Chapter 8 - THE COLD FOUNDATION
The basement smelled of damp earth, old limestone, and rust.
Marcus pulled his smartphone from his pocket and switched on the flashlight, casting a sharp, narrow beam of white light across the rough-hewn stone walls and concrete floor. The air down here was significantly colder than the house above, sending a sharp shiver through Lily’s soaked body.
"Daddy... the dark room," Lily whispered, her arms tightening around his neck until it was hard for him to breathe. "Don't put me in the dark room!"
"I won't, baby, I promise!" Marcus reassured her, setting her down gently on a dry wooden crate near the foot of the stairs. He shed his dark, water-resistant rain jacket and wrapped it carefully around Lily’s small, shivering shoulders. "Daddy is right here. Look at the light. Focus on the light."
He pointed the phone camera beam around the subterranean space.
The modern section of the basement housed the HVAC unit, the water heater, and rows of metal storage shelves packed with plastic bins. But beyond the concrete pillars lay the older section—the original stone cellar.
Marcus walked quickly toward the far wall where the old foundation met the dirt ground. He knew from the home's original blueprints that an old storm door, long since covered by wooden decking on the outside, opened out onto the eastern lawn near the woods.
He approached the decaying wooden frame of the storm door, secured by a heavy, rusted iron latch.
"If I can break this latch, we can crawl out under the deck," Marcus murmured to himself, his mind racing against the six-minute clock Clara had set.
He grabbed a heavy iron crowbar resting on a nearby workbench, jammed the flat end into the space between the iron latch and the rotting wood, and threw his entire body weight into it.
The old wood groaned, splintering loudly in the quiet basement.
CRACK.
The latch held, but the rotten wood surrounding it began to yield. Marcus pulled back, preparing to strike a second time, when his flashlight beam hit something strange embedded in the mortar of the stone wall directly adjacent to the storm door.
It was a small, blue metallic USB drive, taped securely inside a small crevice between two limestone blocks, wrapped in clear waterproof plastic.
Marcus stopped mid-swing. He lowered the crowbar, reached out with his free hand, and pulled the USB drive from the stone wall.
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Written on the plastic wrapping in faint, permanent black marker was a message in handwriting he would recognize anywhere in the world:
If you are reading this, Marcus, she didn't let me leave.
