The Man Beneath The House

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Man Beneath the House

ELENA

“Elena.”

The voice came from beneath the trapdoor. “Sweetheart, open the door.”

I couldn’t breathe. The other Elena stood beside the wooden table, watching the trapdoor with an expression that made my stomach twist. She wasn’t afraid of what was underneath it. She was afraid of what would happen if it got out.

“Who is that?” I whispered.

She shook her head. “Don’t answer him.”

The knocking stopped. For several seconds, the shed was silent except for the uneven rhythm of my breathing. Then the man beneath the floor laughed, a warm, familiar sound that sent an inexplicable ache through my chest.

“You’ve grown so much,” he said.

My knees nearly gave way. I knew that voice. I didn’t know how I knew it, or where I had heard it before, but something deep inside me recognized the warmth in his tone. It recognized the way he stretched the final syllable of my name, as though he had all the time in the world to say it.

“Who are you?” I called, hating how small my voice sounded.

The other Elena seized my wrist. “Don’t.”

But the voice beneath us had already changed.

“Don’t you recognize your own father, sweetheart?”

The world stopped.

My father had been dead for twenty years. At least, that was what I had been told. I remembered the funeral, or thought I did. Black clothes. White flowers. A coffin lowered into the earth while a woman held my shoulders and told me not to look. I had been too young to understand death, but old enough to remember the terrible emptiness that followed it.

Except I couldn’t remember his face.

Not clearly. Every time I tried to picture him, his features blurred, as though someone had taken an eraser to my memories.

I pressed a hand against my mouth.

“My father is dead.”

A sigh came from beneath the floor. “That’s what Adrian wanted you to believe.”

The other Elena stepped between me and the trapdoor. “He’s lying to you.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he lies to everyone.”

The man laughed again. “And you would know, wouldn’t you?”

Her face drained of color.

I looked between them. “What is going on? Why does he know me? Why do you look like me? And why does everyone in this house keep talking as though I died?”

Neither answered.

Something inside me snapped.

“I’m done with this!” I shouted. “I’m done with the secrets, the lies, the cryptic warnings. One of you is going to tell me the truth, or I swear I’ll tear this house apart myself.”

The other Elena stared at me for a long moment. Then she glanced at the trapdoor.

“Your father didn’t die in an accident,” she said quietly. “He was murdered.”

The words struck me with such force that I forgot how to breathe.

“By whom?”

Her eyes met mine.

“Adrian.”

I shook my head immediately. “No.”

“I saw him do it.”

“No.”

“I watched him stand over your father with blood on his hands. I heard your father beg him to spare you.”

“Stop it!”

“He didn’t kill your father because he hated him, Elena. He killed him because your father had discovered what we were.”

I stared at her. “What we were?”

She swallowed.

“Experiments.”

The word seemed to suck all the air from the room.

I waited for her to laugh, to tell me she was joking, to offer some explanation that would make the world feel familiar again. She did none of those things.

Instead, she reached into the pocket of her dress and withdrew a small photograph.

It was old, its edges yellowed and worn. Five children stood in front of a building I didn’t recognize. They were dressed in identical white clothes, their hands folded neatly in front of them. Behind them stood three adults, all wearing the same silver badge.

I recognized one of the children immediately.

Me.

I looked no older than six.

Beside me stood a girl with my face.

The same eyes. The same mouth. The same scar beneath the left eye.

I stared at the photograph until the image blurred.

“That’s impossible.”

“No,” the other Elena whispered. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

I turned the photograph over. Someone had written five names on the back.

ELENA. ELENA. MARA. ELIAS. NOAH.

My fingers went numb.

“Who are Mara, Elias, and Noah?”

The other Elena looked away.

“They didn’t survive.”

A faint metallic click sounded beneath the floor.

We both turned toward the trapdoor.

The handle had begun to move.

Slowly, it lifted.

The other Elena grabbed my arm and dragged me toward the far wall. “We have to go.”

“Wait! What about my father?”

“That’s not your father anymore.”

The trapdoor opened an inch.

