Chapter 7
The television screen glowed with an eerie, fluorescent brightness, displaying a static, wide-angle shot of the master bedroom upstairs. The bed was neatly made, the curtains were drawn, and sitting squarely on the center of the pillows was a small, unmarked cassette tape next to a leather-bound journal that belonged to Mark's late father.
Sarah dropped to her knees beside the spilled documents, her face draining of all color as she stared at the screen. "That journal... how did they get that? I packed it away in the storage unit across town six months ago. The unit has biometric locks, Mark."
Mark sprinted toward the staircase, taking the steps three at a time with the heavy brass key still clutched in his fist. He burst into the master bedroom, throwing the door open so hard it slammed against the drywall with a sickening crack. The room was empty, cold, and smelled faintly of pipe tobacco. On the bed, the leather-bound journal lay open to a marked page, the paper yellowed and brittle with age.
He approached the bed slowly, his boots sinking into the carpet. He looked down at the open page. His father’s shaky handwriting covered the margins, detailing coordinates in the nearby national forest—coordinates that matched the exact location where Mark’s former company had recently broken ground for a massive subterranean data center.
Leo walked into the bedroom behind him, his small footsteps entirely silent on the carpet. The toddler climbed effortlessly onto the edge of the mattress, reached out, and picked up the cassette tape with both hands.
"Grandpa left a message," Leo said, his voice dropping an octave, mimicking the gravelly, exhausted tone of a dying old man.
Mark spun around, kneeling down to look his son directly in the eye. "Leo, who told you to say that? Who is talking to you when we aren't in the room?"
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Leo tilted his head, smiling with an unsettling warmth. "The man in the wall, Daddy. He said the box in the forest is already open."
From downstairs, the front door clicked shut with a loud, final thud, followed by the sound of a deadbolt turning from the outside, locking them securely inside their own home.
