Chapter 13 - Locked Inside
The heavy oak door slammed shut with a concussive thud that rattled the dust off the basement rafters. A second later, the sharp, metallic sound of a deadbolt sliding securely into place echoed down the stairwell, followed by the muffled, mocking laughter of the woman in the silk blouse fading away toward the backyard.
"Hey! Open this door!" Clara screamed, rushing across the concrete floor and slamming her fists against the solid wood panels. "Open this door right now!"
There was no answer, save for the distant hum of the idling delivery van starting up in the alleyway above.
Clara rattled the brass doorknob frantically, but it spun uselessly in her hand, completely disengaged from the latch mechanism. She turned back to look at her mother, her chest heaving with panic. "She locked us in! They trapped us down here!"
Helen didn't panic. She walked slowly over to Clara’s desk, picked up the ceramic coffee mug the stranger had left behind, and peered into the dark liquid left at the bottom.
"Mom, stop looking at the coffee! We're locked in a basement with no phone service and no way out!" Clara cried, pacing the small room in absolute agitation.
"Look at the desk lamp, Clara," Helen said calmly, pointing the metal poker toward the heavy mahogany furniture.
Clara stopped pacing, confused. "What about the lamp?"
"The cord," Helen replied simply. "It’s plugged into the floor socket. But look where the wire goes."
Clara followed the black electrical cord with her eyes down to the baseboard. The wire didn't lead to the wall outlet; it ran underneath the heavy bookshelf along the back wall, disappearing into a narrow, dark crawlspace that Clara had completely forgotten existed.
"The old storm cellar access," Clara whispered, the pieces suddenly clicking together in her mind. "When my father built this office twenty years ago, he put a secondary escape hatch underneath the built-in shelving unit in case of tornadoes."
"Precisely," Helen said, walking over to the heavy bookcase and tapping the side panel with her metal poker, producing a hollow, echoing knock. "And since our charming friend in the silk blouse forgot that old houses have old secrets, she just locked us inside the one room in this building that she couldn't secure."
Clara rushed over to help her mother, grabbing the side of the heavy mahogany shelving unit. Together, using all the adrenaline and fury they had left, they shoved hard against the side. The bookcase groaned loudly, scraping across the concrete floor with a screech of protesting wood, revealing a narrow, dust-filled opening behind it.
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Inside the dark cavity, a rusted metal ladder led straight up toward a heavy iron hatch embedded in the backyard lawn. But as Clara shined her flashlight into the tight space, she saw something hanging from the rungs that made her blood run cold.
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