Naya Ann slows to a pause; her chest rises and falls like a storm-ridden sea wave. Her freshly flat-ironed hair springs back into curls like hands during a worship song; she stands in her white church dress in a curious chaos of autumn leaves bright like a trail of fire. She stands stroking her bottom lip. She thinks about how good it felt to kiss the neighborhood tomboy, Charla May; she feels like a grown woman. “Naya Ann,” she hears Aunt Irma, and she flinches. She stiffly treads down the trail of fire and approaches a large cottage with tiny, rectangular windows on the second floor. Dusty cherubs sit on the roof; they glare down as if they hate her. She reads a wooden plank that spells out in red letters “Gadford’s Charm School.” She knocks on the door and when no one answers, she tries to open the door, but when she touches the knob, a scream erupts. Naya Ann clamps her hands over her ears. The scream, rich with deep sorrow, rocks her bones and makes her shiver; makes her want to cry. Her toes curl in her white flats; her shoulders curl. She painfully stares at the window on the left. A hand grabs her shoulder and spins her around. She swallows her breath under Aunt Irma’s scornful gaze. “Naya Ann- I know what you did. Come on back to the church and we 'll show you my favorite scripture. We’ll get this all sorted out.”
Naya Ann hangs back as her aunt takes her hand and drags her back towards the church. “Ty , there’s someone in that house; they sounds like they need help.”
“Lord help us all.”
“Ty-”
A loud THACK catches her attention. She glances over her shoulder and sees the door to the cottage wide open. The darkness fills her with nausea. A massive white hand shaped thing reaches from the door and grabs Aunt Irma’s shoulder. She spins around and searches for the culprit. She glares at Naya Ann, but she shakes her head. The massive white hand shaped thing comes back again; a smell of rot fills Naya Ann’s nose. It wraps its ugly, spindly fingers around Aunt Irma and crushes her. Naya Ann screams as the fingers drag Aunty into that house, and the door swallows her whole. Naia cries, runs to the door, and bangs on it, tears trampling down her cheeks, but the door won’t open. She still hears the scream.
When she tells this story to the therapist, to the police, to her parents, none of them believe her. She has nightmares about the white hand reaching for her. She still hears the scream. Except when she’s older, she can make out a word. Burn. She makes a strange habit of carrying a box of matches in her pocket.
Art gives her the freedom to express what happened. She makes a career as an art therapist and marries a beautiful, black woman named Ashely. She still hears the scream. She learns her parents have passed the house down to her. She and her wife flew out to inspect it. Naya Ann Ann tells her wife she’s going for a walk, but she knows she will look for that building- out of curiosity and some sense of closure. She wants to see if she can face it again.
She journeys through the woods, thinks about her first kiss, and thinks about how scared she was that Aunty was going to tell Mama her biggest secret. She faces the cottage. She wants to believe that Aunty was attacked by some wild animal; she stands there as if waiting to be proven wrong. She fixates on the shadows in the window. “Boo!” Naia turns to her wife with her mouth open, lip curled back. Bile rises to the back of her throat as she watches her wife crack up laughing. She hears the familiar THACK. Naya Ann’s heart races, and her body shudders. Not again. Naya Ann shoves Ashley; the white hand grips around Naya Ann. She smells the stench of sweat and rot. Ashley freezes as she blinks. The hand drags her inside.
She rolls onto a floor in a dark hallway; the floor feels cool and slick like the inside of a mouth. She hears her heart in her ears. This is it. This is where Aunty was taken and never found. Her mind whirls with fear about never seeing her wife again. She uses the walls to stand, and they feel rough and tongue-like. She wipes her face. The only direction to go is forward. So, she walks until the walls become a series of doors. She opens one and sees an empty room; she sees outside in the corner of the room in the tiny window. She hears her wife banging on the door. She needs to get out. A rush of hot air blows in her face and she smells piss, shit, and rot. She hears sobbing; it sounds like Aunt Irma. Something grabs her wrist and pulls her inside, but she breaks free and runs.
Something pushes her and Naya Ann Ann decides she’s tired of being pushed around. She reaches into her pocket and cradles the matchbox. She hears the scream; she hears the word; she knows what she has to do. She lights all the matches and throws them everywhere until the fire eats the darkness. The cottage spits her out. She opens the door, hugs her wife, and they run from the burning house, hand in hand.
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