Monstrous Affections Read Online Free Page A

she
could make out a flickering of light, just bright enough for her to see
where the axe and shovel fell. They were very tiny at the bottom of
the hole. Holding her breath, Judith mounted the top rung of the
ladder and began her own descent.
    Despite its depth, the root cellar was warm. And the smell was
overpowering. Judith took only a moment to identify it. It was
Herman’s smell, but magnified a thousandfold — and exuding from
the very walls of this place.
    Mrs. Sloan had thoroughly explored the area at the base of the
ladder by the time Judith reached her.
    “The walls are earthen, shorn up with bare timber,” she said,
shining the light along the nearest wall to illustrate. “The ceiling
here tapers up along the length of the ladder — I’d guess we’re nearly
forty feet underground.”
    Judith picked up the shovel, trying not to imagine the weight of
the earth above them.
    “There’s another chamber, through that tunnel.” Mrs. Sloan
swung the flashlight beam down and to their right. The light
extended into a dark hole in the wall, not more than five feet in
diameter and rimmed with fieldstone. “That’s where the smell is
strongest.”
    Mrs. Sloan stooped and grabbed the axe in her good hand. Still
bent over, she approached the hole and shone the light inside.
    “The end’s still farther than the flashlight beam will carry,” she
called over her shoulder. “I think that’s where we’ll have to go.”
    Judith noticed then that the tremor was gone from Mrs. Sloan’s
voice. Far from sounding frightened, Herman’s mother actually
seemed excited. It wasn’t hard to see why — this day might finish
with the spell broken, with their freedom assured. Why wouldn’t
she be excited?
    But Judith couldn’t shake her own sense of foreboding so easily.
She wondered where Herman was now, what he would be thinking.
And what was Judith thinking, on the verge of her freedom? Judith
couldn’t put it to words, but the thought twisted through her stomach
and made her stop in the dark chamber behind Mrs. Sloan. A little
whore , her father had called her. Then he’d hit her, hard enough to
bring up a swelling. Right in front of Herman, like he wasn’t even
there! Judith clenched her jaw around a rage that was maddeningly
faceless.
    “I’m not a whore,” she whispered through her teeth.
    Mrs. Sloan disappeared into the hole, and it was only when the
chamber was dark that Judith followed.
    The tunnel widened as they went, its walls changing from wood-shorn earth to fieldstone and finally to actual rock. Within sixty
feet the tunnel ended, and Mrs. Sloan began to laugh. Judith felt
ill — the smell was so strong she could barely breath. Even as she
stepped into the second chamber of the root cellar, the last thing
she wanted to do was laugh.
    “Roots!” gasped Mrs. Sloan, her voice shrill and echoing in the
dark. “Of course there would be — ” she broke into another fit of
giggles “ — roots, here in the root cellar!” The light jagged across
the cellar’s surfaces as Mrs. Sloan slipped to the floor and fell into
another fit of laughter.
    Judith bent down and pried the flashlight from Mrs. Sloan’s
hand — she made a face as she brushed the scratchy tips of the two
bare finger-bones. She swept the beam slowly across the ceiling.
    It was a living thing. Pulsing intestinal ropes drooped from huge
bulbs and broad orange phalluses clotted with earth and juices thick
as semen. Between them, fingerlike tree roots bent and groped in
knotted black lines. One actually penetrated a bulb, as though to
feed on the sticky yellow water inside. Silvery droplets formed like
beading mercury on the surface of an ample, purple sac directly
above the chamber’s centre.
    Mrs. Sloan’s laughter began to slow. “Oh my,” she finally chuckled,
sniffing loudly, “I don’t know what came over me.”
    “This is the place.” Judith had intended it as a question, but it
came out as a statement of fact. This was the