THE SECRETS BURIED BENEATH OUR FLOORBOARDS DEMAND A RECKONING WE CANNOT SURVIVE

The soft mechanical click froze them in place. Daniel’s embrace tightened around Elena and Lucas. He slowly turned his head to look toward the living room archway, his muscles coiled like a spring.

"What was that?" Elena whispered, her voice barely audible, terror bleeding back into her tone.

"I don't know," Daniel muttered, gently easing himself off the floor and standing up on shaky legs. He placed himself between his family and the living room, holding his hands out protectively. "Stay here. Do not move."

He crept down the short hallway into the living room. The room was bathed in the pale, cool light of the early morning sun filtering through the front windows. Everything was in its proper place: the sofa, the coffee table, the television on its stand. There was no vault door, no concrete, no supernatural tear in reality.

He exhaled a long, shaky breath, convincing himself it had been the house settling, or the refrigerator cycling its compressor. He turned to walk back to Elena and Lucas.

Then he stopped dead in his tracks.

Resting neatly in the exact center of the hardwood living room floor was a small, tarnished silver music box.

It was the exact same music box from the vault.

Daniel approached it slowly, as if walking toward a coiled snake. He knelt down, his fingers hovering inches above the metal lid. Without warning, the lid flipped open on its own, and the tinny, slow-motion notes of the backward lullaby began to play into the quiet room.

Clink. Clink. Clank.

"Daniel?" Elena’s voice called out nervously from the hallway. "Daniel, what is it? What's in there?"

Before Daniel could answer, the front door of the house—the heavy wooden exterior door that had been securely locked with a deadbolt—swung wide open with a sharp click.

A cold draft swept into the living room, carrying the distinct scent of dried lavender and wet earth.

Standing on the front porch in the bright morning sunlight was an eight-year-old girl with long dark hair, wearing a light beige button-up shirt and hoop earrings that caught the morning light. She looked directly at Daniel with wide eyes, an intense and anxious expression on her face.