THIRTY-ONE
Since Addison claimed to know their father’s cell phone passcode, Ethan made a deal with her. They would only hide in the underground room until the police rescued them. No time at all, really. Because, if they didn’t hide, they’d have to keep running, and then the police would never find them.
Though shaky on his logic, Ethan only had to convince a five-year-old that it made sense. They were too exposed above ground. And if they had to keep running, Addie would grow tired a lot sooner than their possessed father. He recalled one of his teachers talking about how humans and animals reacted to extreme fear with the fight or flight response. So far, they had chosen flight because fighting their father—a grown man with a bloody knife—was out of the question. Neither option worked for them. Ethan knew they couldn’t outrun their father. So, the time had come to hide instead.
The pits were deep enough for a grownup to stand in and not bump their head on the trapdoor. For children, that meant a drop into darkness that could result in a sprained or broken ankle if they weren’t careful. Ethan couldn’t risk Addie getting hurt and crying, trapped in a pit with him, at the mercy of their possessed father. Ethan flashed on his nightmare of being buried alive in one of the pits and shuddered.
He dropped to his stomach and told her to take his hands before swinging her legs over the pit. Braced against the ground he supported her weight, inching forward to lower her down as far as he could.
“Don’t drop me!”
“It’s not far.”
“It’s dark,” she said. “I’m scared!”
“The bottom should be close to your feet,” Ethan said. “You could probably feel it with your toes if you had big clown shoes.”
She laughed at the image. “Really?”
“Just a little hop down.”
“Okay.”
“On three,” he said. “One, two…”
“Three,” she said and let go of his hands.
He heard an oomph! Then a low, “Ow!”
“Are you okay?” he whispered.
“Fell on my butt,” she said. “But, yeah.”
“Told you,” Ethan said.
“It’s dark down here,” she called. “Don’t leave me alone!”
“Coming,” he said, swinging his legs around to lower his body over the edge. He almost let go—
“Oh, crap!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Forgot the door!”
Fingers digging in the dirt, he had to scramble up the rough wooden surface of the chamber wall, the toes of his sneakers slipping a couple times before he pulled himself back over the edge. He flipped the door over on its hinges, propping it up with a stick, high enough that he could slither through the gap. With his left forearm circled around the stick, he lowered his body again. The fingers of his right hand clung to the edge.
“Stand back!” he called.
“Don’t fall on my head!”
“Watch out!” he called as he yanked his left arm toward the hole, which pulled the stick out from under the door. At the same time, he let go with his right hand and dropped into the pit. The door slammed shut a moment before he landed with a thud. His momentum caused him to stagger backward, brushing Addie before he thumped against the far wall.
“You okay?” Addie asked.
“Bit my cheek,” Ethan said. He ran the tip of his tongue over the cut, tasted his own blood. “I’m fine.”
“It’s darker now,” Addie said plaintively.
With the door shut, they were trapped in almost complete darkness. Ethan stared up at the trapdoor, the ceiling of their tiny underground cell. A few tiny cracks in the wood let through some light from above, but he couldn’t escape the spooky feeling that he’d buried them alive with no help at all from their possessed father.
“Makes it harder for him to find us,” Ethan said, attempting to sound more positive than he felt.
His mother always said, “You choose if the glass is half full or half empty. Nobody else.” They had lived in a bunch of crappy houses the last few years. His mother had always found something positive to say about each one. And every time they moved into another bad house, she told them it would get better each day as their father continued to fix it. And someday they would move into a great house and it would be theirs for good. He would make friends he could keep and finally get a dog.
As Ethan stood in the dark with his sister, hiding from something evil that wanted to kill them, he focused on the positive. His father had no idea where they were, so they were safe. And he believed his mother was alive and would get better, once they called for help. One simple phone call.
Ethan took those few moments to calm himself. Be brave so she’ll be brave.
Reaching into his back pocket, he handed Addie their father’s cell phone. “Okay,” he said. “Enter the code.”
She took the phone from him, looked at the lock display and began tapping numbers on the onscreen keyboard.
With his arms spread, Ethan could touch opposite walls of the pit. Turning ninety degrees, he reached out again and found the distance the same. Wide enough to lie down, he thought, but not comfortably.
“Once you unlock it, we’ll call for help,” he said. “And we’ll use the flashlight app, so we can see down here until the police and ambulance come for us and Mom.”
But Addison was frowning. He hadn’t counted the taps, but she’d entered way more than six numbers. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s not working.”
“You said you knew it!”
His calm had already started to evaporate. He could feel panic rising from his stomach. “Tell me the number,” he said. “I’ll try it.”
“Daddy said it was a secret,” she said. “Not supposed to tell anyone.”
“I’m not anyone, doofus,” Ethan said impatiently. “I’m your brother!”
She tried the number again, and again.
