven-year-old girl. How could anyone do that to a child?
Erica felt a wave of nausea rise to her throat. She was going to have to take a break from visiting Laila. She didn’t know how she could face her again after coming here and seeing with her own eyes these traces of the woman’s wickedness. Photographs were one thing, but as she held the cold, heavy chain in her hands, she had a much clearer idea of what the police must have found on that day in March 1975. She felt the same horror they must have felt when they came down to the cellar and discovered a child chained to the wall.
A rustling in the corner made Erica stand up abruptly. Her pulse again began racing. Then the light went out and she screamed. Panic seized hold of her and she started taking short, shallow breaths. Close to tears, she fumbled her way towards the stairs. Odd little sounds were coming from all directions, and when something brushed against her face, she screamed again. She flailed her arms about until she realized that it was just another cobweb. Feeling sick to her stomach, she threw herself in the direction where the stairs ought to be and then had the breath knocked out of her when she ran right into the railing. The light flickered and then came back on, but she was so filled with terror that she grabbed hold of the railing and dashed up the stairs. She missed one of the steps and hit her shin, but then managed to stumble the rest of the way up to the kitchen.
Gratefully she fell to her knees after slamming the cellar door closed behind her. Her leg