Chapter 9 - The Sympathetic Bond Across the Water
Mark turned sharply on the staircase, abandoning his footing as he scrambled back down toward the cellar floor. The sheer terror of Sarah's screams completely overwrote the chilling spectral presence standing on the steps behind him.
Hold on, Sarah! I'm coming back through the tunnel right now! Mark shouted into his radio as he sprinted across the moldering concrete floor toward the trapdoor leading to the drainage pipe.
Wait, Daddy, Elizabeth's soft voice echoed from the top of the stairs, stopping him dead in his tracks. You can't leave yet. She's keeping my door locked.
Mark whipped his head around, his flashlight beam cutting back toward the stairs. Elizabeth was standing halfway down now, her small face illuminated by the stark white beam. Her expression wasn't threatening or malicious; it was drowning in a profound, unimaginable loneliness.
What are you talking about? My daughter is dying back home! Mark yelled, the desperation in his voice tearing at his vocal cords.
She's not dying, she's remembering, Elizabeth whispered, clutching her white bunny tighter against her chest as a single tear traced down her pale cheek. She has to remember, or I'll be stuck in this dark water forever.
Mark stood paralyzed between the trapdoor leading to his family and the little girl holding the exact duplicate of his daughter's toy. He raised his radio with a shaking hand.
Sarah! Sarah, can you hear me? How is Lily? Mark screamed into the receiver, waiting through seconds of agonizing static.
Mark... it's... it's like she can't breathe, Sarah's voice sobbed, barely audible over the sound of rain and distant thunder. She's saying... she's saying she's trapped in a box under the water, Mark. She's repeating words she couldn't possibly know.
Mark stared at Elizabeth, the terrifying, impossible truth crashing over him with the weight of a tidal wave. Lily wasn't just seeing the ghost across the water; she was acting as an emotional anchor, feeling every lingering, unresolved second of the tragedy that had trapped Elizabeth in nineteen-eighty-five.
What do we need to do to open her door? Mark asked, his voice softening as he looked directly into the little girl's big blue eyes.
Elizabeth pointed a small finger toward the far corner of the cellar, where an old, heavy iron padlock sat resting on top of a locked wooden trunk buried beneath decades of debris.
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The key is inside the music box in the living room upstairs, Elizabeth whispered. But the water is covering the stairs now. You have to climb up through the house.
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