Chapter 12 - The Screams Beneath the Floorboards
The sound hadn't come from the kitchen. It had come from the root cellar directly beneath the living room hearth.
I stood frozen on the misty porch, clutching the blood-scrawled marriage certificate against my chest until the paper crumpled. My pulse hammered violently against my throat. Julian had sworn Eleanor was locked inside the psychiatric ward of the state penitentiary, awaiting trial for attempted murder. He had promised me that her madness was contained, that her legal claws had been stripped by the district attorney.
*Was this a lie? Or had the Vance empire reached deeper into the dark than even Julian knew?*
I dropped the paper, slipped inside the front door, and grabbed the heavy brass fire poker leaning beside the hearth. The cottage was deathly quiet, save for the rhythmic tick-tock of the antique mantel clock.
*Clang.*
Another dull vibration shuddered through the floorboards near the corner of the rug. It was deliberate. Someone was striking the wooden subfloor from below.
I crept forward, my knuckles turning white around the cold brass poker. With my left foot, I kicked back the edge of the woven wool rug. The rustic cedar floorboards gave way to an old iron ring set into a trapdoor—a storm cellar used by fishermen decades ago to cure salt and store preserves.
The padlock on the latch had been clipped cleanly in two. Fresh metal filings glittered on the oak planks like spilled diamond dust.
I hooked the poker through the iron ring and hauled the heavy hatch upward. A blast of frigid, stagnant air rushed into the room, smelling of damp earth, mildew, and something sickly sweet—like formaldehyde.
"Who’s down there?" I shouted, my voice cracking with adrenaline. "I’m armed! Come out!"
Silence answered.
I took the flashlight from the entry table, pointed the beam into the gaping black hole, and peered down the rickety wooden ladder. At the bottom, illuminated in the stark white cone of light, was not Eleanor.
It was a large, military-grade steel Pelican case, secured with digital biometric latches. And sitting on top of the case was an antique cassette recorder, its red recording light blinking silently.
Beside the recorder lay a fresh bouquet of white calla lilies—the exact flowers I had carried down the aisle the morning Eleanor shoved me to my near-death.
My phone suddenly buzzed in my pocket. The screen flashed with an *Unknown Caller ID*.
My finger shook as I swiped green and pressed the speaker to my ear.
"Did you find the wedding gift, Clara?" whispered a voice.
It was Eleanor. But the connection was crystal clear, without the echo of a prison payphone.
May you like
"Julian didn't tell you the most important rule of the Vance family," she purred, her voice dripping with venomous delight. "Dead men don't leave wills, Clara. They leave debts. And Julian paid his debt with *you*."
***
