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The door gapes behind me, open wide like a mouth that’s waited too long to scream. The air curls up from the cellar, damp, sour, alive. It wraps around my legs like fingers dragging me backward, whispering: Come back. Come home.

The first step groans beneath my weight.

It’s familiar, that deep, splintered sound, but it doesn’t reach into my chest the way it used to. It doesn’t crack me open like it did when I was small and scared, when each creak meant they were coming closer.

Now, it sounds like surrender.

Like the house itself knows I’ve returned for what’s mine.

I grip the railing. The wood is worn smooth from years of use. Man after man who ran their hands down this banister walking into the pit of hell disguised as the Lord’s calling.

One step.

Then another.

The air grows colder with every inch I sink. Not just cold, wet. Thick. It clings to my clothes, seeps into my skin, settles beneath my ribs like frostbite. The darkness breathes around me, like it remembers my name.

The walls close in the farther I go. Rough concrete and packed earth, scarred and stained in places I don’t dare look at too long. I know what those stains are.

I remember how they got there.

When I hit the landing, I stop. My exhale curls into mist in front of me, barely visible in the dark.

The silence here isn’t quiet.

It’s listening.

I run my fingers along the wall. The stone pulses faintly under my touch, like it remembers, too. Every scream. Every sob. Every “amen” twisted into a curse.

The walls down here are made of memory.

And then I see it.

The room.

The far corner, where they used to keep the cot. Where I was tied down when obedience required structure.

The hook still hangs from the beam. Rusted. Empty.

If I listen hard enough, I can hear it. The soft clink of chain on metal, the way it used to sway with my sobs.

The table’s still there too, warped and bare now, but I know what it once held. The tools never stayed. They were brought in fresh, like a priest preparing an altar.

Clean towels. Oil. A Bible.

A knife, not to cut me. Not at first.

Just to remind me they could.

The light overhead flickers once, one bare bulb on a frayed cord, casting shadows that crawl across the walls. I step into it, watching my own silhouette stretch long and dark, flickering.

Larger now.

Whole.

The faint outlines of shapes nailed into place catch the thin light from above. The wooden contraptions are still there. I’d thought they might have rotted or fallen, but no, they remain, perfectly preserved like relics of some forgotten ritual.

The yoke, its leather straps dangling like dead vines, hangs crooked, the wall behind it scarred where the nails bit deep. Beside it, the gag still hangs from the dowel, the rope coiled neatly like it’s waiting. And the small wooden cross rests beneath them, its surface worn smooth by my childhood knees.