Chapter 2 - The Lock on the Shed
My heart plummeted straight into the floor. I froze, my boots sinking into the damp soil behind the rose garden.
“Shh, baby, please be quiet,” a woman’s voice whispered back. It was raspy, dry, and fragile, but I would have recognized it if I were deaf and dying. Elena. “Don’t cry, sweetheart. Don’t let Grandma hear you, or she won't give us the bread tomorrow.”
My hands began to shake so violently that the heavy duffel bag slipped from my fingers, thudding softly onto the grass.
I pushed through the overgrown hydrangeas toward an old, rusted corrugated iron storage shed—a structure built decades ago by the property’s previous owners to store lawnmowers and fertilizer. It was tucked behind the garage, far out of sight from the main house. A heavy steel padlock hung from a latch on the outside, securing the heavy wooden door shut.
I approached the narrow, dirt-smeared glass pane on the side of the shed and pressed my face against it.
The moonlight cast long, skeletal shadows inside the windowless box. Sitting on a pile of moldy burlap sacks on the bare concrete floor was my wife.
Elena was unrecognizable. The vibrant, rosy-cheeked woman I had kissed goodbye five years ago was gone. In her place was a ghost. Her collarbones jutted out sharply against her papery skin. Her hair was dull and matted, pulled back into a fraying knot. Her clothes—a faded oversized sweater and torn sweatpants—hung off her skeletal frame like rags on a broomstick.
Beside her sat a tiny boy. Julian. He was clutching a stale, hardened crust of bread in both of his dirty hands, nibbling at it like a starved rodent.
I felt a surge of hot, blinding rage tear through my veins, so intense it blinded my vision for a fraction of a second. I threw myself at the door, grabbing the steel latch.
“Elena!” I roared, my voice breaking.
Inside, her head snapped toward the window. Her sunken eyes went wide with sheer, unadulterated terror. She instinctively threw her body over Julian, hiding him beneath her arms as if expecting a blow.
“Don't hit us!” she cried out, her voice quivering. “We're quiet! We're being quiet!”
“Elena, it’s me! It’s Daniel!” I screamed, grabbing a heavy rusted iron crowbar resting against the woodpile nearby. I jammed the iron tip into the padlock latch and threw my entire body weight against it with a primal roar.
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CRACK.
The old wood splintered, the rusted latch gave way, and the heavy door swung open.
