Chapter 6 - The Sound of Screams
Back in the ICU waiting area, Hannah sat curled on a vinyl chair, her hands clutching a worn leather notebook. Daniel knelt before her, his soaked tuxedo trousers pressing into the linoleum, his eyes searching the girl’s face with a desperation bordering on madness.
"Hannah, please," Daniel pleaded, his voice breaking. "Tell me everything. How long? How long was my daughter locked in that dark?"
Hannah opened the notebook. Inside were hundreds of handwritten dates, scribbled in frantic, uneven blue ink.
"I started writing them down three months after the wedding," Hannah whispered, tears spilling over her bruised cheeks. "Every time you boarded a plane. Look, Mr. Daniel. September 14th: *Clara locked in Blue Room from 6:00 PM to 8:00 AM. No water.* October 3rd: *Mrs. Vale slapped Clara across the mouth because she asked for her real mommy’s photo. Locked in Blue Room until dawn.*"
Daniel felt a white-hot agony tear through his chest. "Why that room? Why the Blue Room?"
"Because of the soundproofing," Hannah wept. "Your mother spent half a million dollars lining those walls with industrial acoustic felt and triple-pane mahogany to absorb the vibrations of her Steinway. When the door is closed, you can stand three inches outside the jamb and you won't hear a gunshot fired inside."
"The screams," Daniel choked out. "She knew no one could hear her."
"She didn't just scream, sir," Hannah said, reaching into her apron pocket and pulling out a tiny, silver digital voice recorder—the kind reporters used. "Two weeks ago, when Mrs. Vale went to the salon, I took a risk. I slipped this under the baseboard near Clara’s cot in that room. I wanted evidence for the police. But when I heard what was on it... I was too terrified of Evelyn to go to the precinct. I thought she would kill my brother."
Daniel took the small metal recorder with trembling hands. His thumb hovered over the play button.
"Don't, Daniel," Vance warned gently, stepping out of the shadows. "Let the crime lab process it."
"No," Daniel growled, his voice a guttural, shattered sound. "I need to hear what my blindness cost my child."
He pressed play.
The speaker hissed with static for three seconds, followed by the heavy, vault-like *thud* of a mahogany door slamming shut and the mechanical click of an exterior deadbolt sliding home. Then came the darkness.
*“Mommy?”* Clara’s tiny, terrified voice echoed from the tiny speaker. *“Mommy, it’s dark. Please turn on the light. The monsters are in the walls.”*
A pause. Then the sound of small fists beating against wood.
*“Daddy? Daddy, where are you? Daddy, please come home! I’ll be good! I won't spill the juice! Daddy, it’s so cold!”*
The weeping that followed was not the tantrum of a spoiled child; it was the desolate, broken wail of an abandoned soul losing its grip on safety. It went on for minutes, dissolving into ragged, gasping coughs, until Clara’s voice dropped into a rhythmic, traumatized chant:
*“Daddy is in the sky. Daddy forgot Clara. Daddy forgot Clara.”*
Daniel dropped the recorder onto the floor. He doubled over, clutching his stomach as if he had been shot through the gut with heavy caliber lead. A dry, agonizing sob ripped from his throat. He had crossed oceans to conquer shipping lanes, he had sat with prime ministers and corporate titans, while five miles away, his four-year-old daughter was curled on a freezing floor in the pitch black, learning to believe that her father had abandoned her to the monsters.
"She didn't forget you, Daniel," Vance whispered, his hand clamping down on Daniel’s shaking shoulder. "And she’s not dead. But you need to stay sharp. We just got a security alert from the basement freight elevator."
Daniel’s head snapped up. The grief in his eyes was instantly incinerated by an ancient, predatory rage.
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"She’s here," Daniel said.
***
