Chapter 1 - The Voice Beneath the Floor
“HELP ME! HE’S GOING TO KILL ME!”
The scream came from my living room.
Officer Megan Cole stopped so suddenly that her partner nearly walked into her.
Across from them, my husband, Eric, smiled.
“That’s Winston,” he said, pointing toward our African grey parrot. “He hears things on television and repeats them.”
Officer Daniel Ruiz stared at the bird.
Winston stared back.
Then he screamed again.
“HELP ME!”
Eric laughed.
I heard every word.
But I wasn’t standing in the living room.
I was beneath them.
Locked in the basement.
Forty minutes earlier, I had been sitting on the cold concrete floor with my knees pulled against my chest.
Eric had taken my phone.
He had disconnected the old landline months earlier.
The basement windows were painted shut.
And the door above me had three locks.
A deadbolt.
A chain.
And the new steel padlock Eric had installed that morning.
He had hummed our wedding song while attaching it.
That was the detail that frightened me most.
Eleven years of marriage, and somehow I had never really known the man upstairs.
The night before, I had discovered why he was terrified of me leaving.
I had found bank statements hidden inside a locked drawer in his office.
A second mortgage against our house.
Three loans in my name.
A life insurance policy worth one million dollars.
And my signature on every document.
Except I had signed none of them.
When I confronted Eric, he didn’t deny it.
He simply stared at me.
Then he took my phone.
“Eric, give it back.”
“You’re upset.”
“You forged my signature.”
“You don’t understand what you found.”
“I understand perfectly.”
I moved toward the front door.
He grabbed my arm.
“Claire.”
“Let go of me.”
“Lower your voice.”
“Or what?”
His face changed.
Not much.
Just enough.
“Or people might start believing what I’ve been telling them.”
My stomach tightened.
“What have you been telling them?”
He smiled.
“That you’re sick again.”
I wasn’t sick.
I had struggled with anxiety after my father died four years earlier, but I had never been hospitalized.
Never been dangerous.
Never lost touch with reality.
Eric knew that.
He also knew how easily concern could be turned into doubt.
“You told Rachel that?” I whispered.
Rachel was my younger sister.
My closest family.
Eric nodded.
“She thinks you stopped taking medication.”
“I don’t take medication.”
“She doesn’t know that.”
I slapped my hand against the door handle.
Eric pulled me away.
Hours later, I woke in the basement.
My head hurt.
My shoes were gone.
The door was locked.
Eric came downstairs that morning carrying water.
“You should drink.”
I pushed the glass away.
“You kidnapped your own wife.”
“I’m protecting you.”
“From what?”
“From ruining both our lives.”
“You mean your life.”
His jaw tightened.
“I can fix the financial problems.”
“You forged my name.”
“No one will believe you.”
“I’ll tell the police.”
His voice dropped.
“No, Claire.”
He stood.
“You won’t.”
At the stairs, he stopped.
“I already told Rachel you left town.”
My blood went cold.
“You what?”
“She thinks you needed space.”
“You told my sister I disappeared?”
“I told everyone what they needed to hear.”
Then he locked the door.
I screamed until my throat burned.
Nobody answered.
Except Winston.
He had lived with us for six years.
He could imitate almost anything.
The microwave.
Our doorbell.
My laugh.
Eric coughing.
Even the sound of my keys dropping into the bowl by the front door.
Recently, he had learned our arguments.
“Give me the phone.”
“Claire, stop.”
“You forged it!”
Three weeks earlier, Winston had shouted that final sentence during breakfast.
Eric dropped his coffee cup.
I laughed.
Eric didn’t.
He stared at Winston for a long time.
I should have understood then.
Now I heard footsteps moving above me.
Two strangers.
One man.
One woman.
Police.
I crawled beneath the air vent.
“HELP!”
My voice barely carried.
I slammed my palms against a heating pipe.
“PLEASE!”
Upstairs, Eric was talking fast.
“My wife isn’t here.”
Officer Ruiz asked, “Where is she?”
“We’re separated.”
Officer Cole said, “What’s your wife’s name?”
“Claire.”
“And where is Claire now?”
“I don’t know.”
I hit the pipe.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
Everything upstairs went silent.
“What was that?” Ruiz asked.
“Furnace,” Eric replied.
Then Winston spoke.
In Eric’s voice.
“Claire, stop.”
Silence.
Eric hissed, “Winston, quiet.”
The bird clicked his beak.
Then he made three electronic sounds.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
“Sounds like a phone keypad,” Ruiz said.
Winston answered in my voice.
“Nine. One. One.”
My eyes filled with tears.
The previous night, while Eric slept, I had found an old cordless handset beneath a workbench.
The line had been dead for years.
Still, desperation made me try.
I pressed 911.
Nothing happened.
I whispered anyway.
“Please help me.”
“I’m in the basement.”
“My husband locked me in.”
Minutes later, Eric appeared.
He ripped the handset from my hands and smashed it against the wall.
I assumed my attempt had failed.
Now Winston repeated me.
“Please help me.”
Officer Cole’s voice changed.
“Mr. Bennett, our dispatcher received a call from this address.”
“That’s impossible.”
“She heard a woman.”
“There is no woman here.”
Winston suddenly screamed.
“I’M IN THE BASEMENT!”
Officer Ruiz started toward the hallway.
Eric blocked him.
“There’s nothing downstairs.”
Ruiz stopped.
“I never said we were going downstairs.”
Eric went pale.
Officer Cole reached the basement entrance.
“What the hell?”
The chain rattled.
“You padlock your basement from the outside?”
“We had a break-in.”
“From inside your basement?”
Eric didn’t answer.
I crawled toward the stairs.
“Please!”
Winston began flapping wildly.
Then he shouted one word.
“Megan!”
Officer Cole went silent.
Ruiz whispered, “Did you tell him your name?”
“No.”
Neither had Eric.
I knew because I had heard everything.
Winston leaned toward the basement hallway.
“Megan… don’t let him get the key.”
My skin prickled.
Eric backed toward the kitchen.
Winston screamed.
“KEY!”
Eric ran.
Furniture crashed upstairs.
Officer Ruiz shouted, “STOP!”
Then Eric yelled something that made my blood freeze.
“You don’t understand! She can’t come out!”
Officer Cole rushed to the basement door.
“Claire?”
“Yes!”
My voice cracked.
“Oh God, yes!”
“I’m Officer Cole. We’re getting you out.”
For the first time in two days, I started believing I might survive.
Then I heard another sound.
Three knocks.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
They weren’t coming from upstairs.
They were behind me.
I turned toward the shelves covering the basement’s far wall.
Eric had forbidden me from touching them.
Behind them was newer drywall.
Something scratched from the other side.
Officer Cole heard it.
“Claire, is someone else down there?”
I couldn’t answer.
A woman whispered behind the wall.
“Claire?”
I crawled backward.
I knew that voice.
I had heard it in old family videos Eric kept hidden in his study.
It belonged to the woman he said had abandoned him eight years before we met.
His first wife.
Laura.
May you like
Then she whispered something even more terrifying.
“Whatever you do, don’t let Eric know I’m still alive.”
