Chapter 2 - The Echo Downstairs
The sound of the bell wasn't loud, but in the suffocating silence of the bedroom, it hit like a gunshot. Brrrring. Brrrring. It possessed the heavy, brassy ring of a 1970s landline, rhythmic and mechanical, vibrating through the cold titanium door and into the floorboards beneath Mark’s boots.
"We are leaving. Right now." Elena backed into the doorway, her voice shrill, eyes wide with genuine panic. She clamped one hand over Lily’s ear, pressing the child’s face into her collarbone. "Mark, grab your keys. We get in the car, we drive to the police station, and we don't come back until they tear this entire house apart."
Mark looked at her, then back at the hairline crack in the door. A sliver of blackness stared back at him. "Elena, if someone is down there... if someone has been trapped in this house since before escrow closed—"
"Or if someone broke in!" she hissed. "Mark, think! Lily just said someone was knocking under her room! That means whoever built this isn't necessarily dead. It means they might be looking up at us right now."
The telephone continued its relentless cadence. Brrrring. Seven rings. Eight rings.
"It stopped," Mark whispered as silence abruptly reclaimed the room.
Then came a click. A raspy burst of static hissed through an intercom speaker concealed within the frame of the metal door.
"David?" a voice wheezed over the speaker. It was an old man’s voice, wet and strained, punctuated by the mechanical wheeze of an oxygen concentrator. "David, is that you? Did you bring the ledger? The seals are breaking at the lower reservoir. If you don't input the bypass sequence before six o'clock, the foundation will flood with the runoff."
Mark stepped closer, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. "Who is this? My name is Mark Vance. I bought this house at auction three weeks ago from the county probate court. Who are you?"
Silence hung heavy on the line for five agonizing seconds. Then, the voice lost its fragile, bewildered tone. It flattened into a cold, chillingly sharp monotone.
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"You aren't David," the voice said. "Then why did you bring his daughter back to his grave?"
Behind Mark, Lily turned her head in Elena’s arms, looked directly at the intercom, and spoke in a voice far too clear for a six-year-old child: "I found the way down, Grandpa."
