Total pages in book: 40
Estimated words: 37317 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 187(@200wpm)___ 149(@250wpm)___ 124(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 37317 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 187(@200wpm)___ 149(@250wpm)___ 124(@300wpm)
Kevin’s legs moved as if they weren’t even his, and he sped up with every step. Sandro needed him. This was no test, nor was it a game. Sandro had promised him he might omit some things but wouldn’t lie, so this surely wasn’t some stupid prank. Especially not after the assault at Christmas. Sandro knew just how rattled Kevin had been and wouldn’t have lured him into the room that caused Kevin so much distress for the fun of it.
Kevin took a deep breath when he stood in the hallway and faced the white door at the end. It was only then that he realized he was moving far too slowly. Sandro wanted a pillow, he slurred, wanted Kevin to stay on the line. He must have had some kind of accident in there, needed help, and here Kevin was—thinking about his own irrational fears instead of the big picture.
He grabbed a pillow and ran over to the vase standing on the windowsill nearby. He turned it upside down, throwing out all the plastic flowers, but the underside showed no signs of a key. “I’m there, but there’s nothing—”
“There’s a hidden compartment at the bottom. You need to pry it open, baby.”
The colorful pattern of the vase obscured the tiny gap, but Kevin found it by touch, and when he pulled at it with his nail, the wooden compartment came open, and a key fell to the floor. Kevin scrambled to pick it up.
“I’ve got it. Stay calm, I’m almost there.”
Sandro chuckled without humor. “Open the door, I’ll need to tell you the code.”
Kevin wanted to ask what code, but between kicking the pillow over the floor, holding the phone in one hand and his fingers shaking so badly he could barely fit the key into the hole, he had too much going on.
“Have you opened the door yet?”
Kevin expected to find Santo on the floor with a concussion once he revealed the hidden room, but what he saw instead was… another door.
Metal, with a keypad and a small green light pulsing next to it.
“D-daddy? What is this?”
He thought back to joking that Sandro was like Bluebeard, and bile rose in his throat, because what if he was? A year had passed since Kevin moved in here. Maybe he’d outlived his usefulness, and behind this door his tomb awaited.
“Kevin? Are you there? The code. Make sure you tap it in correctly. I will explain, but you need to do as I ask you to, baby.”
Kevin bit his lip, on the verge of crying from nerves even though he didn’t yet know what was happening. “Are you hurt, Daddy?”
“Yes. The code is 44871. Bring the pillow.”
Kevin’s imagination ran rampant as he tapped in the numbers. Sandro wouldn’t have put a gaming room or a library behind such heavy steel. Whatever awaited Kevin on the other side wasn’t something he wanted to find, because monsters like Roberto came out of there. But if the house belonged to Sandro, was he a monster too?
Kevin didn’t have more time to wonder, and once the door beeped and opened in front of him with the click of several metal bolts unlocking, all he could think of was that Sandro had admitted to being hurt.
An unpleasant, tangy smell he couldn’t identify hit him right away, but his confusion rose when he faced a flight of stairs leading underground. He hadn’t known about the existence of a cellar, and his instincts told him to take a step back, but if Sandro was hurt, he would run all the way to the pits of Hell to help him.
“Sandro? You there?”
“Come down, Kevin,” Sandro said, but Kevin heard the echo of his voice from below.
He descended the concrete steps with his heart in his throat, feeling as if he were drowning in the darkness of the corridor. Any second now, a monster could reach out of the shadows and grab him, but he had his phone to guide his steps.
There were no lights above the stairs, but a faint glow came from the tunnel starting at the bottom of the steps. The walls of the corridor were smooth, with no doors, but Kevin hurried to the turn, where the illumination originated, enticed despite the revulsion caused by a strange scent mixed with what smelled like bleach. The stench was… off. As if to warn him that he shouldn’t enter, that he should go back to the door, lock it and never look back.
When Kevin turned the corner, into a corridor with several entryways, he screamed.
Sandro half sat, half-laid on the floor, and the white glow coming from a doorway across from him made the bloodstains on his clothes clear as tomato sauce on a fresh apron. Only then it truly hit Kevin that the intense scent had been blood all along.