Chapter 5 - Beneath the Floorboards
I froze instantly, every muscle in my body locking up, the blood rushing so loudly in my ears that it drowned out my own thoughts.
I stood motionless in the hallway, holding my breath, straining my ears against the oppressive silence. Nothing moved. Just the faint settling of the old house timbers in the autumn chill. I let out a slow, trembling breath, trying to convince myself that my shattered nerves were playing cruel tricks on me, that paranoia was conjuring
ghosts out of empty air.
Then it came again.
It wasn't the wind. It wasn't the plumbing. It was a soft, broken, exhausted whimper—the sound of someone crying quietly in the dark for a very long time, having finally run out of tears.
My feet moved of their own accord. I crept slowly down the narrow hallway toward the back of the house, sweeping the tight beam of my phone light low across the hardwood floor.
About three feet from the back exit, my light caught something strange: deep, fresh, frantic scratches gouged into the polished oak planks. And right beside them lay a heavy, antique Persian rug, bunched up awkwardly as if it had been dragged across the floor in a desperate hurry.
I dropped to my knees, hooked my fingers beneath the thick, woven fabric, and pulled with all my might. The rug slid aside, revealing a patch of floor that had been deliberately altered.
There, cut neatly into the hardwood, was a secret door—a narrow, heavy wooden hatch reinforced with iron framing, secured shut by a massive, rusted sliding metal bolt.
My hand hovered over the cold iron. Every primitive instinct screaming from the deepest recesses of my brain warned me that lifting that bolt meant crossing a threshold into a nightmare from which I could never return. There was no unseeing what I was about to find. There was no going back to the comfortable illusion of ignorance.
I grabbed the iron handle and pulled.
The bolt slid backward with a heavy, metallic, echoing scrape that sounded like a gunshot in the silent house.
I lifted the wooden hatch.
The heavy, suffocating smell hit me first—a vile cocktail of damp earth, stale sweat, rotting food, and unwashed fear. It was the smell of a tomb.
I angled my phone light downward, illuminating a steep, narrow set of raw concrete steps descending into pitch blackness.
Huddled tightly in the far corner of a small, unfinished concrete cellar space sat a human figure. A girl. She couldn't have been older than fifteen. Her clothes were torn and dirty, her hair matted with sweat, her arms wrapped tightly around her trembling knees.
As the beam of my light hit her, she threw her hands up over her eyes to shield them from the sudden brightness, pressing herself desperately against the damp dirt wall as if she could melt right through the foundation.
"Please," she sobbed, her voice raw, cracked, and barely audible above the hum of my own racing heart. "I'll be quiet. I promise. Just don't... please, don't hurt me anymore."
The words struck me like physical blows to the chest.
"Hey. Hey, look at me," I whispered, my voice breaking as I hurried down the concrete steps, ignoring the damp chill sinking into my bones. I kept my hands open, palms facing outward to show I meant no harm. "I'm not him. I'm not Matthew. I'm here to help you. You're safe now."
She lowered her hands slightly, squinting through her fingers at my face. Recognition flickered in her tear-filled eyes. I knew her face instantly—not from Matthew’s files, but from the local news broadcasts that had blanketed Charlotte three days ago. She was a sophomore from Matthew’s high school who had been officially reported as a runaway by her distraught parents.
Except she hadn't run away at all. She had been hunted, trapped, and buried alive.
"We have to go right now," I said urgently, gently grabbing her trembling, ice-cold hand and helping her unsteadily to her feet. She wobbled on weak legs, her body shaking violently. I whipped off my expensive wool jacket and draped it over her narrow shoulders, guiding her up the steep concrete steps and out into the hallway.
We reached the main floor just as the front windows suddenly flooded with blinding, harsh white light.
Outside, the heavy, unmistakable crunch of tires grinding over gravel echoed loudly through the quiet suburban night.
Matthew was early. The autumn formal had ended sooner than expected, or he had returned for something he forgot.
Panic flared in the girl's eyes, and she let out a choked, terrified gasp, her knees buckling beneath her.
May you like
"Run," I hissed, grabbing her by the shoulders and shoving her gently toward the kitchen backdoor that led out to the dark woods. "Run straight to the neighbor's house—number 412—and tell them to call 911 immediately. Tell them Dr. Bennett sent you. Don't look back for a single second."
She didn't need to be told twice. With a burst of adrenaline-fueled desperation, she scrambled through the kitchen and vanished into the night just as the front door handle began to turn with a sharp, metallic click.
