Page 4 of Delilah
I set down the dirty frames and notice a few of the cobwebs to my right are gently billowing on a soft breeze. I wave my fingers near the webs and furrow my brow. A draft.
I shrug off my coat and attempt to push the bookshelf to the left, but it doesn’t budge. I cough as dirt wafts up around me. My shirt, pants, and hands are now filthy, and I swear a spider is crawling down my back.
I feel the draft again to confirm it's there. I squat to examine the lowest bookshelf to see if it’s possibly bolted to the floor, but it’s not.
Instead, I catch the flashlight reflecting off a tiny silver semi-circle in the very corner of the bottom shelf behind a few books and trinkets. I move them all to look more closely. I blink twice, dumbfounded by my discovery. I look around the shelf some more on my hands and knees. The left side of the outer shelf also has a small piece of metal and two screws.
I have a multitool on my keychain, so I pull it out of my bag and use it to loosen the screws. When I pop off the metal plate, there’s a keypad underneath.
There’s no electricity still connected to the house, so there’s no way the keypad would work, but I take after my father in the way that I’m an expert in security systems. I lie down flat on my stomach and start dismantling the small device until I can see the wires inside.
It’s nothing special, but now my curiosity is piqued.
I also dismantle the portable charger I keep in my purse and use the battery to create enough charge to give power to the keypad. I spend a few minutes going through every numerical combination I can think of. None of them work.
I take a wild guess, and for my last try, I type in Edwin’s birthday.
The small light on the keypad turns green before I hear a small ‘click’.
I gasp and crawl backward, grabbing my phone to shine the light on the bookshelf. I stand up and push the bookshelfagain, and this time, it rolls across the floor to reveal a narrow staircase.
I laugh to myself because I can’t imagine how no one found this before me. It’s been nearly two decades. This house was crawling with investigators for months.
Maybe no one ever found this becauseIwas meant to.
I swallow the anxiety creeping up my throat and take the staircase down until I reach a basement. I use my flashlight to look around the space, and I can’t see anything of any importance. A few metal tables, some old tools, and crumpled pieces of paper.
And then my eyes land on a generator in the corner. One of the ones that you have to crank up like an old lawnmower.
If there’s one thing I know about my father, it’s that he was always prepared, and I don’t even have to think twice as I crank up the machine and watch the lights come on.
I stare at the large concrete room in awe, but not shock. My father had to keep his double life hidden somewhere, after all, but to see it for myself feels…otherworldly.
There are computers and racks of weapons. A shooting range and sparring mats on the ground. There are dozens of blueprints and prototype gadgets spread across the metal tables.
At the computer, there’s a password screen. I type in my mother’s birthday and chuckle when the computer unlocks.
“You really were obsessed with her,” I whisper to the empty, cold room. The computer screen is chaotic. There are shortcuts all over the desktop, some of them double-stacked. They’re all labeled with numbers and dates, with no other indication of what kind of information they might hold.
But in the corner, all by itself, is a folder simply titled ‘Angel’.
That’s what my dad used to call my mother, so often that I’d sometimes wonder if that was her real name and Elena was just a nickname.
I never did get to ask him why he called her angel; I’ve always just assumed it was because of how simple and ethereal her beauty was. Her aura, her compassion, her love, everything about her was angelic.
I’ve struggled a lot with whether I believe in an afterlife, in heaven, but if it’s real, I know she’s there.
And the worst part about that thought is that if heaven exists, I know my father can’t exist there with her, which means that in killing himself after losing her, he probably still ended up having to live an eternity without her.
I click into the file, and sort by date, with the oldest coming first. The very first file is a video from September 6, 2019. A part of me nags me not to watch whatever is on that video, that it’s probably private, but I also can’t help myself.
“Dad, this better not be a sex tape.”
I take a deep breath and click into the video with my eyes squinted in case I need to quickly shut them. After a second I peek. There’s no sound, but the video is playing.
It looks like some sort of…body camera footage. It’s shaky as the person the camera is attached to paces around in a circle.
It’s a rainy night. Water splashes against the camera, leaving droplets on the lens that distort the video.
