Oh, I knew. Everything I'd worked the last seven years for, every bruise I'd suffered, every small success from learning to balance a checkbook to getting a job, every triumph over the monster who had dominated my life would be dismissed, eradicated, wiped out, and I'd be the failure that Timothy so often screamed I was. Not good for anything, too stupid to ever survive on my own.

A freak.

I lifted my head and squared my shoulders, holding my bag close to me as I slowly walked down the stairs. There was nothing on this earth that could frighten me as much as the life I had once been trapped in; if I was strong enough to leave an abusive husband, I was strong enough to face a little sentient darkness.

I held that thought until I started down the stairs to the basement. Then all sorts of warning bells and whistles went off in my head, not to mention the voice of sanity, which was screaming to hell with my honor; I needed to get out of there right then, before whatever was behind the door at the bottom of the stairs got me.

A cold wave of sheer and utter terror washed over me, stopping me dead on the middle of the stairs, my feet refusing to move anymore, my hand gripping the dusty banister in a manner that would take a crowbar to release it. I couldn't breathe, so oppressive was the blackness beyond the door. I couldn't swallow, I couldn't blink, and I seriously doubted if my heart was beating. A faint noise, a distant, soft, muffled beat from the room throbbed along the edge of my awareness.

"Heartbeat," I croaked through lips numb with fear, then instantly regretted the word as I felt the darkness beyond gathering itself, turning its attention to me. "Oh, crap," I whispered, torn between the need to escape, and the knowledge that I would fail my life's calling if I didn't confront what was in that room.