Chapter 18 - The Open Cellar
I kept my boot planted firmly on his throat while pulling my phone from my pocket with my left hand.
The screen illuminated with a push notification from an encrypted live-stream app I had never installed. The title of the stream read: *THE CHRYSALIS NURSERY - FEED 01*.
My thumb tapped the screen with trembling terror.
The video feed snapped into focus.
It wasn't a remote location. It wasn't an airport or a safehouse.
The camera was positioned high in the corner of a stone-walled room with exposed wooden rafters and damp mortar—the hidden root cellar beneath the old tool shed at the back of our own five-acre property. A space sealed with heavy padlock doors that hadn't been opened in thirty years.
On the screen, sitting in the middle of a dirt floor illuminated by flickering battery lanterns, was Ava.
She was clutching baby Lucas tightly to her chest, rocking him in her small arms, tears streaming down her pale, terrified cheeks. Lucas was crying softly, his little fists waving in the air.
And sitting on a metal folding chair right in front of them, dressed in a spotless white linen dress that looked like a bridal gown, was Clara.
She had escaped Riverbend. The entire lockdown, the hospital transfer, the court orders—it had all been bypassed. She was here. On our land.
On the live feed, Clara slowly turned her head, looking directly into the camera lens with wide, unblinking, feverish eyes. She smiled—a terrifying, angelic mask of absolute insanity.
She reached down, picked up a baby bottle filled with a cloudy, yellow liquid, and held it out toward Lucas.
Then, she tapped a small microphone pinned to her collar.
Her voice drifted out of my phone’s speaker, soft and chillingly sweet:
*“David, my love. You have sixty seconds to walk down to the cellar alone. No police. No weapons. If I see anyone else, or if the clock runs out… I will feed our little prince his final meal. And Ava will watch him fall asleep forever.”*
On the screen, a digital countdown appeared in the bottom corner:
May you like
**00:59… 00:58… 00:57…**
Downstairs in the dark, the front door of the lake house slowly creaked open, and heavy, slow footsteps began ascending the wooden stairs toward me.
