Day 385

Our fireplace was mainly decorative and rarely turned on unless the main heater broke.
There was some kind of pipe connecting it to a vent outside the house, never paid it any mind.
All you saw of the vent was a little mesh panel screwed into the wall, pretty subtle.
So subtle god knows how longs it had been open for.

I worried that a mouse might have gotten in and made a home there.
No sounds were coming from it at that point but I'd left a humane mousetrap there just in case.
With no hassle coming from it, no sprung trap either, we soon forgot it was even open.
It wasn't until our daughter Abbie began talking that we realised something wasn't right.

She kept wanting to sit in front of it, laughing and babbling away at the unused fireplace.
It was cute at first to see her pulling faces at the faintly clouded glass.
Soon though she grew scared of it, eventually to the point where she refused to go anywhere
near the living room, scampering past the doorway as fast as possible.

Her speech wasn't the best at this point so all we got from her was that the fireplace was bad.
I put different mousetraps outside and around the vent before finally screwing it shut.
Somehow it kept coming undone, we suspected Abbie and hid the screwdrivers but it didn't work.
Eventually we found the vent cover embedded in the wall above our bed, it was in pretty deep.

At this point we decided to get rid of the fireplace altogether.
When we told Abbie she was old enough to form sentences, kept saying something about a bad
lady who would escape if we broke through the wall as "that's where they killed her".
She described the way this imaginary woman was choked and bricked in so graphically.

We thought it was something she'd seen on TV or at a friend's but she said "the lady" told her.
She drew us plenty of pictures to illustrate the lady and how she talked to her.
As the fireplace removal day drew closer Abbie gave us a written list of instructions on how
to contact "the lady"and said that we had to before we got rid of the fireplace.

My other half refused, said it was just her imagination but I decided to give it a go.
Following her little list to the letter I sat down by the fireplace and put my left hand on the glass.
It was supposed to heat up when she was there and after a fair while it did.
Flames leapt out and left my hand bright red and throbbing.

A faint chuckle met my ears as the flames receded and in their place was the face of a woman.
She looked gaunt, nearly skeletal and sadistically pleased with my hurt hand.
Before I could talk to her she vanished altogether, leaving behind smoke and ash.
I peered closer at the fireplace so see if she was lurking back there when a hand darted out.

Her ashy grey palm slammed into the glass, cracking it slightly.
My mind was set to remove the fireplace now, hoping it would get rid of her entirely.
Removal day came all too soon and we had a family day out to give the removers space.
When we came back the wall was soot covered bricks.

Before our eyes the soot formed the rough outline of a person.
Abbie was distraught, we hadn't told her what was happening to avoid stressing her.
She was screaming that we'd let the bad lady out and we'd all burn for it.
The figure laughed and began to step out of the wall towards us as the room grew warmer.