Then he heard it again.
There were three small knocks, as if someone beneath that house was begging to be found.
Shawn still could not imagine what he was about to discover beneath the home where he had grown up.
PART 2
Shawn immediately remembered the old underground cellar that his grandfather had built decades ago to store sacks of corn and jars of preserves during the rainy season.
The entrance was behind a heavy wooden cupboard in the kitchen.
When he was a child, he used to go down there with his father, but he had not thought about that place for years.
He carefully pushed the heavy piece of furniture and saw that the door was still there.
The strange thing was the lock, which was completely new.
Shawn tried to open it, but it was locked tight.
He returned to his room before Brenda woke up.
The next morning he had breakfast with her, pretending everything was normal.
“I am going to the bank in the next town,” Brenda said as she grabbed her car keys. “I will be back in a couple of hours.”
Shawn waited until he saw her car disappear down the road.
Then he began to search the house.
He remembered that his father used to hide copies of certain keys inside a metal coffee can in the shed.
He found it behind some old rust tools, and inside were four old keys.
One of them managed to open the new door mechanism.
When he pushed the wood, a current of humid air hit his face.
He turned on the flashlight on his phone and called out, “Dad?”
There was only silence.
He stepped down the stairs and called again, “Mother?”
Then he heard a weak breath.
At the back of the basement they had placed a partition of metal bars and a heavy padlock.
Behind them, on a thin mattress, were two people covered with old blankets.
Shawn dropped his phone on the ground.
