Chapter 9 - Piper Found Anna Because Selene Could Not Completely Soundproof the Vent
The old storm room had one weakness.
Ventilation.
Selene had installed acoustic material around the door and false wall, but she could not fully seal the vent without risking suffocation.
Sound traveled faintly through it.
Especially at night.
Anna discovered that on the seventh evening.
She heard footsteps.
Small ones.
Then Piper humming somewhere in the hallway outside.
Anna began knocking.
Three times.
Pause.
Three times again.
She did not shout because she was too weak, and because the vent distorted sound.
Piper heard the first knocks.
Selene dismissed them.
“Old pipes.”
The next night, Anna tried again.
Three knocks.
Then whispered:
“Piper.”
The child recognized something familiar in the voice but could not place it.
She told Tristan the following morning.
He dismissed her.
That gave Selene confidence.
She told Piper:
“You’ve been imagining things again.”
Exactly the kind of statement she had been making for months.
But Piper returned the third night.
This time she pressed her ear against the wardrobe.
Anna whispered her name again.
Piper finally recognized her.
“Miss Anna?”
That was when Selene entered.
Saw Piper at the wardrobe.
Panicked.
And dragged her toward the hallway.
Seconds later Tristan arrived.
The entire plan collapsed because Selene had spent months teaching Tristan that Piper’s strange claims were unreliable—
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but this time he saw Selene physically trying to silence her.
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