Chapter 4 - The Twin No One Knew
The word hung in the heavy, suffocating air of the hallway. Twin. Clara froze, her small hands clutching the collar of her light blue dress. She looked at her father, waiting for him to laugh, to deny it, to say it was a cruel joke born of the house's creaking age. But Arthur said nothing. He only stared at the starving girl in the crawlspace, his face draining of all color.
"Arthur, shut it! Put the grate back!" Elena shrieked, scrambling across the floor to shove her husband away from the opening. Her dark maroon dress was stained with dust as she frantically kicked the heavy iron cover back over the dark abyss. The metal slammed down with a resounding crash, cutting off the girl's quiet sobbing.
"Elena, she's alive," Arthur whispered, his voice trembling as he looked down at his wife. "After all these years... we thought the smoke took her. We buried an empty casket."
"We saved the one we could!" Elena screamed, tears streaming down her face. "You know what happened that night! If she comes up, we lose everything! The police, the neighbors, our lives!"
Clara sat frozen between them, her chest tightening. "Mama... Papa... who is she? Why is there another me?"
Arthur couldn't look his living daughter in the eye. He stood up slowly on shaking legs, his navy blue suit feeling suddenly too tight, like a straitjacket. He walked over to the window, staring out at the quiet, unsuspecting suburban street.
"We have to tell someone," Arthur muttered, his back to them. "We can't keep her down there anymore. It’s inhuman."
"If you breathe a word to a single soul," Elena hissed, rising to her feet with a terrifying coldness in her eyes, "I will tell them you were the one who locked the door and threw away the key."
May you like
Clara watched her parents argue, her young mind racing to process the impossible nightmare unfolding around her. She quietly crawled back to the floor vent. Slowly, deliberately, she reached out her small fingers and slid the iron grate open just a crack.
---
