Chapter 6 - The Broken Cradle
Sarah sprinted up the wooden basement stairs two at a time, disregarding caution, her slippers skidding across the polished floorboards of the kitchen. Her mind screamed with terrifying imagery. The master bedroom door was still jammed shut with the oak chair, exactly as she had left it. She pulled the chair away and flung the door open, her heart in her throat.
Toby was standing on the bed, holding a bedside lamp like a weapon, his small chest heaving. On the mattress beside him, Brendan was sobbing uncontrollably, his blanket twisted into a tight knot around his ankles. But the room was empty. The window was latched.
""Mom! The nursery!"" Toby yelled, his eyes wide with horror. ""It wasn't in here. It's across the hall!""
Sarah turned around, her flashlight cutting through the hallway gloom. The door to the nursery, which she had kicked shut earlier, was now standing wide open. A foul, humid odor poured out of the room, smelling strongly of freshly turned graveyard earth and rotting wood.
Sarah stepped slowly across the corridor, raising the flashlight into the nursery. The scene inside stopped her cold.
The heavy wooden crib had been violently flipped onto its side. Two of the solid maple spindles were cleanly snapped in half, their splintered edges pointing outward like broken ribs. But what lay beneath where the crib had stood was far worse.
The plush white carpet had been pulled back from the wall, cleanly severed along the baseboards as if sliced by a razor. Below it, three of the original pine subfloor boards had been pried upward and shoved aside. Beneath the flooring lay a gaping, square cavity between the floor joists—a crawlspace that had never appeared on any architectural plan of the house.
Sarah stepped closer, holding the flashlight beam over the edge of the hole.
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The space between the joists went down nearly four feet, ending not in concrete foundation, but in soft, dark, unpaved earth. Resting inside the cavity was a child-sized wooden chest wrapped in decaying iron chains. Scratched crudely into the rusted lock plate was a single name: THOMAS.
From deep within the shadowed cavity beneath the floor, the sound of rhythmic breathing rose up, thick and phlegmy, followed by a faint, child-like sigh.
