Alice was not scared. Not at all. Maybe a little bit. But she was determined to confront the ghost in her house. Alice lived in a farmhouse built in 1921. All of the floors and doors were original; the entire house had its skeleton in place. But by far the most terrifying part of the house was the basement steps, right under the front door and beyond the furnace, creaks, and cries that came from below the house. What made Alice determined to confront the ghost today was especially loud crashes the previous night. She’d gotten no sleep, convinced the ghost was going to break through the door and do something horrible. What, she wasn’t sure, but the ghost would do something.
Alice hadn’t seen the ghost, but what else could be making loud noises in an old house? The noises she had been down in the basement less and less. Once she saw the shelves without glass jars, she was a little put off. But what made her help the door shut and locked was the abrupt end of the concrete floor halfway across the room. Because nothing except horror happened in a basement with a dirt floor. Alice had seen enough horror movies to know that.
Alice stared at the basement door, trying to gather enough confidence to open it and walk down the stairs like she owned the place. Because she did – or would, once she’d finished paying her mortgage in 30 years. Alice took a deep breath and yanked the door open. She marched down the stairs, only to stop abruptly at the bottom. Because who was she to be scared of a ghost? At all? It was a calico cat, one who looked utterly unimpressed by her brave journey into the basement.