Addison expected Luke to reappear with an axe in hand. He didn’t.
“You’re going to break the door down…with that?” she asked.
He smiled. “Watch and learn, grasshopper.” He pointed at the corner of the door. “See these hinges? They’re on the outside. Most of the time, they’re on the inside. I should just be able to tap the hinge pins out, and then I can pull the door off.”
“You just pull it off?”
“Remove it from the frame? Yeah.”
Luke and his hammer went to work on the first pin. Fifteen minutes later, it hadn’t budged.
“This door has been here for so long, these pins have practically become fused to it,” he said. “If I oiled them, it might help, but it might not either. I might have to break it down after all.”
“Isn’t there a way to get these doorknobs off?”
“It’s locked from the inside, and the outside is solid. There’s no hole.”
“How did they get in here if it was locked from the outside?”
“Maybe that was the idea. Once they locked it, they never planned on going inside again.”
“What now?” she asked.
He laughed. “Roxanne, if you can hear me, we could use some help.”
“Luke, I don’t think you should say things like…”
A cracking noise was heard on the other side of the door, followed by what sounded like pieces of something shattering.
“Did you hear that?” Luke asked. “Sounded like broken glass.”
“It came from behind this,” Addison said, placing her hands on top of one of the long wood boards. “We need to get one of these off.”
Luke replaced the hammer with a pry bar, splitting the wood until he’d broken off a chunk large enough for Addison to stick a hand through. She turned the middle of the knob until it clicked and stared into the murky darkness.
“You want to turn the light on?” she asked Luke.
“Nope. This is all you.”
Addison ran her hand along the inside of the wall until she felt the switch. She turned it. The light sputtered on.
“It’s empty,” she said. “There’s nothing here.”
“What did you expect to find?”
“I don’t know. Not this.”
“Look again—what do you see?”
There were holes in the walls but no pictures. A half-open closet door with a few wire hangers but no clothing. There was one window. The carpeting on the floor was thin and brown and reminded her of something she’d see at church. “Strange.”
“What?”
“The carpet. All of the rooms in the house are hardwood. None of them have carpet. Not even the storage closet.”
“Exactly.”
Addison walked around the room, staring at the walls, trying to remember where she’d seen Roxanne crouched in the corner, begging for her life. On the wall opposite the door she found a tiny hole. It was too small to be a bullet hole or a nail, but the perfect size for a pushpin. “This is where the calendar was—which means Roxanne was right about here when I saw her in my vision. I remember the floor. There was no carpet. It was wood.”
Luke reached into his pocket and retrieved a carpenter’s knife. “With your permission?”
Addison nodded. “Rip it out. Rip it all out.”