Chapter 2 - The Room My Brother Never Left
The phone kept ringing in the darkness.
I stood frozen in the middle of my living room, staring toward the hallway where the sound was coming from.
Nobody moved.
Not Emily.
Not the boys.
Not even the little girl.
The only sound inside my estate was that old phone ringing again and again.
A phone that should not have existed.
Because I had removed every landline from the house years ago.
Slowly, I reached for my flashlight.
"Stay here," I told everyone.
Emily grabbed my arm.
"Daniel, don't."
I looked at her.
The fear in her eyes was not the fear of someone who had just seen something impossible.
It was the fear of someone who had been waiting for this moment.
"What do you know?" I asked.
She looked away.
"I don't know everything."
"Then tell me what you do know."
Before she could answer, the phone stopped ringing.
The silence became heavier.
I walked toward the hallway.
The boys held onto each other behind me.
The little girl watched without blinking.
She looked like she already knew where I was going.
That disturbed me more than anything else.
I followed the sound to the old west wing of the estate.
A part of the house I rarely entered.
A part of the house I had locked away fifteen years ago.
Because that was where Marcus spent his final days.
My brother had lived there while working on something he refused to explain.
Back then, I thought he was obsessed.
Paranoid.
I remembered the nights he stayed awake.
The documents spread across his desk.
The constant warnings.
"Daniel, if anything happens to me, don't trust anyone who tells you I left."
Those words came back to me.
I had forgotten them.
Or maybe I had forced myself to forget them.
I reached the end of the hallway.
A door stood in front of me.
The old study.
Marcus's study.
The door was supposed to be locked.
I had locked it myself after his funeral.
Nobody had entered that room in fifteen years.
But now...
A thin line of light appeared underneath it.
My heart started beating faster.
I slowly touched the handle.
It was warm.
Someone had been inside.
I opened the door.
The room looked exactly the same.
The desk.
The books.
The old leather chair.
Everything remained untouched.
Except one thing.
A phone sat in the center of the desk.
An old black telephone.
The same one that had been ringing.
I walked closer.
The receiver was off the hook.
I picked it up.
At first, there was only static.
Then a voice.
My hand tightened around the phone.
"Daniel."
I stopped breathing.
Because I knew that voice.
Nobody else sounded like him.
Nobody else could say my name that way.
"Marcus?"
The line went silent.
Then the voice returned.
"You finally found the room."
I stepped back.
"This isn't possible."
A quiet laugh came through the phone.
A sad laugh.
"You always believed evidence mattered more than people."
My eyes filled with anger.
"Where are you?"
No answer.
"Where are you, Marcus?"
The line crackled.
Then he said something that made my blood run cold.
"I was never missing."
The phone went dead.
I stood there staring at the receiver.
My entire life had been built around one fact.
Marcus Vale was dead.
I saw the grave.
I attended the funeral.
I watched the coffin disappear underground.
But now his voice was coming from a phone inside his old study.
A room nobody had entered.
A room only he knew.
I turned around.
Emily was standing at the doorway.
Her face was pale.
"You heard him," she whispered.
I looked at her.
"You knew."
She didn't answer.
"You knew he was alive."
Tears formed in her eyes.
"I knew something was wrong."
"That's not an answer."
She stepped inside slowly.
"Marcus came to me before he disappeared."
I stared at her.
"What?"
"He told me someone was trying to erase him."
I felt my anger rise.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because he made me promise."
I laughed bitterly.
"My brother disappeared and you kept a secret for fifteen years?"
Emily looked at the floor.
"He said if you knew the truth, you would go after them."
"I would have."
"Exactly."
Her words stopped me.
Because she knew me.
She knew I would have burned everything down to find him.
I looked back at the room.
"What was he hiding?"
Emily shook her head.
"I don't know."
But the way she said it told me she was lying.
Before I could push further, the little girl appeared beside her.
She was still holding the photograph.
She looked around Marcus's study.
"He used to hide things here."
I turned toward her.
"What things?"
She walked to the bookshelf.
My instincts screamed.
A child should not know this room.
A child should not know my dead brother's habits.
She reached between two books and pulled one out.
Behind it was a small metal box.
My entire body froze.
Because I knew that box.
Marcus carried it everywhere.
I had seen it fifteen years ago.
"What is that?" I whispered.
The girl handed it to me.
"He said you would open it when you were ready."
I examined the box.
No lock.
No label.
Just a single number carved into the metal.
Fifteen.
The exact number of years since Marcus disappeared.
I opened it.
Inside was a small collection of items.
A photograph.
A key.
A folded piece of paper.
And a tiny silver bracelet.
I picked up the photograph first.
It showed Marcus standing outside a building.
But someone had scratched out the face of the person beside him.
The note underneath was written in Marcus's handwriting.
"Daniel, if you are reading this, they failed to stop me."
My fingers trembled.
I opened the paper.
Only one sentence was written.
"Your brother was not the only person who disappeared that night."
I looked at Emily.
"What does this mean?"
She didn't answer.
Because suddenly, the boys started crying.
Noah pointed toward the hallway.
"Uncle Daniel..."
His voice shook.
"There was someone else in the house."
I turned around.
The hallway was empty.
"Where?"
He pointed toward the security room.
"I saw him on the camera."
I grabbed the tablet from the table and opened the security feed.
Every camera showed the same thing.
Empty hallways.
Empty rooms.
Nothing.
Then I checked the recording.
The footage from five minutes earlier appeared.
The west hallway.
My blood froze.
A person was standing outside Marcus's study.
Watching me.
The figure was wearing a dark jacket.
The face was hidden.
I paused the image.
Then I zoomed in.
A small detail appeared.
A ring on the person's hand.
A silver ring.
With the same symbol carved into it as the metal box.
My phone suddenly vibrated.
Unknown number.
I answered immediately.
Nobody spoke.
Then a voice whispered.
"Daniel..."
My body went cold.
Because the voice belonged to someone I buried fifteen years ago.
Marcus.
But before I could respond, he said one final sentence.
"Do not trust the little girl."
The call ended.
I looked up.
The little girl was no longer in the room.
Her stuffed rabbit was lying on the floor.
May you like
And from the hallway outside...
I heard her whisper my name.
Related Stories
