But then, I heard it.
At least, I thought I heard it.
A gasp.
I froze. And when I didn’t hear anything, I closed my eyes. Surely, my brain wasn’t conjuring shit up like that. I placed my arm over my mouth to breathe in something that wasn’t the air in this fucking house. Had the fumes of the dead gone to my head? The only sound I heard for the longest time was the raging beat of my own heart in my ears. I closed my eyes to give myself a moment to focus better. But when I didn’t hear anything else, I turned and headed back down the hallway.
Until I heard another noise.
A noise so unmistakable that it made me whirl around in my fucking spot.
A whimper.
I heard a fucking whimper.
“I hear you,” I said as I clicked on the flashlight. “Who’s there?”
I heard the softest clapping sound, like skin on skin, and the hairs on the nape of my neck stood on end.
Someone was in this fucking house.
I eased the room door open to my left and swept my flashlight inside. Nothing, though. Nothing but blood on the walls and a chair in the middle of the room. I closed the door and threw open the other one to my right. Again with the flashlight, but I didn’t see anything. Nothing except a window that was blocked out with a blackout curtain and carpet that was riddled with filth. And that sound hadn’t come from behind me.
When I swept my flashlight over the dead-end wall I stared at, I chewed on the inside of my cheek. I thought about all of the Sherlock novels I read growing up as a kid. Daydreaming my life away while growing up much too quickly. And one of the lines I’d always been obsessed with was one that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was known for:
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
I reached my hand out toward the dead-end wall and knocked on it, and sure enough, it wasn’t a solid wall. I mean, sure, walls had voids, but every void had a certain sound. Knocking on that wall felt like I was knocking on an entrance to a cavern. Almost like I was just knocking on someone’s bedroom door or some shit. The sound should’ve been more muted.
I beamed my flashlight back down to the scuff marks on the floor.
The little bits of particleboard that didn’t quite break down the way dirt did on carpet.
I pressed my hand against it to see if I could get it to pop open and swing. Like those old mirrors in bathrooms with the magnets. But that didn’t work.
“Come on, there has to be a handle somewhere,” I grumbled.
I couldn’t just punch my way through. We couldn’t leave a mark. Not a fucking trace. But I knew there was something behind this wall. Something living enough to make sound. I kept trying to tell myself that maybe it was just an animal that had burrowed into the walls from the outside. Maybe even a guard dog they kept on watch or some shit.
But if it was a dog, it would’ve barked.
If it was an animal in the wall, it would’ve scurried about.
Not gasping and whimpering about.
I ran my hand along the wall, pressing into random spaces. Until finally, a place to the left that I pressed against had a little square that popped open from the wall. I looked around to see if any of the guys were near, but all I heard was Cap yelling out about how we had ten more minutes.
I could do a lot within ten minutes.
There was a small black button behind the little square that flipped open like a hidden compartment door. I drew in a silent breath and held it before I pressed the button, and almost immediately, I was ripped back to the cockpit.
Watching a bomb drop from my plane after pressing the button for it.
A heavy ‘ka-thunk!’ followed the depression of that button. I slid my flashlight around as a door in the wall popped open. I fucking knew it. I slid my fingers in between the crack of the door and the crack of the wall it was hidden in, and now I understood why there were particleboard scuff marks on the carpet.
Fucking hell, this door was a bitch and a half to open.
“Please, don’t. I’m sorry. I swear, it won’t happen again.”
