Chapter 1 - The Voice in the Wall
“Dad—open that wall!”
Lily’s scream cut through the upstairs hall so hard that Daniel Mercer dropped his keys.
He ran toward the storage room and found six-year-old Lily kicking and twisting while Vanessa dragged her backward by the waist.
“Let me go!” Lily cried. “Someone’s in there!”
Vanessa clamped a hand over the child’s mouth.
Daniel saw red.
“Take your hand off her.”
Vanessa froze. “Daniel, she’s having another episode.”
He crossed the room in two strides, pulled Lily behind him, and slapped Vanessa’s hand away from the girl’s face.
“Don’t touch her like that again.”
Lily grabbed the back of his shirt. Her whole body trembled.
“Daddy, behind the big wardrobe. I heard a lady crying.”
Vanessa’s expression changed for half a second. Too fast for anyone else to notice. Not too fast for Daniel.
“There is nothing behind that wardrobe,” she said.
Daniel looked at the massive walnut cabinet pushed against the far wall. It had belonged to his grandfather. He remembered it standing in a downstairs guest room when he was a boy.
“Why is it up here?” he asked.
Vanessa folded her arms. “The movers put it there months ago.”
“No, they didn’t.”
He shoved one side. The wardrobe scraped across the hardwood. Vanessa stepped forward.
“Daniel, stop.”
He shoved harder.
Behind the cabinet was a rectangle of plaster that looked newer than the rest of the century-old wall.
Lily whispered, “That’s where the knocking comes from.”
Daniel grabbed a framing hammer from a renovation box in the corner.
“Daniel!” Vanessa snapped. “You’re destroying your own house because a child had a nightmare.”
He swung.
CRACK.
Plaster burst across the floor.
He swung again.
CRACK.
A strip of dark metal appeared beneath the broken wall.
Vanessa backed toward the doorway.
Daniel hit it a third time.
The plaster collapsed, revealing a narrow steel door with a black keypad.
He stared at it, unable to breathe.
His family had owned this mansion for thirty-two years.
He had never seen that door.
“What is this?” he asked.
Vanessa said nothing.
Then the room went silent.
THUD.
Lily squeezed Daniel’s hand.
THUD.
Vanessa’s face went white.
THUD.
A weak voice came from the other side of the steel.
“Daniel?”
The hammer slipped from his fingers.
May you like
He knew that voice.
He had buried an empty coffin for that voice three years ago.
