Chapter 7
The Room of Shadows
Selly insists Emily play only in the darkest room. The atmosphere grows heavy and cold. Sally feels a growing dread, a mother's intuition screaming danger.
The air in the house had thickened, becoming a tangible thing, heavy and cold. It clung to Sally’s skin like a damp shroud, raising goosebumps despite the summer heat outside. Emily, usually a whirlwind of giggles and bright colours, had become a creature of muted tones and hushed movements. It was Selly, of course. Selly, who preferred the places where light surrendered.
“We have to play in the dark room, Mommy,” Emily had said, her voice barely a whisper, her eyes wide and unblinking, fixed on a point just over Sally’s shoulder. The “dark room” was what Emily had started calling the old storage closet off the hallway, a space Sally rarely used, filled with forgotten boxes and the faint scent of dust and mothballs. It was, in every sense of the word, a room of shadows.
Sally had tried to coax Emily into the sunlit living room, to play with her dolls or draw with her crayons. But Emily’s resistance was a quiet, unyielding wall. “Selly doesn’t like the light,” she’d insisted, her small hand fisting around Sally’s shirt. “Selly likes it dark.”
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