Number 414 was a small, single-story craftsman house with faded white paint and a wraparound porch. It looked lonely. The garden Mr. Hector had spoken of was a small patch of earth near the front steps, filled with wildly blooming pink carnations. A pair of garden shears sat rusting on a wooden bench nearby, exactly where he must have left them yesterday morning before the transport vehicle came to bring him to the hospital.
I parked my car at the edge of the gravel driveway and rolled down the window. The silence of the woods was absolute, broken only by the occasional caw of a crow.
I should leave, I thought. His children will be coming in from out of state to pack up his things. It’s none of my business.
But then, I noticed something that made my breath catch in my throat.
The front door of the house was slightly ajar. Only an inch or two, but enough to show a sliver of pitch-black darkness inside.
Mr. Hector had been in the hospital for two weeks. His children had left ten days ago. The transport service wouldn’t have unlocked the house; they were supposed to drop him off, and he had his own keys in his personal belongings bag—keys that were currently sitting in a plastic bag in the hospital morgue.
A cold prickle of dread crawled up my spine. Had someone broken in?
Ignoring every single instinct of self-preservation I possessed, I opened my car door. The gravel crunched loudly beneath my clogs. I walked up the cracked concrete path, my heart hammering against my ribs, echoing the rhythm of the chest compressions I had given just hours before.
I reached the front porch. The wood groaned softly under my weight. I stretched out a trembling hand and pushed the front door open.
“Hello?” I called out, my voice sounding incredibly small in the vast quiet. “Is anyone here?”
No answer. Only the smell of stale air, old paper, and a faint, sweet scent that smelled suspiciously like Rose’s legendary beef stew, lingering like a ghost from a time when the house was full of life.
The living room was neat but frozen in time. Framed photographs of a smiling, younger Mr. Hector and a beautiful woman with dark eyes—Rose—lined the mantelpiece.
I walked deeper into the house, drawn by an invisible, magnetic force toward the back hallway.
There, at the very end of the corridor, was a heavy, wooden door.
My heart skipped a beat. A massive, heavy-duty brass padlock had been installed on the outside of the door. But the padlock wasn’t locked. It was hanging open, dangling from the latch as if someone had hurriedly opened it and forgotten to snap it shut.
Don’t let them look in the closet, Hope.
This wasn’t a closet. It looked like the door to the basement.
I stepped closer, my hand hovering over the cold brass of the padlock. Every rational cell in my body screamed at me to turn around, walk back to my car, go home to my kids, and pretend I had never come here. I was a nurse, not a detective.
But then, from the other side of the heavy wooden door, deep within the darkness of the basement…
I heard a distinct, rhythmic tapping sound.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
It sounded exactly like the slow, steady strike of a wooden cane against a concrete floor.
