Chapter 3: Shadows in the Hallway
Night descended over the suburban house, bringing with it a heavy, suffocating quiet. The funeral wreaths cast long, skeletal shadows across the living room walls, twisting the white flowers into grotesque shapes under the moonlight. Leo sat upright on the edge of the velvet sofa, his black jacket draped over the armrest, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. Sleep was an impossible luxury; every time he closed his eyes, he heard the muffled echo of his own frantic shouts and Maria’s unyielding warnings.
The house creaked—a settling sound, or perhaps something more deliberate. Leo stood up quietly, his stockinged feet making no sound against the floorboards. He slipped out of the living room and into the dim hallway, drawn by a faint streak of light bleeding from beneath the kitchen door.
As he approached, he heard a low murmur of conversation. Maria was speaking on the phone, her voice pitched dangerously low, stripped of the comforting, maternal softness she wore around him.
""No, the boy is suspicious,"" Maria hissed into the receiver. ""He’s asking for medical reports. We can't wait until Tuesday for the crematory pickup. We need to move the timeline up. Tonight.""
Leo’s heart slammed against his ribs. A cold sweat broke out across the back of his neck. *Crematory pickup?* They hadn’t discussed cremation. Arthur had always been vocal about wanting a traditional burial plot beside his own parents in the upland cemetery. Why would Maria rush a cremation unless—
The thought froze him in place. Unless there was no disease at all.
He leaned closer to the wooden door, straining to catch the voice on the other end of the line, but the speaker was too quiet. The implications crashed over him like a freezing wave. If there was no contagious pathogen, then Maria was lying. And if she was lying about the disease, what else was she hiding about the man resting inside that heavy wooden box?
Footsteps scraped against the kitchen floor, moving toward the door. Panic surged through Leo’s veins. He spun around, moving as fast and silently as he could back down the darkened hallway, slipping into the shadows of the coat closet just as the kitchen door clicked open.
Through the narrow crack of the closet door, he watched Maria step out into the hallway. She looked around, her face illuminated by the pale moonlight, her eyes narrowing as she spotted the faint scuff mark on the living room rug where Leo had paced earlier. She knew someone had been listening. A chilling, predatory calmness settled over her features. She pulled her pearl necklace through her fingers, sliding the beads back and forth with a rhythmic, calculating slowness that made Leo’s stomach turn.
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In the living room, mere yards away, Arthur lay paralyzed by terror, his ears straining for the sound of his son. He had managed to shift his shoulder slightly against the interior wall, producing a faint, hollow thud that echoed in the silent house—a desperate Morse code of survival swallowed up by the terrifying night.
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