The days passed very quickly and everything in the great old house of the Parker family continued as usual. Paula saw nothing weird again and, a week after the last incident, she was almost not afraid. Her days were spent in an overwhelming routine because Mrs. Parker didn't let her rest for a minute; she always had some work to give to the girl. It was an endless list of duties.

Paula sometimes used to think that her aunt was determined not to leave her free time, and lately Mrs. Parker was determined to order Paula to create a garden in the front of the house. Paula didn't agree with her because in that desert area nothing grew except spiny bushes and cactus.

"It is in vain," Paula said, "that day I planted these flowers last week and the sun burned them. It is very hot here and there is no shade."

"You didn't put enough water on them. If you don't learn to take care of a plant, then how will you take care of yourself?" answered her aunt rudely, almost without thinking.

Paula frowned. It was an unpleasant and hard-to-digest comment. Mrs. Parker always said those things as if Paula was a teenage girl, but her aunt saw her that way and unfortunately her husband too. Paula's relationship with Mr. Parker remained as unpleasant as ever. Despite the poor communication between the two, the man always made a gesture of bad mood that made her angry and sometimes left a hurtful word floating in the air. The Parkers never missed the opportunity to remind Paula that she was there on the instructions of her psychiatrist and also that they disliked her «careless habits». Paula was shocked when she heard them talk about her. She was not a careless girl! I worked all day like a donkey! She said to herself.

They did not understand her and neither her reasons, that was clear.

"Well, I'm done!" Paula said with her hands full of dirt.

She wiped them on the white apron she was wearing and removed a strand of hair that had slipped to her cheek.

"Did you see that it was easy?" scoffed the woman who was watching her while her niece worked under the intense sun.

Paula looked at her with a frown but noticing that the woman was smiling, so she also smiled. Her aunt had a strange personality that

Paula didn't quite understand.

"I repeat that this work is in vain. Plants simply refuse to grow. It's not my fault," the girl said without giving up as she walked into the shade to shelter from the sun.

The heat was intense despite the fact that it was early that morning and apparently it would be hotter than the previous days where, at lunchtime, only the bugs dared to leave.

Mrs. Parker patted her affectionately on the back.

"You have to be patient, honey. When you insist on achieving something and you do everything possible to achieve it, things end up being as you wish".

Paula smiled, had the impression that her aunt was thinking about other things. That was the first advice she had received from the woman since she lived in that house. The girl hugged her, causing her aunt's affection. When they were alone, they got along. Aunt Parker was warm, understanding, kind and caring, but everything changed when she was in front of her husband, so her character was numbed somewhere in her interior where no one could access.

"I am going to enter the house, I need to take a bath," the girl murmured and shortly after she entered the house through the back door. She walked down the long corridor that led to the lobby, but in the middle of the road she stopped in surprise. The basement door was open.

Since her uncle had discovered her trying to enter the basement, he had placed a lock on the door and since that day, he had the key in his pocket.

Paula advanced to the door with intentions of closing it but suddenly she heard noises.

"There is someone there?" she asked in whispers. She didn't dare to go down.

As he got no answer, Paula looked both ways down the corridor and because she didn't see her aunt nearby, she finally decided to go down.

Paula had only advanced a couple of steps when she saw a small silhouette of a person move between the boxes that were at the bottom of the basement that could be seen from where she was.

"What are you doing here?"

The girl was startled.

"Oh, aunt! Sorry! I..."

But the woman didn't answer so, taking her niece tightly by the arm, she almost dragged her into the corridor.

"You are not allowed to go down to the basement! When will you understand it?" she said very loudly.

"There are some noises... I think I saw somebody there!" the girl was justified. Fear invaded her face.

"There is no one else besides us in this house!" the woman said. But at that moment they heard a noise coming from the basement. The noise contradicted Mrs. Parker. Apparently some glass had broken when it crashed into the floor. Mrs. Parker was startled to hear it and immediately fell silent.

