Chapter 2: The House of Secrets
The steel door swung inward with a long metallic groan.
Cold air poured from the darkness.
It smelled of damp concrete and old electricity.
My flashlight revealed a narrow staircase descending beneath the house.
The walls weren't ancient.
They were reinforced.
Whoever built this place had intended someone to stay there.
Or never leave.
Ignoring everyone behind me, I ran down the stairs.
"Rachel!" Mark shouted.
I barely heard him.
At the bottom waited a small underground apartment.
A bed.
A kitchenette.
Books stacked neatly against one wall.
Children's drawings covered another.
The newest drawing showed a little girl holding hands with a woman whose face had been crossed out in black crayon.
My chest tightened.
"Lily?"
Tiny footsteps hurried across the room.
Then she appeared.
She was sixteen now.
Tall.
Thin.
Her blonde hair reached past her shoulders, but her frightened blue eyes were exactly the same.
The same eyes that used to search for me every night before bedtime.
For one impossible second we simply stared at each other.
Then she whispered,
"Mom?"
I pulled her into my arms.
Neither of us spoke.
We only cried.
Ten years disappeared in a single embrace.
Mark stood frozen at the bottom of the stairs.
"Oh my God..."
Lily finally looked up.
"I knew you'd come."
"How long have you been here?"
She hesitated.
"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"There aren't any calendars."
My blood ran cold.
"What did Grandma tell you?"
"She said the outside world ended."
I closed my eyes.
"She said everyone got sick. She said only this house was safe."
My hands shook.
"She told me you died before the sickness."
Every lie landed harder than the last.
"Did she ever let you leave?"
"Sometimes at night."
"Only the backyard."
She pointed toward security cameras mounted in every corner.
"If I crossed the fence..."
She stopped talking.
"What happened?"
Lily slowly rolled up her sleeve.
Old scars circled her wrist.
"They locked me downstairs for weeks."
Mark turned toward our parents.
"You monsters."
My mother collapsed against the wall, sobbing uncontrollably.
"I never wanted that."
"You let it happen," I said.
"No..."
She looked toward the staircase.
"Your grandmother changed."
"What do you mean?"
"At first she only wanted to keep Lily safe."
"But after a few years..."
My father finished the sentence.
"She refused to give her back."
The room fell silent.
My grandmother...
The woman who baked birthday cakes.
Who knitted Christmas sweaters.
Who tucked me into bed every summer.
She had imprisoned her own great-granddaughter for nearly a decade.
Then Lily grabbed my hand.
"Mom..."
"What is it?"
"Grandma wasn't alone."
The words chilled every inch of me.
"There was another man."
Mark frowned.
"What man?"
Lily pointed toward another steel door at the far end of the bunker.
"He came every Thursday."
"And today..."
May you like
She looked directly at my father.
"He still has a key."
