Chapter 8 - The Voice Beneath the Tunnel
For one frozen second, I could only stare at the screen.
My husband stood behind my daughter as calmly as if he had merely stopped by for coffee. His shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, his hair slightly disordered from the train, but his eyes were completely alert.
He had never been asleep.
He had known I was leaving.
Perhaps he had even allowed it.
“Don’t touch her,” I said.
My voice came out weaker than I intended.
He smiled.
“That depends on you.”
My daughter looked terrified but conscious. Her hands were bound in front of her with a strip of gray fabric. Behind her, the apartment lights were off except for the lamp beside the sofa.
He held the silver pendant between two fingers.
I had seen it thousands of times.
A small oval piece of metal with three narrow teeth along one side. I had always assumed it was some old-fashioned key.
Now, under the phone’s light, I noticed tiny numbers engraved around its edge.
“Where are you?” I demanded.
“You know where I am.”
“No, I don’t.”
He turned the camera slightly.
On the wall behind him hung a framed photograph of my daughter at her university graduation.
He was definitely in her apartment.
Yet something was wrong.
The window behind the curtains showed only darkness.
No city lights.
No neighboring buildings.
Nothing.
As though the apartment had been moved somewhere else.
The colorful woman leaned close to the phone.
“You don’t have the second piece.”
My husband’s smile faded.
“So you’re still alive.”
“Disappointed?”
“Not anymore.”
His eyes returned to me.
“The pendant opens only half the mechanism. The other half was hidden by your first husband.”
I looked toward the crates in the tunnel.
“Where?”
“That,” he said, “is what you’re going to tell me.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“You know more than you remember.”
The screen suddenly shook.
A deep metallic sound echoed from his side of the call.
My daughter looked over her shoulder.
“What was that?”
My husband ignored her.
Then the same sound rumbled through the tunnel beneath my feet.
I turned slowly.
From beyond the stacked crates came a dull knock.
Three times.
Pause.
Three more.
The colorful woman raised the lantern.
“There’s someone behind that wall.”
My husband heard her.
His expression changed.
Not fear.
Recognition.
“Do not open it,” he said sharply.
For the first time since I had met him, he sounded truly afraid.
The call ended.
The tunnel fell silent.
Then the knocking began again.
This time, a voice followed.
A man’s voice.
Weak.
Hoarse.
But familiar.
It said my name exactly the way only one person had ever said it before.
My first husband.
May you like
The man I had believed abandoned us twenty-two years ago.
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