Chapter 8 - The Open Front Door
The heavy oak front door of the penthouse swung inward with a slow, agonizing creak, letting in the gray, overcast light of the hallway outside. Ricardo stared at the open threshold, his mind racing to find any shred of logic in the impossible scene playing out before him. The entity standing by the piano—the thing wearing his son's face—smiled wider, its jaw unhinging slightly in a grotesque display that defied human anatomy.
"Close it!" Ricardo screamed, lunging away from the dining table toward the open door, desperate to shut out whatever horrors waited in the building's hallway.
Before he could reach the entryway, a pale, slender hand reached out from the gloom of the hallway, its long fingers gripping the wooden edge of the doorframe. The hand was ice-cold, the skin bruised and rotting around the fingernails.
Elena didn't look alarmed in the slightest. She gracefully descended a few steps, her maroon dress rustling softly against the stairs, watching Ricardo’s panic with sadistic amusement.
"There's no use trying to lock it out, Ricardo," Elena said, her voice dripping with venomous satisfaction. "You invited her in the moment you signed the marriage certificate five years ago. This house doesn't belong to the living. It never did."
Ricardo slammed his weight against the heavy door, throwing his shoulder into the wood, but it wouldn't budge an inch. It felt as though an immovable wall of lead was pressing against the exterior side. He looked down through the narrow security gap and saw a pair of milky, cataract-clouded eyes staring back at him through the crack.
“You let her take the boy,” a raspy, whispering voice hissed directly into Ricardo’s ear, sounding as though it were echoing from inside his own skull.
Ricardo spun around, swatting at the empty air, his chest heaving with terror. The entity that had worn Leo's face was gone from the piano, leaving behind only the crumpled, empty navy suit jacket lying abandoned on the hardwood floor.
"Where is my son?" Ricardo roared, turning his fury back toward Elena. He grabbed the polished wooden banister and vaulted up the first three steps, ignoring her presence entirely. "Where is Leo?!"
Elena didn't flinch as he closed the distance. She simply reached into the front pocket of her dress and pulled out a heavy, old-fashioned iron key—the exact duplicate of the one that Clara had written about in her hidden letters.
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"He's where he has always been, Ricardo," Elena whispered, inserting the iron key into the deadbolt of the forbidden second-floor nursery door right in front of them. "Right where you abandoned him."
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