Chapter 7 - DOWN BELOW

They had no choice.

The cellar opened whether they wanted it to or not.

Cold air rolled upward, and the whispers stopped.

Caleb loaded the rifle.

Mara took the lantern, notebook, iron poker and a coil of rope.

“You’re actually going down?”

“If there’s another way out, it may be through the old mine.”

“That is the worst plan I’ve ever heard.”

“Your truck won’t start. Mine won’t start. Phones are dead. The cabin is filling with things that crawl into ears.”

Caleb sighed.

“Fine. Second worst.”

They descended.

The cellar looked ordinary at first.

Then Mara moved a shelving unit marked on Halverson’s map.

Behind it was a narrow stone passage.

The tunnel.

Caleb shined his light inside.

Scratches covered the walls.

Warnings and names covered the walls.

RUTH.

DANIEL.

LENA.

“Someone carved this recently.”

Caleb stared.

“Who?”

A light appeared deeper in the tunnel.

Warm.

Yellow.

Like a lantern.

Then footsteps.

An elderly man emerged.

Mara raised the poker.

He lifted both hands.

“Easy.”

Caleb whispered, “Ezra?”

The man smiled tiredly.

Ezra Halverson looked twenty years older than his photograph and exactly as dead as the town records claimed he should be.

“You bought my cabin,” he said.

Caleb could not speak.

Ezra looked at Mara.

“And you brought Lena’s sister.”

Mara’s heart stopped.

“You knew her?”

Ezra’s face collapsed.

“I tried to save her.”

“From what?”

He looked down the tunnel.

“From becoming what Ruth became.”

A woman called from far below.

“Ezra?”

His eyes filled with grief.

“That’s not my wife.”

The voice came again.

“Come home.”

Ezra whispered, “That thing has used her voice for fifteen years.”

Mara stepped closer.

“What happened to Lena?”

Ezra looked at her.

“She didn’t drown.”

Mara’s breath vanished.

“What?”

“She went into the water.”

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He swallowed.

“But something else came back out.”