Don’t stop here. Continue reading to discover the next chapter of the story.

-3-

The door swung inward with a slow, agonizing groan that sounded like a dry joint protesting after years of disuse.

Ethan reached inside the dark frame, his hand sweeping blindly along the rough concrete wall until his fingers brushed the familiar plastic toggle of a light switch. He flipped it up.

A single overhead bulb sputtered to life, casting a harsh, jaundiced illumination over the small windowless enclosure. The room was no larger than a walk-in closet, lined from floor to ceiling with wooden shelving units crammed with mason jars of pickled vegetables, old boxes of holiday decorations, and plastic storage totes.

At first glance, it appeared entirely empty.

"Lauren?" Ethan called out, his voice cracking slightly in the damp air.

There was no answer. Only the low, rhythmic hum of the basement’s old dehumidifier chugging away in the corner.

Ethan stepped across the threshold, his eyes scanning every shadow, every corner behind the stacked plastic bins. The metallic, chemical scent was much stronger down here now, stinging the inside of his nostrils and making his eyes water. It wasn't just the smell of damp earth; underneath it lay something rancid—something organic and decaying, mixed with the sharp, clinical sting of industrial cleaning fluid.

Then he looked down at the floor near the back shelving unit.

A pile of discarded clothing lay in a heap beside a white enamel bucket. Ethan’s breath caught in his throat. He recognized the heavy knitted cardigan Lauren had been wearing on Monday evening—the dark green one with mother-of-pearl buttons that he had bought her for her birthday.

He knelt beside the pile and reached out, his fingers brushing the fabric. It was damp, stiffened with dried mud and what looked suspiciously like dark, oxidized bloodstains near the hem.

"Dad?"

Ethan spun around so fast he nearly lost his balance.

Noah was standing in the doorway of the cellar room, peering inside with wide, terrified eyes. The wool blanket had slipped from his shoulders, pooling around his small boots.

"Noah! I told you to stay in the truck!" Ethan snapped, a surge of adrenaline overriding his shock. He lunged forward, grabbing his son by the shoulders and pulling him back out into the main basement area. "I told you to wait outside!"

"I saw the door open," Noah whispered, his lower lip trembling. "I wanted to see if she was here."

"She’s not here, Bug," Ethan said firmly, shielding the view of the clothing pile with his own body. "There’s nothing down here. Just old boxes. Come on, we’re going back upstairs right now."

"No," Noah said softly, planting his feet firmly on the cold concrete. He wasn't looking at Ethan; he was looking past him, staring directly at the back wall of the fruit cellar.

Ethan frowned. "Noah, listen to me—"

"Dad. Look at the wall."

Ethan turned slowly back toward the small enclosure.

From where he had been standing, the shelving unit had blocked the lower half of the back concrete wall. But from Noah’s slightly lower angle—and with the light hitting the surface at a different angle—something else was visible.

Scratched into the gray concrete wall, just a few inches above the floor, were ragged, horizontal gouges. Dozens of them. Deep grooves torn into the hardened cement, filled with white plaster dust and dark, dried smears of crimson.

And right beside the gouges, written in what looked unmistakably like fingernail polish or smeared blood, were numbers.

A series of dates.

MONDAY. TUESDAY. WEDNESDAY.

And beneath them, a final, frantic line written so hard the concrete had chipped away around the strokes:

HE WASN'T ALONE.

Ethan’s heart slammed against his ribs with the force of a sledgehammer. The room seemed to tilt sideways, the hum of the dehumidifier turning into a deafening roar in his ears.

"Dad?" Noah’s voice sounded miles away. "Who was with Aunt Claire?"

Ethan stared at the writing on the wall, the pieces of an impossible, horrifying puzzle violently snapping together in his mind. The seventy-two hours of meticulous organization, the closed-casket funeral, the hasty burial arranged without a proper medical review, the sudden panic when Noah mentioned the key, and the frantic escape from the cemetery.

Claire hadn't just been helping him grieve.

She had been managing a timeline.

And if Lauren had been locked in this room until sometime between Monday and Wednesday... who had Claire been burying this morning? And more importantly, whose body was currently resting inside that white casket in the cemetery?