A long, pale finger curled around its edge.

I screamed.

The other Elena shoved me behind the table as the trapdoor swung upward with a violent crash. A man emerged from the darkness beneath us, his shoulders hunched, his clothes filthy and torn. His hair hung across his face, and his skin was so pale that he seemed almost translucent in the weak light.

But it was his eyes that made me freeze.

They were mine.

The same strange shade, the same dark ring around the iris. He lifted his head and looked directly at me, and for one impossible moment, I saw the face of the man I had spent my entire life trying to remember.

“Daddy?” I whispered.

His expression broke.

“Oh, my little girl.”

He took a step toward me.

The other Elena raised a rusted metal rod between them. “Don’t come any closer.”

He stopped.

For the first time, his gaze shifted to her. Something dark and terrible passed across his face.

“You,” he said.

She tightened her grip on the rod.

“You should have stayed buried.”

He smiled.

“And you should have stayed dead.”

Then he lunged.

I barely saw him move. One moment he stood beside the trapdoor; the next, he had seized the other Elena by the throat and slammed her against the wall. The metal rod clattered to the floor.

“Stop!” I screamed.

He didn’t look at me.

“You’ve caused enough trouble,” he hissed at her. “You were supposed to keep her asleep.”

She clawed at his wrist, struggling for breath.

I grabbed the rod and struck him across the back.

He released her with a roar and turned toward me.

For a second, we simply stared at each other.

Then he smiled.

It was the same smile I had seen in the photograph.

The same smile I had imagined on the father I could barely remember.

“You always were a brave girl,” he said.

I backed away, holding the rod with both hands.

“Don’t come near me.”

His smile faded.

“Adrian has poisoned your mind against me.”

“Adrian said you were dead.”

“Adrian has told you many things.”

He took another step.

“Did he tell you that he was the one who put you in the ground?”

My hands began to shake.

“What?”

“Did he tell you that you were dead before he brought you back?”

The rod slipped slightly in my grip.

“No.”

My father—or whatever wore my father’s face—tilted his head.

“Then perhaps you should ask him what happened on the night of your wedding.”

A crash sounded behind us.

The shed door flew open.

Adrian stood in the doorway, his face pale, a pistol raised in his trembling hand.

“Get away from her,” he ordered.

My father turned slowly.

For the first time since emerging from beneath the floor, he looked afraid.

Not of the gun.

Of Adrian.

“Still playing the hero?” he asked.

Adrian’s grip tightened around the weapon. “I said, get away from her.”

My father laughed softly.

“You haven’t told her, have you?”

“Be quiet.”

“You haven’t told her that the woman she married you as was never the woman standing in front of you now.”

My heart slammed against my ribs.

I looked at Adrian.

“What is he talking about?”

Adrian didn’t answer.

My father smiled at me.

“Ask him which Elena he carried out of the fire.”

The pistol trembled.

And for the first time, I saw Adrian cry.

“Don’t listen to him,” he whispered.

But I was already remembering.

Flames licking the ceiling. Smoke filling my lungs. Someone dragging me across the floor while another woman screamed my name.

Two identical faces.

Two wedding rings.

And a voice whispering in my ear just before everything went dark.

If you wake up, don’t let him know which one you are.

I dropped the metal rod.

Adrian stared at me in horror.

“Elena?”

I looked down at my left hand.

The silver ring was still there.

But beneath it, hidden against my skin, was a second ring.

Identical to the first.

I slowly raised my eyes to Adrian.

“Which one of us did you marry?”

His lips parted.

Before he could answer, the man who claimed to be my father reached into his torn coat and pulled out a bloodstained envelope.

“Neither,” he said.

He threw it at my feet.

“Because your real husband is still alive.”

The envelope landed open.

Inside was a photograph of a man standing beside a hospital bed.

I recognized the face immediately.

It was Adrian.

Younger. Unscarred. Smiling.

And lying in the hospital bed, holding his hand, was a woman wearing my face.

On the back of the photograph were six words.

ELENA DIED BEFORE ADRIAN EVER MET HER.