Chapter 6: The Man in the Cellar

Chapter 6: The Man in the Cellar

The black square in the floor seemed to breathe, exhaling a cold, foul draft that smelled of chemicals, damp earth, and something metallic that made Clarice’s saliva taste like old pennies. It was the scent of the footage, the scent of the sterile, silent dissection she had witnessed. A place of preparation.

“Clarice! What is it? What’s a hatch?” Fátima’s voice was a frantic buzz in her ear, a lifeline to a world that was rapidly dissolving into madness. “Get out of there! Your time is almost up!”

Clarice’s own survival instinct screamed in agreement. Run. Flee. Forget you ever saw this. But the quiet, rhythmic thumping she had heard, the sound of a trapped and desperate thing, had silenced that instinct. It was the first sign of imperfection in André’s flawless world, the first crack in his sterile facade. She couldn’t leave without knowing what was behind it. The rage she felt had consumed her fear, leaving behind a cold, hard resolve.

“I have to go down,” she whispered into the phone, her voice a stranger’s.

“No! Clarice, don’t you dare! It’s a trap!”

“Stay on the line,” Clarice commanded, her tone leaving no room for argument. “If you don’t hear from me in five minutes, call the police. Send them the file. Go.”

She didn’t wait for a reply. She clicked on her phone’s flashlight, the bright white beam cutting a stark, trembling path into the oppressive darkness. The light revealed a ladder. Not wood, but cold, industrial steel, bolted directly into the earthen wall of a narrow shaft. It was brutally functional, utterly out of place in the meticulously constructed home above.

Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drumbeat against the sudden, profound silence from below. The thumping had stopped. It knew she was here.

Swinging her legs into the opening, her sneakers found the first rung. It was freezing cold, the metal biting through the thin soles of her shoes. She held the phone in her mouth, the metallic taste of the case mingling with the scent of fear, and began her descent, one hand over the other on the frigid rails.

The air grew colder with each step down. The smell intensified, becoming a sickening cocktail of bleach and old blood, the loamy scent of a freshly dug grave clinging to it all. The shaft was deeper than she expected, maybe ten or twelve feet. Her feet finally touched solid ground—a smooth, cold concrete floor.

She took the phone from her mouth, its beam cutting erratically through the subterranean gloom as her hand trembled. She was in a small, windowless room. A cellar. But it wasn't for storage.

Her light swept across the space and landed first on a long, stainless-steel table in the center of the room. It gleamed unnervingly under the beam, a drain hole drilled into one end. Beside it, on a smaller metal tray, was an array of tools, laid out with surgical precision. Scalpels of varying sizes, hemostats, syringes, a small bone saw. They were spotless, glinting like a predator’s teeth. The horrifying pantomime she’d witnessed on the camera feed crashed back into her mind. This was no rehearsal stage. This was the operating theater.

She choked back a wave of nausea, forcing the beam of light to keep moving. The concrete floor around the table was stained with dark, rust-colored patches that no amount of bleach could fully erase. This place was a secret, a wound hidden beneath the clean skin of the house.

And then the light found the source of the noise.

In the far corner, slumped against the damp concrete wall, was a man.

Her breath hitched in a painful, silent gasp. He was bound to a thick water pipe, his wrists and ankles secured with the kind of heavy-duty black zip ties that felt impossible to break. He was wearing the tattered remains of a simple t-shirt and jeans, a stark contrast to the formal suits she was used to. His head was bowed, his dark hair matted with sweat and something dark that she prayed was just dirt.

He was alive, but barely. His body was a canvas of ugly, purple bruises and half-healed cuts. He had been beaten, systematically and brutally. Clarice felt a surge of horrified pity. Her monster, the cold, robotic entity from upstairs, had a prisoner. It wasn't just observing and practicing. It was actively tormenting someone. This cellar wasn’t just for her; it had been used before.

She took a hesitant step forward, the crunch of her shoe on the gritty floor seeming to echo like a gunshot.

The sound made the man stir. He flinched, a low moan escaping his chapped lips. Slowly, painfully, he lifted his head, squinting into the blinding glare of her phone’s flashlight.

Clarice’s world tilted on its axis, the cellar walls seeming to spin around her. The light illuminated his face. A face swollen and bruised, a cut splitting his lower lip, but it was a face she knew better than her own. It was the face that had haunted her sleep, the face that had watched her from the couch, the face that belonged to the cold, human machine who called himself André.

Her mind fractured, trying to reconcile two impossible truths. How? He’s supposed to be gone. He can’t be in two places at once. Is this a trick? A mannequin? A trap?

But this was no mannequin. The man recoiled from her light, his eyes—those same piercing eyes—were not empty and cold. They were wild with a raw, desperate terror she had only ever seen in cornered animals. He scrambled backward, scraping his back against the rough concrete, pulling at his bonds with a frantic, useless strength. A whimper, high-pitched and full of pain, broke from his throat. This wasn't the creature from upstairs. This was a man. A terrified, broken man.

He stared at her, his gaze darting from her face to the open hatch above, a sliver of grey afternoon light in the oppressive black. He saw her not as a rescuer, but as a new and terrible threat.

He finally spoke, and the sound shattered the last of her sanity.

It wasn't the flat, emotionless monotone she knew. This voice was raw, hoarse from screaming or dehydration. It was ragged and cracked, but it was undeniably, terrifyingly human. It trembled with fear.

“Who… who are you?” he rasped, his eyes pleading with her. “Please… Did it send you? Did it send you to finish me?”