Chapter 3 - The Lullaby in the Machine
The tinty, mechanical notes of ‘Brahms’ Lullaby’ drifted from the medical monitor, echoing mockingly off the gold-trimmed crown molding. Julian spun around, his boots slipping on the slick glass. The police officers drew back instinctively, their weapons aimed at the useless plastic and metal of the IV pole.
“Turn it off!” Julian roared, slamming his fist against the digital screen. The glass cracked under his knuckles, drawing a smear of dark blood, but the music only grew louder, distorting into a harsh, metallic screech before snapping into silence.
Detective Miller stepped forward, his pen pressing into the power cord to sever it completely. “Forensics is downstairs. They found something by the gate, Mr. Vance. You need to see this.”
Julian didn't want to see anything. He wanted his wife back from the hospital. He wanted his daughter back from whatever dark abyss Elena had just carried her into. But his feet moved, dragged by some morbid gravitational pull down the grand staircase, past the ancestral portraits whose painted eyes seemed to follow every stumble.
On the front steps, illuminated by harsh cruiser headlights, lay the light blue blanket. It was soaked through, but not with rain. It was heavy with red clay, the kind found exclusively on the southern acreage of the estate—near the old well that had been sealed since his grandfather’s time.
“We found the blanket,” Miller said, lifting the edge with a gloved pencil. “No baby inside. Just this.”
Resting in the center of the damp flannel was a gold-plated pocket watch, ticking steadily. The case was engraved with initials that Julian hadn’t seen in thirty years—his father’s initials.
“My father died in the fire,” Julian whispered, the cold night air burning his lungs. “The house burned down when I was six. How is this watch here?”
“It gets worse,” Miller said, his radio crackling with static. “Dispatch just called from the county records office. The nursery room you were standing in? According to the blueprints filed in nineteen-eighty-two, it wasn't a nursery. It was a secure medical vault.”
May you like
Julian looked back up at the third-story window where Elena had vanished. In the shattered glass reflection, a small face was pressed against the pane from the outside, watching them with wide, unblinking eyes.
---
