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I approach slowly, my heart in my throat. My fingers tremble as I lift the lid.

Inside—

Two items.

The first is a Polaroid picture featuring a young woman standing proudly in front of Hawthorn Manor. Debris from the building still litters the front yard, marking it as a moment frozen in time—probably Cecilia Hawthorn, captured before she ever took her first step inside this very house.

The second—a thick, hefty key.

I gasp, snatching it up. The cool metal presses against my palm, sending pure electricity down my spine. It has to be a match for the chest's padlock. Relief and excitement collide inside me, and my chest tightens as I realize this could be it—the end of a hunt that's dragged on for days.

I don't waste a second.

I bolt out of the room, my footsteps echoing in the dark passage. My mind races. I'm so close—so damn close. The study blurs past me as I sprint up the stairs, the house groaning and creaking beneath my hurried steps.

My bedroom door slams shut behind me.

The chest sits in the center of the room, waiting.

I drop to my knees, the key clutched tight. My breath comes fast, ragged. I hesitate—just for a heartbeat—then shove the key into the lock.

It turns with a soft click.

The lid creaks open, and–

The stench hits me first—rot, decay, something ancient and foul. It's overwhelming. My stomach lurches. I gag, my throat tightening, but I force myself to look.

I shouldn't have.

The bile rises fast—I turn away, retching violently onto the floor. My body shakes as I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, eyes watering.

I glance back into the chest.

Horror anchors me to the spot.

Whatever I expected—it wasn't this.

9

Iknow the human skull is made up of twenty-two distinct bones: eight cranial and fourteen facial. If I were to count the number of bones now staring up at me from the treasure chest, it would be roughly three hundred and fifty-two in total–or rather, sixteen skulls.

For a moment, I can’t breathe. The foul smell is sharp, sour, and unmistakably human. It claws its way down my throat, forcing me to gag again. I stumble backward, my hand covering my mouth, but my eyes refuse to look away. Hollow sockets gape up at me, dark and empty, like open mouths mid-scream. Some of the skulls are yellowed, brittle with age, edges crumbling like dried leaves. Others look... fresher. Thicker. The kind you’d expect to see perched on a doctor’s shelf, polished and clinical—only these aren’t plastic.

One skull, near the top, bears the violent signature of blunt force trauma. Cracks spider out from a quarter-sized hole near the rear left, radiating like the jagged legs of an ant trail converging on a forgotten crumb.

The stench of decay claws up from the chest, metallic and heavy. Dark, congealed blood stains the inside. My stomach twists violently. I swallow hard, tears pricking at my eyes as I force myself to turn away.

These aren’t just bones. They’re people. Men. Women. God—some of them are small. Kids. Even without formal training, I can see the decades etched into them. A few still hold entire rows of teeth, grinning grotesquely up at me, while others have snapped jaws, their smiles fractured and incomplete. These bones tell a story, or sixteen separate stories, that I don’t think I ever want to know.

My legs give out. I slide down the wall, the world tilting violently. Moments ago, I was having the time of my life—exploring this new charming, historic town, meeting new faces, peeling back layers of this house's rich heritage. I had been proud of what I’d found. A lovely couple had built this home, lived here, thrived here. It had been their legacy.

But now? Now I’m staring at sixteen human skulls. Death—violence—right here, buried within these walls.

How could this place be connected to something so horrific? My mind fixates on the cracked skull near the top—the one with the gaping wound, the jagged spiderweb of cracks. Were all of these people... murdered?

The shift from light to dark is too fast, too jarring. I can’t make sense of it. I feel the significance of it pressing down, the cruel irony that the same house I had seen as a fresh start was actually a graveyard all along. How did it go so wrong, so quickly? I press my palms into the cold floor, trying to ground myself, but the question keeps looping in my mind: Who were they? And why are they here?

The image is seared into me now. I’ll never unsee it. And deep down, a chilling certainty blooms—I don’t think I want to know their stories, because knowing means accepting the truth: this house isn’t what I thought it was, what I needed it to be.