Chapter 4 - The Sound Above
Ryan didn't hesitate. He vaulted over the back of the dining chair, ignoring Clara’s terrified gasp, and sprinted toward the staircase. His sneakers hit the hardwood steps three at a time, the old oak boards groaning under his weight as he surged toward the second floor.
"Leo!" Ryan shouted, rounding the landing and charging down the narrow hallway toward his son’s bedroom.
The door to Leo’s room was wide open. Inside, the afternoon light streamed through the window, illuminating a scene of absolute chaos. Leo’s plastic building blocks were scattered across the carpet like spilled debris. The small wooden desk had been dragged sideways, and the floor-level return air vent—the one connected to the exact same vertical duct shaft that ran down to the kitchen—had been torn completely out of the wall.
Leo was standing in the middle of the room, shaking violently, pointing a trembling finger toward the dark, gaping hole in the drywall.
"Dad!" Leo sobbed, tears streaming down his face as he ran toward Ryan, burying his head in his father's waist. "A hand! A big hand came out of the wall! It grabbed my tablet and pulled it inside!"
Ryan dropped to one knee, wrapping his arms around his trembling son, but his eyes were fixed entirely on the black opening in the wall. The metal edges of the duct were twisted outward, as if something heavy and desperate had just forced its way upward from the lower levels of the house.
"Leo, listen to me," Ryan said, his voice urgent but controlled as he looked down into his son's wide, terrified eyes. "Go downstairs. Find your mother. Stay right by the front door and do not move. Do you understand?"
"Dad, there's a monster in the house," Leo whimpered, his small fingers digging into Ryan's shirt.
"There's no monster, buddy. Just go downstairs. Now."
Leo nodded frantically, scrambled past his father, and bolted out of the room, his sneakers squeaking against the hallway floor.
Ryan slowly stood up. He walked over to the desk, picked up a heavy metal flashlight from the top, and clicked it on. A blinding beam of white light cut through the dust motes dancing in the air, illuminating the dark interior of the vertical duct.
He bent down, bringing his face close to the opening. The smell hit him first—not the stale dust of before, but something metallic, sharp, and unmistakably human. Sweat, old canvas, and copper.
"Who's there?" Ryan called out, his voice echoing hollowly inside the metal cylinder. "Show yourself."
For a moment, there was only silence. Then, from somewhere deep down near the foundation level—far below the kitchen floor, in the forgotten crawlspace beneath the slab—came a sound that made Ryan’s blood run cold.
It wasn't Maya’s gentle, high-pitched voice.
It was a deep, raspy cough, followed by a low, grating laugh that sounded like dry gravel grinding together.
"You always did have terrible taste in home renovations, Ryan," a voice whispered from the dark depths of the wall.
Ryan froze, the flashlight beam trembling in his hand. The voice didn't belong to a stranger. It was a voice he hadn't heard in six years—a voice belonging to a man the police had declared dead in a fiery warehouse fire across the state line.
May you like
A man named Marcus Vance.
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