The phone rang.
i’m going in.
Mariana turned her head, just a fraction. The living room was dark. The grandfather clock ticked. The front door was locked, chain on. The window curtains were drawn. Nothing.
Mariana’s fingers, nails bitten to the quick, hovered over the keyboard.
The chat window was gone. The browser was gone. In its place was a single, pixelated image, loading line by line from top to bottom, the way images did on a 28.8k modem. It was a photograph. Grainy. Dark. A hallway, lined with floral wallpaper that might have been pretty in 1974. At the end of the hallway, a door. Just a crack open.