Chapter 5 - Whispers from the Wet Concrete
The flashlight beam flickered once, casting long, dancing shadows against the curved concrete walls of the drainage tunnel. Mark swallowed hard, the taste of metallic dust coating his throat. He looked down at the mud-stained stuffed bunny in his hand, feeling an unnatural chill run straight down his spine despite the thick wool of his green sweater.
Mark? Mark, do you copy? Sarah's voice crackled through the handheld radio clipped to his collar, sounding small and distant.
I copy, Sarah, Mark spoke into his collar mic, keeping his voice low and steady. I found something at the entrance of the pipe.
What is it? What did you find down there? she asked, tension bleeding through the static.
Another stuffed bunny, Mark replied, stepping cautiously into the mouth of the tunnel, ducking his head to avoid the low concrete ceiling. Exactly like Lily's. It's been here a long time, Sarah. Decades, by the look of the mold.
That doesn't make any sense, Sarah's voice whispered back, her breathing ragged on the other end. Toys decompose. Cotton rots in damp environments. How could a stuffed animal survive twenty years in a drainage pipe?
I don't know, but I'm moving forward into the primary junction, Mark said, shining his light down the straight concrete corridor. The blueprint shows a maintenance ladder about fifty yards ahead that leads straight up into the old house's root cellar.
Please be careful, Mark. Lily is still awake upstairs; she keeps asking if the little girl outside is cold, Sarah said, a tremor of pure terror in her tone.
Mark pressed onward, his boots splashing lightly in a shallow trickle of clear water running along the floor of the pipe. The air grew colder with every step, the sound of his own heavy breathing echoing back at him like a second person walking right behind him in the dark.
He reached the primary junction where the pipe widened into a small square chamber. In the center of the chamber stood an old wooden crate, tilted slightly to one side. Resting on top of the crate was a rusted metal lunchbox, its painted cartoon characters faded beyond recognition.
Mark stopped, his flashlight beam locked onto the lunchbox. He slowly approached it, noticing that the latch wasn't locked. With trembling fingers, he flicked the metal clasp open and lifted the hinged lid.
Inside lay a collection of pristine photographs, protected inside a sealed plastic sleeve, along with a handwritten yellow notepad dated November twelfth, nineteen-eighty-five.
He pulled the topmost photograph out and held it directly under his flashlight beam. The image showed a smiling six-year-old girl with long blonde hair, wearing a teal knit sweater, holding a white stuffed bunny toy while standing on the exact front porch of the house he was currently standing beneath.
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The girl in the photograph wasn't a stranger. She looked identical in every single detail to Lily.
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