Night Will Find You by Julia Heaberlin EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author:Julia Heaberlin
- Language: English
- Genre: Domestic Thrillers
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 3 MB
- Price: Free
The steps to the basement were steep for a little girl hugging the wall on the
way down.
There was no banister to hold, just a sheer drop-off into the dark, a
concrete floor below that would break me.
I understood that my only business down here was to grab a load out of
the cranky washing machine at the bottom of those steps and claw the wall
right back up.
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Under no circumstances was I to explore its intimate and creepy chaos
or a particular little black book, about eight by ten and two inches thick,
that was held together by a snap. The click echoed off the moldy walls
when I opened it.
I wasn’t a particularly brave little girl. I was afraid of roller coasters,
backflips, horror movies, even the wall beside my bed. At night, after my
mother turned off the light, I’d bang my fist on the wall to be sure it was
solid. Because my sister complained, my mother limited me to fifty thumps
—not so many as it sounds and never enough. I was certain I would slip
through the wall where I slept, and no one would know where I’d gone
tumbling.
And yet, a few times, when the house was empty and the washing
machine silent, I opened the little door off the kitchen and risked tumbling.
I’d pick up the flashlight that sat on the top step. My chest throbbed.
The smell of earth and decay filled my lungs. And I’d creep into an
underworld carved into the side of a Virginia mountain. I was sure it sat
right on top of the hell adults liked to talk about. The lightning crack in the
filthy concrete floor was proof of desperate souls banging to get out.
I’d make my way to the center of the basement, carefully stepping over
the crack. I’d stand on my tiptoes and wave my hand in the air until I felt
the tickle of kite string that dripped out of the ceiling.
When I pulled it, and the bare lightbulb scattered the shadows, it was as
if I’d entered my mother’s brain. Here is where she painted portraits and
abstract blobs of color on wooden easels, where she cleaned camera lenses
and her gun, where people on paper emerged like ghosts from stinky
solutions, where she hung old tools with big teeth.
Here, in an old trunk, is where she stored a grim book of photographs.
It was a book of horror. A book of sorrow. A book of death. Of dead
people. And it was my mother who was on the other side, looking through
the lens.
As a single mother, she tore through countless ways to pay our bills.
Waitress, hairstylist, lumberyard lady, lunch lady. Maid, secretary, forklift
operator, plumber’s assistant, car show model.
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