Chapter 18 - The Phantom on the Glass
I didn't sleep. The highway leading back to our safehouse felt like a dark, endless tunnel beneath the driving rain.
When I reached the inn, Elena was sitting in the corner armchair with a shotgun laid across her knees, her eyes fixed on the rain-streaked window. Noah was curled on the pullout sofa, fitfully tossing in a nightmare, his phone resting on his chest.
I took the shotgun from Elena’s stiff hands, set it on the nightstand, and knelt before her. "There’s another level," I breathed. "Beneath the cellar where you were kept."
Elena stared at me. Her pupils were dilated, black pools swallowing her irises. "What are you talking about?"
"When you were down there... did you ever hear anything?" I pleaded, taking her icy hands. "Beneath your feet? In the floor?"
Elena pulled her hands back as if she had been burned. A sudden, violent tremor tore through her shoulders. She covered her face with both hands, rocking back and forth.
"Elena. Talk to me."
"I thought I was hallucinating," she sobbed, the sound muffled by her palms. "I thought the dehydration was destroying my brain, David. Every night, between two and three in the morning, the floorboards vibrated. A dull, mechanical hum. And sometimes... rhythmic clicking. Like someone tapping a ring against iron pipes."
She looked at me, tears streaming down her pale cheeks. "I thought it was the water system. Celeste swore the cellar was just an old root store. But God help me, David... sometimes I heard breathing through the drain grate. Slow, wet, labored breathing."
Suddenly, Noah’s phone vibrated loudly on the table.
*BZZZ. BZZZ.*
Noah gasped, waking instantly, disoriented. "Mom? Dad?"
I grabbed the phone. The screen displayed a video file from an unknown number. No sender ID.
I hit play.
The screen lit up with grainy night-vision footage. The camera was pointed up at the second floor of our home from the pine tree line. It zoomed in on Noah’s bedroom. The timestamp in the corner read: *YESTERDAY — 03:14 AM.*
Through the glass of Noah’s window, a figure was visible standing inside the dark room.
It wasn't an intruder from outside.
The figure had stepped out of the shadow of Noah’s closet, leaned over my sleeping fourteen-year-old son, stroked his hair with a pale, thin hand, and then slipped back into the darkness of our home's walls.
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At the bottom of the video, an audio caption played a woman’s rasping whisper:
*"He smells just like you did, David. When we were children. Come back to the manor alone, or I will come out of his closet while you sleep."*
