Page 128

Reluctantly, he took it from me and shook it and then pulled it over his head. It was so tight. he could barely move his arms. He looked at me and smirked and then he took the scissors out of his back pocket and cut off the sleeves.

"At least I can breathe," he declared. "Now don't ask me to put on a pair of those shoes. I couldn't fit my feet in them anyway."

"At least put on these socks." I said holding up a pair I had found. Reluctantly, he obeyed.

"Let's see what else of value we can find," he suggested. We both returned to exploring the room.

"I wish there was a telephone down here." he called from the side of the bed while I went through the cabinets in the small kitchenette,

"It wouldn't do us any good. Your grandfather probably didn't pay the bill."

"Right. Hey," he called. "there's a carton of stuff shoved under the bed.'

I came out and watched him take out more pictures, books, and then what looked like a little girl's rag doll.

"Strange. I didn't think a kid was down here," he said turning the doll in his hands.

"It's someone's childhood memory. Harley. Women often keep the dolls they had as little

"Yeah," he said thoughtfully. "I guess. So who lived here?" he asked.

I studied the room more carefully until my eyes settled on a smaller box below the table upon which the phonograph and records were. Opening the box. I found what looked like an old composition notebook, the edges of the pages yellow with age. While Harley tapped on the walls, looking for another possible entryway that had been covered. I sat on the sofa, opened the notebook and began reading.

"Harley!" I called.

"What?"

"I know who was down here."

"Who?" he asked starting toward me.

"Your grandmother," I said. "The sad-looking pretty woman in the photographs we found out in the other room. This," I said, holding up the notebook. "is her diary. She must have written it while she was down here."

"How can you be so sure she wrote it down here?" he asked.

"From the very first sentence." I replied. He waited and I looked back at the notebook and read.

After Fletcher died, I told Ed that the only place I didn't hear the voices in our house was down in the basement. In the beginning, I only, heard the voices at night, but after a while, I could hear the whispering even in the daytime, so he fixed up the basement for me so I would have a safe place whenever I needed it. He even put a little kitchen in for me.

I paused and looked at Harley. His lips were turned into his cheek, his eyes full of astonishment. I looked back at the diary.

He said. "Come up whenever you want, Francine."

I smiled at him and shook my head. He knew. He knew very well.

I'll never come up again.

Harley and I looked at each other. Would it be the same for us?

14

Grandmother's Diary

.

"Are you hungry?" Harley asked me

After what my stomach had gone through the