Chapter 3 - The Midnight Tap
The nursery was dead quiet by 11:30 PM, save for the violent drumming of sleet against the heavy casement windows. Noah was asleep, curled on his side in the massive four-poster bed.
Every muscle in my ribcage throbbed with a persistent, fiery ache, but I didn't dare move. On the nightstand, the antique silver teacup sat cold and untouched.
Then, the grandfather clock in the lower hall struck twelve.
Dong. Dong. Dong.
The heavy bronze chimes faded into the shadows.
Then, it began.
Clink. Clink. Clink-clink-clink.
It wasn't the wind. It was metallic, deliberate, and rhythmic. It was coming from inside the wall behind Noah’s carved headboard—specifically, from the heavy cast-iron radiator pipes that ran through the ceiling into the sealed north wing.
Three taps. A pause. Three taps.
Morse code.
I knelt by the baseboard, pulled an old brass bobby pin from my hair, and tapped the iron pipe three times. Clink. Clink. Clink.
I held my breath. Five seconds of suffocating silence passed.
Then, from forty feet away through the solid masonry, the answer came back. Clink-clink. Clink. Clink-clink-clink. Two taps. One tap. Three taps.
In the numerical cipher of the old Boston docks, that sequence meant only one thing: Room 213. Or in this house: Door Two. Third Lock.
My heart hammered. I reached into the pocket of my cardigan, pulling out a small steel keycard I had lifted from Dominic’s suit jacket earlier that evening—a master bypass token stamped with the syndicate’s black falcon crest.
I slipped out of the nursery, closing the oak door quietly.
The second-floor corridor was an endless tunnel of shadow. At the end of the hall stood the double oak doors of the north wing, bound in heavy black iron straps and secured by an electronic biometric scanner and three mechanical deadbolts.
I stepped up to the doors. The air here was ten degrees colder, smelling of mold, dried copper, and industrial bleach.
I held the master keycard to the scanner. The LED flashed green. Click. Whirrr. Thump. The deadbolts retracted.
May you like
I pushed the heavy door open three inches. A wave of freezing, stale air washed over my face. And from the darkness beyond came a sound that made my soul freeze:
A woman’s voice, raspy and trembling, humming a mournful lullaby.
