Chapter 5 - What Was Buried Beneath
The cellar air was thick with the scent of damp earth, limestone, and ancient rot. Leo tumbled down the final three wooden steps, landing hard on the packed dirt floor. Above him, the cellar door hung wide open, framing the pitch-black kitchen. He could hear the creature’s ragged, wet breathing hovering right at the top of the stairwell, hesitating at the threshold.
Why wasn't it coming down?
Leo scrambled backward on his elbows and knees until his back hit the cold stone foundation. The darkness was absolute, save for a thin sliver of light falling through a ground-level cellar grate on the opposite wall. The moon was high now, casting long, barred shadows across the floor.
He remembered his mother's dying command: Unlock the iron trunk beneath the hearth.
Squinting through the gloom, Leo searched the cellar. At the far end stood the massive stone support structure of the house's central fireplace—the underground hearth. It was built of rough, mossy fieldstones, looking more like an altar than home foundation. Half-buried in the dirt at the foot of the stonework was a heavy, rusted chest bound with thick bands of blackened iron.
Leo crawled toward it, keeping his eyes glued to the open doorway above. The dead man stood at the top of the stairs. In the gloom, only his silhouette was visible: impossibly tall, unnaturally still, his head tilted at that horrific, broken angle. The creature raised a hand and touched the frame of the door. A loud, hissing sizzle filled the room, followed by the smell of burning meat. The creature recoiled with a muted snarl.
The threshold, Leo realized. Eleanor had carved or laid something along the cellar doorframe. It couldn't come down—at least, not yet.
Reaching the trunk, Leo clawed away the loose dirt covering the lock. It wasn't a standard keyhole. The face of the lock was a circular bronze plate etched with the exact same symbol branded onto the dead man's neck: three interlocking triangles.
Leo looked down at the pocket watch. The open casing revealed the iron key, but the circular lid of the watch bore the identical triangular pattern. With shaking hands, he aligned the watch's casing against the bronze plate on the trunk.
It clicked.
A heavy internal bolt slid back with a hollow thud. Leo lifted the iron lid, which groaned on rusted hinges. Inside, resting on a bed of dry, blackened cloth, was not gold or jewels, but a thick, leather-bound ledger, a collection of glass vials filled with dark, shimmering fluids, and a yellowed photograph.
Leo picked up the photograph first.
His hands shook so violently that the paper rattled. The picture showed three people standing in front of this very house ten years ago. In the center was his mother, looking young, radiant, and happy. Standing beside her, his arm wrapped warmly around her waist, was the man from the window—Julian—alive, smiling, with clear hazel eyes that looked uncannily like Leo’s own.
But it was the third person that made Leo’s breath catch in his throat.
Standing on Julian's other side, wearing a heavy overcoat and holding a ceremonial dagger, was a man with a stern, angular face and cold, calculating eyes. Written in faded black ink across the bottom of the photograph were four words:
The Ritual of Three. October 14, 2016.
Leo opened the leather ledger. On the first page, written in his mother's neat, elegant cursive, was an entry dated the day before his birth:
Julian refused to give the boy to the Circle. We had no choice. We tied him beneath the roots of the willow at Blackwood Trench and poured the salt into his lungs. He cursed us with his final breath. He said when our son turned eight, he would come to collect what was stolen.
Leo’s head spun. A sickening revelation crashed over him: his father hadn't died in an accident. His mother had murdered him.
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Suddenly, a loud, metallic clatter echoed from the top of the stairs. The threshold hadn't broken—the dead man had simply stopped trying to walk through the door.
Instead, the wooden planks of the floor above began to splinter. Julian wasn't using the door; he was tearing through the ceiling.