"Did you hear it? I was not lying to you," Paula said.

The woman did not have time to answer her because from the depths of the basement there was a shout, an insult and the voice of Mr. Parker.

"Laura! Are you? Come here!" the man shouted.

"The uncle? What is he doing down there?"

"Stay here and don't go down," the woman whispered before going downstairs. She couldn't hide the fear that invaded her and Paula was also scared.

The woman had come down almost half of the stairs when she decided to return to close the door in front of her niece's face.

Paula stared at the door with concern. What was that man doing in the house? Shouldn't he be working? She had already discovered Mr. Parker three times in the house when he was supposed to be working. Inside she began to grow even more the feeling that uncle and aunt.

Parker hid something from her. She sat on the stairs without knowing what to do until Mr. and Mrs. Parker returned minutes later. Mr. Parker had hurt his hand and squeezed a red-colored handkerchief. He had cut himself with something, probably a glass, and made a fuss about it.

Luckily he didn't know that his niece had intended to go down the stairs because Mrs. Parker didn't tell her and Paula was grateful for that.

That afternoon when he saw Daiana she told her about the incident.

She always went to the house one day yes and another no. She didn't go more often because the Parkers were always trying to get her to leave. They did not like her presence, they considered her an intruder and always tried to let her know that they disapproved of her friendship with her niece. Daiana was uncomfortable with that situation and Paula was embarrassed but her friendship was strong and they did not plan to separate from each other.

"What do you think they are hiding in the basement?" Daiana asked after hearing her friend's story.

At that time the two friends were walking near the grove, but they didn't go into it because Daiana didn't like it and although Paula didn't want to recognize it, she didn't like it either.

"I don't know, but my uncle's obsession with the basement is sickly," said Paula.

There was a brief silence.

"Heavens! There is your aunt again," Daiana complained as she looked towards the house.

In the window of the house was Mrs. Parker watching them closely.

"Ignore it," Paula said. "I don't understand why she always does that."

She hated that every time her friend visited them, her aunt was spying on them.

"Do you remember what you told me about those rumors?" Daiana looked at her friend.

"Yes. Why?"

"What if those rumors were true? But I mean some of them."

"What do you mean?"

"What if they had a son but they never killed him?" Paula whispered.

Her friend looked at her carefully.

"Do you think they have it locked in the basement?" Daiana asked.

"I don't know, but everything is so strange, Daiana. I'm sure I've heard a child, his laugh and his cry at night, and I'm sure that shadow I saw in the basement was not my uncle's. It was the shadow of a very small person, and why do they always lock the door? My uncle always has the keys with him and well, you know, they are always watching me."

After speaking, Paula felt relieved, as if she took a heavy weight off of her. What she had just said was an idea that had time floating in her head, but that she had never dared to say until then.

And if she was wrong? But recent events reaffirmed her hypothesis.

Daiana was thoughtful...

"What I don't understand is why they have him locked up," Paula said.

"Maybe the child has a mental illness or something like that. In the last century people used to hide their relatives with disabilities," Daiana said with a shrug.

"That's horrible, Paula was shocked."

"Well, we'll never know if we don't investigate," said Daiana.

"Are you crazy? If they discover me trying to enter the basement again..."

"We're not going down," her friend said. "All basements have a ventilation window that is usually in the garden. We just have to look for it."

"I don't know... I never saw one of those," Paula said, but the idea seemed good.

"Let's look for that window," her friend proposed.

"Wait a minute! My aunt is watching us," Paula said, taking her arm to stop her.

That was the weak point of the plan. They both looked toward the house and saw Mrs. Parker through the window.

Daiana considered her plan for a moment and then she spoke:

"If we pretend that we are going to talk under the apple tree so she will stop watching us because there are no windows in that area of ​​the house, remember?"

"That is a good idea," Paula approved. She can't spend the afternoon looking at us.

