Chapter 4 - The Locked Room at the End of the Hall
Nathaniel didn't speak until Goldie was asleep.
Even then, he checked her bedroom window twice, locked the hallway door, and pulled a chair beneath the handle.
I waited downstairs.
At one in the morning, he entered the kitchen carrying a wooden box.
He set it on the table.
For a long moment, neither of us moved.
Then he said, "My sister didn't die in the woods."
I looked at him.
"Where is she?"
"I don't know."
"Then why did you tell everyone she died?"
"Because seventeen years ago, someone convinced me that was the only way to keep her alive."
He opened the box.
Inside were newspaper clippings, old photographs, a silver necklace, and several folded hospital documents.
One photograph showed Evelyn at nine.
Another showed her at sixteen.
Her hair was even longer.
"She survived?" I whispered.
Nathaniel nodded.
"Someone took her. I spent seven years looking. Then, one night, she came home."
"What happened?"
"She was sixteen. She was terrified. She wouldn't tell me where she'd been."
He rubbed his face.
"She kept saying they were waiting for her birthday."
"Who?"
"That's what I wanted to know."
He pulled out a photograph of a woman standing beside a hospital bed.
"Dr. Miriam Vale."
"The geneticist?"
"She found Evelyn before I did. Or Evelyn found her. I never learned which."
He looked toward the ceiling.
"Evelyn was sick when she came back. Not physically, exactly. She had terrible nightmares. She couldn't stand anyone touching her hair."
"Why?"
Nathaniel's jaw tightened.
"Because they had cut it."
I remembered the article about the braid found inside the abandoned car.
"The police recovered her hair."
"Not all of it."
He turned over another photograph.
Evelyn stood in front of a mirror.
Her hair reached her shoulders.
Her expression was empty.
"She told me that every time they cut it, they took something from her."
"What does that mean?"
"I thought it was trauma."
He swallowed.
"Now I'm not sure."
I leaned forward.
"Nathaniel, where is Goldie's mother?"
His eyes filled.
"Evelyn."
For several seconds, I couldn't breathe.
"Your sister?"
He nodded.
"Goldie is my niece."
I looked toward the stairs.
All those years.
Every parent calling him Goldie's father.
Every teacher assuming he was raising his own daughter.
He had never corrected them.
"Does she know?"
"She knows I'm her father in every way that matters."
"But does she know you're her uncle?"
"Not yet."
"Why?"
"Because Evelyn made me promise."
He removed a folded letter from the box.
The paper was yellowed and worn.
Across the top was written:
For Nathaniel, if I cannot come back.
I watched him unfold it.
He read aloud.
"If they find me, do not tell Goldie who I was. Do not let them know she exists. Keep her hair uncut until she is seventeen. After that, tell her everything."
I frowned.
"Why seventeen?"
Nathaniel shook his head.
"I don't know."
"Did Evelyn explain?"
"She tried."
He stopped.
"She said the women in the white rooms believed something changed at seventeen."
"What women?"
"The ones who took her."
A cold sensation moved through me.
"What happened to Evelyn?"
Nathaniel closed the letter.
"She disappeared again."
"When?"
"Nine years ago."
"Before Goldie was born?"
"Three weeks after."
I stared at him.
"You raised Goldie from infancy?"
"Yes."
"And nobody investigated Evelyn's disappearance?"
"They did. Briefly."
"What did they find?"
"Nothing."
He looked exhausted.
"Then someone sent me a photograph of Goldie sleeping in her crib."
I felt my stomach twist.
"Someone had entered your house?"
"Yes."
"What did the photograph say?"
Nathaniel reached into the box.
He handed me a small piece of paper.
There were only five words.
KEEP THE PROMISE. KEEP HER ALIVE.
I read them twice.
"Did you go to the police?"
"Of course."
"What happened?"
"The detective assigned to the case died in a car accident three days later."
Silence settled over the kitchen.
Outside, the wind moved through the trees.
I looked at Nathaniel.
"You're telling me someone has been threatening your family for seventeen years?"
He nodded.
"And you never told anyone?"
"I tried."
His voice broke.
"Every time I tried, someone got hurt."
He stood and walked toward the hallway.
"There's something else."
I followed him upstairs.
At the end of the corridor stood a narrow wooden door.
Three locks secured it.
Nathaniel removed a key from beneath his shirt.
He opened the first lock.
Then the second.
Then the third.
The room beyond was small.
Dust floated in the flashlight beam.
A single bed stood beneath the window.
There was a dresser, a wooden chair, and a mirror covered with a white sheet.
On the walls hung dozens of photographs.
All of Evelyn.
At different ages.
Nine.
Ten.
Eleven.
Twelve.
Thirteen.
Some showed her smiling.
Others showed her staring blankly at the camera.
But every photograph shared one detail.
Her hair.
It had been measured.
Carefully.
With a ruler positioned beside each braid.
I stepped closer.
Dates were written beneath the photographs.
Measurements.
Medical notes.
Then I noticed something strange.
The handwriting wasn't Nathaniel's.
It was precise, clinical.
I looked at the final photograph.
Evelyn at sixteen.
Her hair was braided tightly down her back.
Beside her stood Dr. Miriam Vale.
The doctor's face had been scratched out.
Beneath the photograph was a handwritten sentence.
SUBJECT E-17: FINAL COLLECTION SCHEDULED.
I turned toward Nathaniel.
"What does collection mean?"
He didn't answer.
Then something creaked behind us.
We both turned.
Goldie stood in the doorway.
She was barefoot.
Her hair hung loose around her shoulders and down the hallway floor.
She stared at the photographs.
Then she pointed toward the covered mirror.
"Daddy?"
Nathaniel went pale.
"Goldie, go back to bed."
She shook her head.
"That's the mirror from my dream."
Before he could stop her, she walked across the room.
She pulled away the sheet.
The glass was cracked.
At the bottom, carved into the wooden frame, were three words.
SHE IS NEXT.
Goldie touched the writing.
Then she whispered, "Mommy told me not to look behind it."
Nathaniel froze.
"Behind what?"
"The mirror."
I helped him lift it from the wall.
Behind it was a narrow opening.
Inside lay a cassette tape, a hospital bracelet, and a sealed envelope.
The envelope bore Nathaniel's name.
He opened it.
May you like
Inside was a single sentence.
If Goldie begins remembering, the treatment has already failed.
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