Chapter 6 - Shadows at Two in the Morning
Midnight settled over Blackwood Manor like a suffocating shroud. Outside, a violent Atlantic storm battered the cliffs, rain lashing against the floor-to-ceiling windows while wind howled through the chimneys.
Emily sat on the edge of her narrow iron cot in the basement servants' quarters, fully dressed in her dark gray uniform. She had spent the last five hours waiting in the dark, her senses dialed to absolute sharpness.
At 1:45 AM, the floorboards above her groaned.
Faint, deliberate footsteps moved down the corridor. Emily cracked her door open an inch.
Through the dim, amber-lit hallway, she saw Mrs. Evelyn. The housekeeper was no longer wearing her formal black uniform; she wore an oversized woolen cardigan, carrying a heavy brass flashlight and a tray covered with a dark cloth.
Evelyn didn't walk toward the kitchens or the staff quarters. She walked down the north service corridor—the one blocked by a heavy velvet curtain and a brass chain with a sign reading: *STRUCTURAL DAMAGE – KEEP OUT.*
Emily waited until Evelyn’s silhouette disappeared behind the curtain before slipping into the hallway. Her bare feet made no sound against the freezing cold flagstones.
She reached the velvet curtain and pulled it back silently. Behind it lay an old, arched wooden door leading down into the estate’s original 18th-century wine cellar—a section of the mansion that had supposedly been sealed off after Clara’s death due to foundation rot.
The door was slightly ajar. A faint sliver of yellow light cut through the pitch darkness below.
Emily crept down the damp stone steps, pressing her back against the moisture-slicked brick wall. The air down here was frigid, smelling of mold, old iron, and something faintly antiseptic.
As she reached the bottom landing, a voice drifted through the darkness. It was cold, harsh, and devoid of any human warmth.
“You brought this on yourself,” Evelyn was saying, her voice echoing off wet stone. “If you had just signed over the remaining trusts like a good little girl, none of this would have been necessary. But no... you had to play the noble saint. And now look at your son. In six months, the court will declare Alexander unfit due to grief, Mason will be permanently committed under Thorne’s diagnosis, and every single cent Clara left behind will flow through me.”
Emily’s lungs froze. Her heart hammered so violently she was terrified the housekeeper would hear it.
Who was Evelyn talking to? Clara was dead. Her limousine had been pulled from the ocean two years ago!
Emily peered around the corner of a massive stone archway.
Ahead was a reinforced steel door fitted into the brick wall—a modern soundproof bank-vault door installed inside a centuries-old cellar. Evelyn was standing in front of the small, barred viewing window, sliding a metal tray through a narrow slot at the bottom.
From inside the darkness behind the heavy steel door came a weak, raspy, trembling voice.
“Where... where is Mason? Please... Evelyn... let me hear my baby’s voice...”
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👉 The voice didn't belong to a ghost. Clara Blackwood was alive.
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