Chapter 11 - The Closet Door
Elena rushed up the stairs, her boots pounding against the carpeted steps. "Clara! Lily!" she shouted, panic threatening to overwhelm her logic.
She reached the master bedroom. The door to the walk-in closet was closed, but a pale, eerie blue light seeped out from underneath the crack at the bottom. Faint, muffled scratching sounds echoed from inside the dark closet space—the exact sound Elena had heard from the basement earlier.
Elena grabbed the brass doorknob. It was freezing cold, coated in a thin layer of frost. She twisted it and threw the door open wide.
Clara and Lily were sitting inside the walk-in closet on the carpeted floor. Clara was hugging her knees, shivering uncontrollably, while Lily was digging frantically into the corner of the closet floor with her bare hands, pulling up chunks of drywall and fresh soil.
"Stop it! Lily, stop!" Elena yelled, rushing forward to scoop the toddler away from the hole.
"She told us to help her finish," Lily said stubbornly, her red hair wild around her flushed face. She pointed a tiny, dirt-smudged finger down into the newly excavated hole in the closet floor.
Elena looked down. Resting inside the hole, right beneath the floorboards of their own closet, was a small, leather-bound diary, its cover badly charred by fire but remarkably intact. Sticking out of the pages was a photograph of the original builder of the house standing on this very porch, holding a sledgehammer, smiling sinisterly.
"Mom, look at the date on the last page," Clara whispered, pointing a trembling finger over Elena's shoulder.
Elena reached out and carefully flipped the diary open to the final handwritten entry, dated October 14, 1994. The ink was faded, but the words were stark and terrifying: She knows I put her in the wall across the street. But she built this house with me. Her body is in both places. The walls share the blood.
"What does that mean?" Clara asked, her voice cracking with tears. "How can her body be in both places?"
Before Elena could answer, the front doorbell rang loudly through the house.
Ding-dong.
"The police," Elena breathed out in profound relief. "Stay here. Do not move."
She scrambled out of the closet, raced down the stairs, and threw the front door open. Two uniformed police officers stood on the porch, their stern faces illuminated by the flashing red and blue lights of their cruiser parked at the curb.
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"Mrs. Vance?" the older officer asked, resting his hand on his utility belt. "You called about a body at eighty-four Elm Street?"
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