Chapter 9
I didn't move right away. My hand was on that handle and I could feel how cold the metal was through the dust on my palm. The plastic I'd cut hung open in two loose flaps and the pinhole of light from inside was still there, steady, yellow and small. Emma's weight was against my left leg where she held my jeans. Sarah stood on my other side, close enough I could hear her breathing through her mouth.
I turned the handle.
It didn't go. Not at first. It stuck about a quarter turn and then caught, metal grinding faintly against the tape seal. I pressed my thumb harder and twisted again and the whole door shivered in its frame. Paint cracked along the bottom edge where it had been skimmed over years ago.
"Easy," Sarah whispered. She wasn't telling me to be easy with the door. She was telling me to be easy, period.
I gave it a third try and put my shoulder into it. The handle turned the rest of the way with a dull click and then the door creaked open.
It was exactly the sound from the video app analysis, that slow door creaking open, wood dragging against dust-caked hinges that hadn't moved in a long time. It wasn't loud. It was low and strained, like the house was exhaling. Dust fell from the top jamb in a thin sheet and caught in that low warm light from the small window behind us.
Behind the door was dark.
Not pitch black. A narrow space, maybe three feet deep and as wide as the wardrobe had been. The air that came out was cooler and smelled like concrete and old cardboard and something sweet, like fabric softener that had sat too long. My eyes had to adjust.
The concrete floor continued back, but it was covered in a fine, undisturbed layer of gray dust, except where it wasn't.
Against the left side, leaning against the studs, was a small child's backpack. Light blue with faded pink straps, the kind Emma's preschool used. It was dusty but not buried, and next to it on the floor was a little plug-in nightlight, the amber kind shaped like a moon, glowing faintly. That had to be the pinhole light. It was plugged into an outlet I hadn't known existed on the back side of that drywall.
No person inside. I checked that first. I swept the space left to right and my chest loosened a fraction. No one curled up, no one hiding. Just that backpack and that light and a second, darker panel at the far end, maybe another piece of drywall that hadn't been finished.
Then I saw the footprints.
Fresh prints in the dust, small and then one larger set, heading away from us toward that back panel. They weren't smudged or old. The edges were sharp where the dust had been displaced, toe to heel, as if someone had walked back there very recently and not bothered to sweep it. The smaller prints overlapped the larger ones in places.
Sarah made a small sound behind her hand.
Emma stepped forward half a step before I could tighten my grip on her shirt. She stared at the backpack. Her mouth was still trembling but she wasn't crying now, she was staring hard like she was trying to place something.
"Mommy?" she said. Her voice was small and confused, not the frantic pointing voice from earlier. She said it like a question about the backpack itself.
Sarah covered her mouth with both hands. Her eyes didn't leave that blue and pink shape. I saw her shoulders rise and hold.
May you like
I kept my hand on the door, holding it open. The hinges creaked again as the weight settled. I didn't step inside. I didn't let Emma step inside either. I could feel the dust motes from the space moving into the warmer air of the room, and that little nightlight kept glowing steady against the dark, and the footprints led back where I couldn't yet see.
I knew if I leaned in I'd see more, and I knew once I saw it we couldn't pretend we hadn't opened it.
