Chapter 5 - The Stranger in the Walls
Mark instinctively jerked backward, dragging his boots across the wooden floor as a face emerged from the dark shaft. It was a man in his late fifties, his skin pale and stretched tight over high cheekbones, wearing a tattered security uniform covered in dried mud and soot. The man grinned, revealing a row of yellowed teeth, his eyes gleaming with a manic, desperate energy under the flickering yellow beam of the flashlight.
“Who the hell are you?” Mark shouted, lunging forward to grab the intruder by the collar of his shredded shirt, his knuckles cracking as he hauled the man half out of the narrow floor opening.
“Let him go, Mark!” Clara screamed, dropping the fireplace poker as she lunged forward to grab her husband’s arm. “You don’t understand what he’s protecting us from!”
The stranger chuckled, a wet, rattling sound that ended in a sharp cough. He didn't fight Mark’s grip; instead, he let his head loll back against the edge of the floorboards, staring up at the ceiling with a chilling calmness. “You think you’re a good father, Reynolds? You think locking the doors and painting the walls white keeps the ghosts out? Your father didn't burn down that research lab by accident thirty years ago. He stole something from the vault. Something they’ve been tracking through every generation of your family line.”
Maya, who had slipped out of the master bedroom while Clara was distracted, crept up behind her mother and tugged on the hem of her cream blouse. She pointed down the hallway toward the attic stairs, where the old pull-string hung limply from the ceiling.
“The lady in the white dress told me to tell you the box is open,” Maya whispered, her voice entirely devoid of childhood innocence.
Mark slowly released the intruder’s collar, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird as he looked from the strange man in the floor to the hanging attic string, which was now beginning to sway gently back and forth without any draft of wind to move it.
“What box?” Mark whispered, his voice trembling as he stood up slowly, backing away from the open duct.
May you like
The stranger in the floor smiled wider, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth as he pointed directly at Mark’s chest. “The one your oldest daughter is currently opening right above our heads.”
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