Chapter 6 - The Subterranean Lens
The screen of the phone flashed rhythmically, casting an eerie greenish light against the white tiles of the patio. Julian stared down at the small, glowing display where the live camera feed showed the exact vantage point of where they stood—except the perspective was upside down, looking up through four feet of murky water and solid concrete.
“Pick it up,” Martha whispered, her voice failing her as she pointed a trembling finger at the device. “Answer it, Julian. We need to know who is watching us.”
Julian swallowed hard, his throat dry. He dropped to one knee, snatched the phone from the ground, and swiped his thumb across the screen to accept the video call.
The audio crackled with heavy static, followed by the sound of rhythmic breathing. Then, a low, modulated voice spoke through the tiny speaker.
“You always did lack patience, Julian,” the voice rasped, sounding digitally altered yet distinctly familiar. “Martha knew how to wait. She knew that if you leave a lie buried long enough, the soil eventually rejects it.”
“Who is this?” Julian shouted into the microphone, his face inches from the screen. “Show your face! If this is some sick joke—”
“It’s no joke, son,” the voice interrupted smoothly. The video feed shifted, the camera panning through what appeared to be a narrow, concrete-lined tunnel running directly beneath the pool foundation. In the dim light of a flickering work light, a figure wearing a familiar grey cardigan sat at a rusted metal desk, surrounded by stacks of old bank ledgers.
Martha gasped, clapping both hands over her mouth as tears finally spilled over her lower lashes.
“Dad?” she choked out, her knees buckling slightly. “Oh god, you're alive?”
“Alive is such a relative term when your children spend twenty years trying to drown your secrets,” the figure on the screen replied, leaning forward into the light. The face was older, lined with deep wrinkles and framed by unkempt white hair, but the piercing blue eyes were unmistakably those of the man they had mourned for two decades.
Julian’s breath caught in his throat. He looked from the phone screen back to the dark water in the deep end of the pool, where the swirling vortex had suddenly cleared into a dead calm.
“If you've been down there the whole time,” Julian said, his voice trembling with a mixture of rage and disbelief, “then who did we bury in the cemetery?”
The old man on the screen smiled slowly, revealing a missing canine tooth.
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“Ask your sister,” the voice said softly. “She helped me pick out the suit.”
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