We crashed to the floor, the wind knocked out of my lungs. His heavy hands clamped around my throat, cutting off my air instantly.
“You foolish bitch!” he hissed, his bloody face inches from mine, his grip tightening. “You’re going to ruin everything!”
Spots danced in my vision. The world began to gray at the edges. I clawed at his face, my nails tearing into his skin, but his grip was like iron. I was losing consciousness.
Desperate, my flailing right hand brushed against the open trapdoor in the floor. My fingers caught the rusted iron key.
With the last ounce of my strength, I drove the jagged, rusted end of the key straight into the side of Daniel’s neck.
He gasped, a horrific, choking sound escaping his throat. His grip on my neck vanished as he collapsed sideways, clutching his throat as dark blood began to pool onto the Persian rug.
I dragged myself away, coughing violently, drawing desperate gulps of air back into my burning lungs. I didn’t waste a single second looking at him. I snatched his phone off the floor, scrambled to my feet, and bolted out of the study.
I ran down the dark basement hallway toward the heavy wooden door that led to the furnace room. My hands shook so violently I could barely turn the doorknob.
I threw the door open. The furnace room was hot and loud, the mechanical hum echoing off the concrete walls. In the furthest, darkest corner, behind a stack of old wooden pallets, was a heavy, iron hatch set into the concrete floor—the entrance to the sub-basement.
I threw the pallets aside, my fingernails breaking and bleeding against the rough wood. I reached the hatch. It was secured with a massive, modern digital keypad lock, installed directly into the reinforced steel framework.
I pulled out Daniel’s phone. The screen was cracked from the fight, but the live feed was still running.
Inside the chamber, Lily’s head suddenly snapped straight up. Even through the blindfold, she seemed to be staring directly at the camera. Her mouth opened, and a sound came out of the phone’s speaker—but it wasn’t a child’s voice. It was a distorted, layered chord of multiple voices speaking in unison, vibrating with a frequency that made the phone in my hand violently shake.
“The final door is unlocked,” the voice from the phone chanted. “The guardian is dead. Enter the coordinates.”
On the digital keypad of the hatch in front of me, a red light began to flash rapidly. A automated electronic voice beeped:
“CRITICAL FREQUENCY DETECTED. SYSTEM WILL PURGE AIR SUPPLY IN SIXTY SECONDS. ENTER DEACTIVATION CODE NOW.”
I stared at the keypad, my mind screaming in panic. Sixty seconds. The notebook was upstairs in the study with Daniel. I didn’t know the code. I had no idea what the final coordinate was.
Then, I remembered the numbers from the bath. The sequence he had written in red. 4-11-21-9.
With forty seconds left on the timer, I slammed my fingers into the keypad: 4 – 11 – 21 – 9.
BEEP.
The light stayed red.
“INCORRECT CODE. THIRTY SECONDS REMAINING BEFORE PURGE.”
“No, no, no!” I screamed, tears blinding my vision. What was the code?! What did I miss?!
Suddenly, from the top of the basement stairs, a heavy, dragging sound echoed through the dark.
I turned my head.
Daniel was standing at the top of the stairs. The iron key was still embedded in his neck, blood soaking his entire shirt. His eyes were completely black, the pupils dilated so wide there was no white left. He wasn’t walking like a human; his limbs were twitching, jerking unnaturally, as if something else was pulling his strings.
He looked down at me, and a horrific, bloody grin split his face.
“You entered the traveler’s path, Sarah,” he whispered, his voice echoing with the exact same distorted, multi-layered frequency as Lily’s. “But you forgot to pay the tribute.”
“TEN SECONDS REMAINING,” the automated voice droned.
Daniel took a step down the stairs, lifting a bloody hand toward me.
Behind the steel hatch beneath my feet, I heard a sudden, violent thumping sound. Something was hitting the heavy metal from the inside. Hard. Too hard to be a five-year-old girl.
And then, the phone screen in my hand went completely pitch black.