Then, the girls actually went to the big tree and after a few minutes they started looking for the window. They hadn't found anything, but when they were about to give up...

"Look!" Paula said pointing to thick bushes that were near one of the walls of the house. Almost flush with the floor was a very small window. It was so dirty that it could hardly see through it. It was not easy to get to her because the girls got hurt with the thorny bushes, but none of that would stop them, they were willing to overcome all obstacles.

"It's useless," said Daiana finally while rubbing her arm. There began to sprout a reddish line.

"I'm going to look for scissors in the shed. My uncle usually keeps them there," Paula said looking at the horizon where the sun began to hide. In an hour it would be night and then her friend and she wouldn't see anything. She had to hurry.

A short time later, Paula returned carrying with her the scissors that her uncle used to prune the apple tree. The girl immediately went to work and immediately opened a hole in the bushes. When Paula finished, she crouched down in front of the window to try to look through it. Daiana was behind her, trying to look too.

"Can you see anything?" the girl asked curiously.

"No, the window is very dirty," she whispered as he pulled a handkerchief from her pocket. She rubbed it against the window glass and cleaned the surface a little.

"Now do you see something there?"

"It's all very dark. There are boxes and... Everything is very messy there."

"I think we're wasting time in vain," Daiana complained.

"Wait! There is a door."

"What do you say? Let me see," Daiana pushed Paula lightly to get space.

"Watch out!" the girl complained.

"I see it! Oh yes, but it is locked with a padlock and chains."

"Don't tell me."

"Get over there, so that I can see too," Paula said impatiently while struggling a little with her friend.

"I wonder what is behind that door," Daiana said and then added: "What if they have him locked there?"

"Who are you talking about?" asked a voice behind the girls.

The girls jumped. It was Mrs. Parker.

After Aunt Parker discovered the girls spying through the basement window, things got worse for Paula in that house and her relationship with her aunt cracked.The woman was very angry, she yelled at Paula for an hour, threw Daiana out of the house and threatened her that if she returned, then she would call the police.

When Mrs. Parker talked to Paula, the girl couldn't help telling her about the town's rumors. She shouldn't have done it because her aunt got very angry and denied everything. She also forbade her to talk to that «malicious and spoiled girl».

When Mr. Parker arrived, the women stopped arguing, so Paula decided to go to bed early that night and without dinner. The words that her aunt had used against her as: «Evil, distrustful and Ungrateful» among others, hurt Paula's feelings. She felt ashamed for having believed that in a moment of «madness».

That night it was hard for the girl to fall asleep. She kept thinking about the horrific words that she had said to her aunt, accusing her of having a child locked up. Then, the words that her aunt had answered her, seemed right. She was sorry to have accused her in that way, even, Paula began to think that she had imagined everything: the crying of the child, the noises and those little footsteps in the middle of the night.

Paula was scared with the idea that she was going crazy and that she would soon have to return to the Santa Ana Psychiatric Hospital with her friend and roommate, Flavia who was screaming at night because spiders, that didn't exist, were climbing on her. Paula hated that place and she didn't even want to remember it. Suddenly a strange noise brought her back to reality, and then she turned on the bed and listened carefully...

Paula heard those little footsteps again, but this time they were not approaching her room, but were moving away from it. She also heard the stairs creak and although she was very scared, she got up from the bed. Would she be imagining that noise too? No! Surely that was her aunt going to the bathroom. Nothing bad was happening.

When Paula was about to fall asleep, she heard it with amazing clarity. On the lower floor of the house a door opened that let out the crying of a child muffled by the distance.

"Holy God! What was that?" she whispered terrified.

For a moment she didn't know what to do, but then she decided to go to investigate. Paula didn't put on her slippers to make no noise. From now on she had to be more careful.

She took the doorknob and turned it, but it didn't open because it was locked. Her uncle and aunt had locked her in her room, even though they shouldn't do it.