Chapter 8: The Musty Abyss
As I stood there, chest heaving, my hands shaking with an anger I had never felt before, the room grew strangely quiet. The nebulizer machine finished its cycle, sputtering into silence. Lily lay in her crib, whimpering softly, her breath coming in rapid, shallow puffs.
And then, the air shifted.
A draft was blowing out of the hole Daisy had made. It wasn't the clean, air-conditioned air of our home. It was an offensive, ancient, rotting draft that carried a heavy, musty stench so putrid that it hit the back of my throat like a physical blow. I involuntarily grimaced, a sudden wave of nausea forcing me to cover my mouth with the collar of my shirt.
It smelled like a flooded basement that had been sealed shut for a century. It smelled like decay.
Daisy stopped barking. She sat down, her raw paws tucked beneath her body, watching me with a profound, steady intelligence that made the hair on my arms stand up. She wasn't crazy. She had never been crazy.
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Slowly, the anger drained from my body, replaced by a cold, creeping sense of dread. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone. My fingers trembled violently as I swiped open the control panel and turned on the high-powered LED flashlight.
I dropped to my knees in the plaster dust, ignoring the stains on my clothes. I leaned forward, bringing my face within inches of the jagged, broken edges of the drywall, and shined the bright beam of light directly into the dark void behind my daughter's crib.