He snatched the phone from her hand. “Tell me,” he said. “Let me try.”
With a dramatic sigh, she said, “Okay, but I better not get in trouble.”
Ethan laughed. Couldn’t help himself. They were hiding in an open grave from their father, who was possessed by an evil shadow creature that wanted to stab them to death, and Addie was worrying about getting in trouble for revealing a cell phone passcode.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” Ethan said. “So not funny. Tell me the code!”
“He told me it’s our birthdays, but that’s too long,” she said. “They won’t all fit.”
Three birthdays, Ethan thought, puzzling it out. Their mother’s, his and Addie’s. Six digits. Two digits for each birth day, birth month or birth year. But which one? And in which order? Oldest to youngest? Or the opposite. Six possible combinations. He’d have to try each one.
From above, he heard his father’s voice, the scary shadow voice, like an animal growl, calling out to them. “Ethan!” he called. “Addison!”
Ethan entered their birth years, starting with their mother’s, but for a few moments he couldn’t remember the year she was born and the panic bubbling in his sour stomach surged.
“Ethan!”
Was it his imagination, or did the voice seem closer to their hiding place?
“Addison!”
Closer! Too close, already!
He heard a creak of rusty metal and the thud of a wooden door falling. “Come out of there!” the voice called. “I know you’re hiding!”
Oh, crap! He’s already checking the pits!
Nearby, a trapdoor slammed.
Hunched over the cell phone, Ethan feared he might vomit on the wooden floor. Addie was scared now, but if she knew how terrified he was, she’d panic.
The security code failed.
“Okay, try days,” he muttered to himself.
“Did it work?”
“Not yet,” he said.
“Told you it didn’t fit.”
“That’s not the—!” He sighed. “I’ll get it.”
“Found something in the corner.”
“What?” he asked. Rotted food? Flashlight with dead batteries?
“A stool,” she said. “With three legs. It’s short. I can sit on it.”
“Do that,” Ethan said. The three sets of two-digit birth days failed to unlock the phone from oldest to youngest, and again from youngest to oldest. “Okay, months now.”
“It’s wobbly,” Addie complained.
“We’ll fix it later,” Ethan said.
Last two digits, Addie’s birth month.
The lock screen vanished, revealing the phone’s home screen. “Thank God!”
“What? It worked?”
“Yes,” Ethan said.
SQUEAK—THUD!
Another trapdoor yanked open and slammed shut.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
If Ethan closed his eyes, he pictured his father less than ten feet from their pit, heard the scuff of his shoes on the ground as he strode toward them. Bile climbed his throat. He grimaced and swallowed hard.
Quickly, he dialed 911. But nothing happened.
No dial tone! “Crap!”
“What’s wrong?” Addie asked. “Battery dead? Momma’s battery always di—”
Ethan tuned her out. The battery icon showed half a charge, but the other side of the screen showed a weak signal, only one bar. No! he thought angrily. Not after everything we…
“Let me have the stool!”
“Finders keepers,” Addie said in a maddening sing-song voice.
“Just for a minute,” Ethan whispered urgently. “I’ll give it back.”
“Okay.”
Ethan climbed onto the seat of the wobbly stool, balancing himself precariously as he raised the cell phone over his head, high enough to brush the underside of the trapdoor. The single bar transformed into two bars, flickered to three for a second then back to two.
Should be good enough, he thought, and dialed 911 again.
When he heard the operator’s voice, he almost fell off the stool in relief. She wanted to know the nature of the emergency. So many, he thought. Where to start?
“Hello?”
“Yes, yes, we need help,” Ethan said quickly, afraid the signal would cut out before he finished. “This is Ethan. Ethan Yates. Me and my sister need help—fast! But my mom’s hurt bad. He stabbed her. Our father—in our house and he’s gonna… hurt us, if he finds us.” Ethan had been rambling, but caught himself before he said anything that might freak out Addison. Well, freak her out more than she already was. “We need the police—and an ambulance for our mom—but tell the police not to hurt my dad, because it’s not really him doing the bad stuff. Something’s inside him. That’s the bad thing.”
“Where are you?”
“Hiding in a pit, in our yard,” Ethan said. “But he’s coming—he’s close!”
“I need your address, Ethan.”
Ethan gave her their address, something his mother had always made him and Addie remember, but it changed so much, sometimes Addie mixed up street and town names. Ethan always made an extra effort to get it right, repeating it to Addie in case she ever got lost.
He climbed down from the stool, careful of the wobble, and gave it back to Addie. She sat on it. He sat on the floor beside her. They waited in the silence of the pit, while above, another trapdoor thumped shut on squeaky hinges. Any minute, he would find their trapdoor and yank it open…
His mother always said, “You never know when an emergency will happen.”
This time, the emergency was in their own backyard.
This time, it was their father who was lost.