Chapter 2 - The Breaching of the Tomb
I stared down at my wife.
The silence in the nursery was heavier than the thunderstorm outside. The ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway sounded like a judge’s gavel striking wood.
Three years.
Three years of quiet dinners across a mahogany table that felt like a tombstone. Three years of holding a grieving woman who slept with Toby’s old woolen sweater pressed against her face. Three years of grieving a child who had been somewhere inside the walls of the mansion, breathing the same air we breathed, perhaps listening to our footsteps as we walked past his prison every single night.
“Victoria,” I whispered. My voice didn't sound like mine. It sounded like stones grinding together. “What did you say?”
Victoria scrambled backward until her spine hit the carved bookcase, her fingers clawing at the dust on the floor. Her mascara had run down her cheeks in jagged black streaks, transforming her beautiful, aristocratic face into something feral. “Mark… don’t listen to them. They’re crazy. The grief has made you all insane—!”
I didn't let her finish. I snatched the sledgehammer out of Hannah’s grip.
My first blow hit the wainscoting where the floral wallpaper was slightly bubbled near the baseboard. The dry mahogany cracked with a dry, hollow snap, sending up a cloud of ancient plaster dust that smelled of lime, rot, and dry rot.
“Mark, NO!” Victoria screamed, lunging toward me again.
Hannah intercepted her, tackling my wife to the floor, pinning her arms behind her back with a grunt of exertion. “Do it, Mr. Blackwood! Break it open!”
I swung again. And again.
The heavy iron head tore through the lath, splintering the old cedar lathes like matchsticks. A wave of stale, fetid air rushed out of the gap—an odor of unwashed linen, urine, and stagnant sweat that made my eyes water. It was the smell of a subterranean cage.
I jammed the claw of the hammer into the jagged hole and wrenched downward. A massive section of the wall paneling tore away, clattering onto the nursery floorboards.
I dropped the hammer, fell to my knees, and thrust my hands into the black void.
“Toby?” I choked out, reaching blindly into the darkness.
May you like
My fingers brushed against cold fabric. Then, a small, trembling hand gripped my wrist with desperate, skeletal strength.
“Dad…?” a voice croaked from the dark, so thin it sounded like dry paper. “You… you came.”
