Chapter 63: The First Witness

 

The warning came through the stone again.

“Keep him back. Please.”

Rhys moved toward the iron ring. Brandt caught his sleeve.

“No one touches that hatch until the fire officer clears it.”

“Someone's trapped down there,” Rhys said.

“And opening it into hot fumes could kill him.”

Elara crouched behind the barrier. The man knew her name and knew Rhys was there. Yet the stone distorted his voice beyond recognition.

“Who are you?” she called.

A scraping sound answered.

Then, “Ask the boy whether he remembers the blue room.”

Rhys's face changed.

Elara stood. “What blue room?”

He shook his head, his eyes fixed on the floor.

“I don't know.”

The fire officer approached with a gas meter. “The temperature below is rising. We need another entrance before opening this.”

“There's a service corridor,” Theo said suddenly.

Everyone turned.

“You told me there was no lower room,” Rhys said.

“I said Grandfather never let me in. I found a ventilation plan when the trust took over maintenance.” Theo swallowed. “It showed access from the old potting shed.”

Brandt looked toward the gardens. “Show us.”

 

The potting shed stood behind a wall of climbing roses. Its door was chained, and the windows had been painted black.

Brandt's officers secured the grounds while firefighters cut the chain. Elara stayed outside with Rhys, resisting the urge to follow.

Then the radio crackled.

“Passage found. Locked door at the far end. There's a ventilation fan running and heavy heat on the other side.”

An officer asked for the keys recovered from Odette's chest.

“They're still in evidence,” Brandt said. “We'll need a documented transfer.”

“We haven't got time,” a firefighter replied. “We can breach it.”

Before Brandt answered, a new voice came over the radio.

“Don't use a torch. There are volatile liquids inside.”

The man below had reached the crew.

Elara looked at Rhys. “Whoever he is, he knows what's stored there.”

Rhys took her hand.

“Maybe he wants us to think that.”

 

The crew opened the passage with mechanical tools, keeping the greenhouse hatch closed. An extractor drew air toward the service entrance while firefighters checked the atmosphere.

Elara waited through every report.

At last two firefighters emerged carrying a man between them.

He was thin and gray-haired, his trousers scorched at one knee. A cloth mask covered his mouth. He struggled when he saw Rhys.

“No,” he rasped. “Not him.”

The paramedic guided him onto a stretcher.

Brandt stepped closer. “Sir, your name?”

The man pulled off his mask.

Rhys recoiled.

“Dr. Vale.”

Elara knew the name from twenty-one years of prescriptions. She had imagined a polished physician with an expensive office. This man looked as though he had slept in his clothes for days.

“You disappeared,” Rhys said.

Vale stared at him.

“I was trying to get away.”

“From whom?”

“From the people who paid me.”

Brandt raised a hand. “He needs medical attention before any interview.”

Vale seized Elara's wrist.

“Your mother kept the original records,” he whispered. “I went down to retrieve them before Augustin's men destroyed the room.”

“Where are they?”

Vale glanced at the greenhouse.

“Behind the cold wall. The cabinet has her iris.”

“Then why warn us not to open the hatch?” Elara asked.

His gaze slid to Rhys.

“Because he remembers more than he realizes.”

Rhys stepped closer.

“What do I remember?”

Vale squeezed his eyes shut.

“The blue room wasn't a hospital room. It was a testing chamber. They made you identify scents through the door.”

Elara stared at him. A child's memory, reduced to an experiment.

“Who was on the other side?”

Vale's lips moved, but the paramedic intervened. His pulse was racing; he needed oxygen and transport.

As they lifted him, Vale caught Elara's sleeve again.

“There were recordings,” he said. “Lucille kept them. Find the tape labeled First Witness.”

Elara nodded.

Vale's eyes filled with terror.

“And when you hear it, don't believe the voice that says it's hers.”

 

An investigator called Brandt to the shed entrance.

They had found the cold wall.

Behind it stood a metal cabinet, scorched but intact. A silver iris shone on its door.

Inside were six cassette tapes in padded compartments.

Five were numbered.

The sixth bore a handwritten label.

Elara leaned over Brandt's photograph.

First Witness.

Below it, in her mother's precise script, was a date: October 2001.

The month Lucille died.

Then Brandt showed them the reverse.

On it, in fresh ink, someone had written:

RHYS KNOWS WHO LOCKED THE DOOR. DON'T LET HIM LISTEN ALONE.

 

Word count: 757 words (excluding chapter title).