A drabble in ten parts: Part IX

IX.

“I know you didn’t want to come here, but this isn’t funny. Bill?” The smell from the kitchen is even stronger than before. I can distinctly hear piano music, and laughing voices and the sound of silverware against china.

There is one place I haven’t looked, I realize. But I don’t want to go down into the cellar, don’t want to find what’s there. That something else I sensed when we arrived.

“Bill!” I call one last time into the no longer empty house. As I back out the door, shaking, I hold up my camera for one last shot.