Chapter 4 Eleven Minutes That Vanished
Chapter 4 — The Footsteps No One Heard
Daniel slowly turned away from the open front door.
His pulse thundered inside his ears.
The foyer stood empty.
Sunlight still poured through the glass entrance, casting long shadows across the marble floor.
No one.
Yet Charlie refused to calm down.
The macaw climbed higher onto the chandelier railing, feathers fully raised.
"They're inside!"
The sentence echoed through the silent mansion.
Olivia grabbed Daniel's arm.
"We need to leave."
Daniel looked at her.
"If someone is really inside my house, I'm not running."
He quietly reached into the umbrella stand beside the entrance and pulled out a heavy metal walking cane that had belonged to his late father.
It wasn't much of a weapon.
But it was better than nothing.
"Stay behind me."
Olivia obeyed without arguing.
That frightened Daniel more than anything else.
Normally she would have insisted he was overreacting.
Now she looked genuinely terrified.
Daniel stepped deeper into the mansion.
The living room...
Empty.
The dining room...
Empty.
The library...
Silent.
Nothing appeared disturbed.
Yet something felt wrong.
Very wrong.
Then he noticed it.
The grandfather clock in the hallway had stopped.
4:17.
Daniel frowned.
That antique clock had never stopped in twenty years.
His father had wound it every Sunday without fail.
After his father's death, Daniel had hired a specialist to maintain it.
He walked closer.
The pendulum hung perfectly still.
Wedged beneath it...
Was a folded piece of white paper.
Daniel carefully pulled it free.
Olivia whispered behind him,
"What is it?"
He unfolded the page.
Only one sentence had been typed.
**Stop looking for Tyler.**
Daniel looked around instinctively.
Someone had placed the note there recently.
No dust covered the paper.
No yellowing edges.
Fresh.
Very fresh.
Charlie suddenly laughed.
Not his own laugh.
A man's laugh.
Deep.
Confident.
The exact same one Daniel had heard earlier.
Then the bird spoke.
"He's in the basement."
Daniel's head snapped upward.
"What?"
Charlie repeated it.
"He's in the basement."
Olivia's breathing became uneven.
"There isn't a basement."
Daniel looked at her.
"This house doesn't have one."
She nodded immediately.
"It never did."
Daniel stared toward the hallway.
He had lived in the mansion for over a decade.
He knew every room.
Every hallway.
Every hidden storage closet.
There was no basement.
Yet Charlie kept repeating the same sentence.
"He's in the basement."
Daniel suddenly remembered something.
When his father purchased the mansion twenty-five years earlier...
The original blueprints had mentioned a wine cellar.
But during renovations...
That section had supposedly been sealed.
His father had always dismissed questions about it.
"It's just old storage."
Nothing more.
Daniel slowly looked toward the end of the hallway.
Behind an antique bookshelf.
Exactly where the original cellar entrance should have been.
A cold feeling settled in his stomach.
Charlie screamed again.
"Don't let them hear you!"
Before Daniel could take another step...
A loud metallic sound echoed from behind the bookshelf.
Someone...
Had just unlocked something...
