Chapter 6 - the lullaby in the brick
Damon stepped into the cold vault, his heavy boots making slow, deliberate sounds against the concrete floor. He walked straight up to the brick wall, reaching out to touch the chalk lines of the music notes.
"This is Elena's handwriting," Damon murmured, his deep voice thick with a mixture of grief and disbelief. "She wrote this music when we first got married."
Naomi walked over to the small table beside the rocking chair. She set her lantern down and looked at the vintage music box. Inside the wooden casing was a small metal cylinder with tiny brass pins.
"Mr. Ashford... look," Naomi whispered, pointing her finger toward the mechanism.
Attached to the music box winding key was a thin piece of fine copper wire. The wire ran up from the table, stretched across the ceiling rafters, and vanished through a narrow ventilation shaft that traveled straight up through the building's chimney structure toward the second-floor study.
Damon looked up at the wire, the truth instantly dawning on him. "It wasn't a ghost..."
"It was an acoustic relay," Naomi realized, her brown eyes wide in the lantern light. "Someone pulled the wire from above... triggering the music box down here, which echoed up through the hollow air shafts into your office."
"And the humming?" Damon asked, his brows furrowing.
Naomi reached down into the drawer of the small table beneath the music box. She pulled out a small, battery-powered analog tape recorder with a cassette tape still sitting inside the slot.
Written on the white plastic tape in fine blue ink was a date: October 14, 2022—the exact night Elena had vanished during a storm four years ago.
Damon took the tape recorder with trembling hands. He pressed the red PLAY button.
Static crackled through the small speaker, followed by the soft, melodious humming of Elena's voice... followed by a second, terrified voice speaking through ragged breaths:
"If you are listening to this, Damon... it means Evelyn has found my hiding place. She told you I died in the river crash, but I escaped. I am hiding beneath the house with Martha's help..."
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The recording cut off with a harsh, static pop.
Damon stared at the small plastic device, his chest heaving as the terrifying reality crashed down upon his world. Elena hadn't died in a car crash four years ago. She had survived, hiding inside her own home with the help of Naomi's late mother, Martha Carter.
