Chapter 4

4: 4

The officer had stopped believing me too.

"Sweetheart, whatever the trouble is, you talk it out. You don't file a false report over it."

"That's a crime, you understand? You're old enough to go to jail for it."

I opened my mouth, then said nothing.

Say more, and no one would believe me anyway.

It would only earn me a worse beating.

I lowered my head, tears filling my eyes.

Captain Lambert waved a hand, and the group left our apartment.

The elevator doors slid shut.

Tenth floor, ninth floor... first floor.

The moment my stepfather saw it stop on the ground floor, he slammed the front door shut.

His face twisted, and he came at me.

"So now you steal your mom's phone and call the cops? Grown some nerve, huh? You want to send me away, is that it?"

His fist crashed into my face.

"I'll teach you to call the cops!"

Blood flooded my mouth. My teeth had gone loose.

I scrambled and crawled under the bed.

"I was wrong, Uncle, please don't hit me, I was wrong!"

He stood at the edge of the bed, jabbing the mop hard at my body, cursing without pause.

I lay flat under the bed, not daring to move an inch.

Then I caught sight of a small pool of liquid.

In the light from the ceiling, I could just make out that it was dark red.

Blood. There was blood here too.

If they'd really only killed a chicken, how could blood have gotten under the bed in my bedroom?

My sister must have hidden here.

Either they'd beaten her badly, or... she was already dead.

But even if she was dead, a body isn't so easy to get rid of.

Where had they hidden her?

Then I remembered. We had a big chest freezer, and a few days ago Mom had gotten someone to move it down to the basement.

When I asked why the freezer had to go to the basement, she brushed me off and said it was broken.

Could it be they'd been planning this all along...

I don't know how long it went on, but at last my stepfather wore himself out from hitting me and from cursing.

He threw the mop down hard against the floor, dragged my mom back into their bedroom, and locked the door from the inside.

I stayed flat under the bed, not daring to move, until their snoring started.

My whole mind was fixed on one thing. Call the police.

But after that scene earlier, the police wouldn't believe me again.

I had to find my sister first, and get proof.

Barefoot, I made my way step by step toward the front door.

The basement key hung on the hook in the entryway.

I lifted it down carefully, opened the door, and slipped out.

I felt my way through the dark to the basement, fumbling the key at the lock a few times before it finally slid into the hole.

The lock turned, and I stepped inside and shut the door.

By the faint moonlight coming through the small basement window, I saw that "broken" chest freezer sitting there.

Its motor was still running, humming a low, heavy drone.

The freezer wasn't broken at all, yet my mom had gone to all that trouble to move it down here...

Dread crept over me, wave after wave.

My hands shaking, I gripped the freezer lid and heaved it up with everything I had.

I leaned in to look inside, but it was pitch black, and I couldn't see a thing.

I reached in to feel around, and the second my fingertips touched the cold air of the freezer, the sound of a key turning came from behind me.

I whipped around.

The door was being pushed open.