Chapter 11: The Cell

Chapter 11: The Cell

The crude drawing of Jacob, a stick-figure effigy of his last moments, held me paralyzed. The world narrowed to that single, horrific image scratched into the dirt, a testament to suffering that I had only ever imagined. Harding placed a heavy hand on my shoulder, a grounding pressure in the swirling vortex of my guilt.

“Leo. We keep moving,” he commanded, his voice a low growl of controlled urgency. He was right. Falling apart here, in the heart of the monster’s sanctuary, was a luxury we couldn’t afford.

We chose a tunnel at random and pushed deeper into the suffocating earth. The air was colder here, thick with the metallic tang of old blood and the persistent, sickly-sweet perfume of rot that clung to the back of my throat. Water dripped from the low ceiling, each drop landing in the oppressive silence with the finality of a ticking clock. Our flashlight beams felt inadequate, feeble probes into a darkness that felt ancient and solid.

The tunnel opened into a larger, cavern-like space, and the stench became overwhelming. This was the monster’s gallery, his hall of trophies. They were arranged on crude shelves carved from the earth, displayed with the reverence of a zealot arranging sacred relics.

My light swept over the macabre collection, and Evelyn Gable’s fearful words came rushing back. Here were the bundles of sticks she had described, tied with what looked like dried gut and adorned with yellowed animal teeth. Here were the strange, moss-covered rocks, arranged in spiral patterns. Skulls of deer and raccoons sat with bizarre symbols painted on their foreheads in what looked like dried blood.

But nestled between these totems of a twisted faith were the objects that stole the breath from my lungs. A single, small white sneaker, its laces still tied in a neat bow. A rusted-out toy car, the kind a child would push through the dirt while making engine noises. A plastic hair barrette in the shape of a pink butterfly, its color faded but unmistakable. A tattered library copy of Where the Wild Things Are. Each item was a ghost. A stolen childhood. A story that ended here, in this cold, damp earth. Billy Peterson. Sarah Jenkins. Timmy O’Connell. And how many others? The sheer, chronological evil of it all was a physical weight, pressing down on us, trying to suffocate us.

“He wasn’t just killing them,” Harding murmured, his voice thick with a disgust so profound it sounded like grief. “He was collecting them.”

My gaze was drawn to a smaller tunnel leading off this central chamber. It seemed darker, colder than the others. A sense of dread, specific and personal, pulled me toward it. Harding followed, his flashlight beam tight on my back.

The tunnel was short, ending after only ten feet. It didn't branch or continue. It was a dead end. A den.

In the center was a crude cot, its frame made of scavenged pipes, a thin, moldy mattress laid on top. Beside it, a rusted bucket. The earthen walls were covered in scratches, hundreds upon hundreds of vertical lines, organized into groups of seven. Days. Weeks. Years.

My light fell upon a small, folded bundle of cloth lying on the cot, the only spot of color in the grim tableau. It was a t-shirt, faded and worn thin, its fabric softened by countless cycles of sweat and fear and tears.

The world tilted on its axis. My flashlight beam trembled violently, the circle of light dancing over the faded image on the shirt. It was a pixelated video game character, a little blue bomber from a game we had spent an entire summer trying to beat. I had given him that shirt for his eleventh birthday.

This was it. This was the cell. This was where Jacob had spent four years of his life. Fourteen hundred and sixty days, scratched into the walls, just a few hundred feet from where we used to play, right beneath the school where we had shared every secret. The horror of it was an ocean, and I was drowning. I stumbled forward and fell to my knees beside the cot. My hand reached out, my fingers tracing the faded outline of the cartoon hero. The fabric was cold. I thought of Jacob, alone in this freezing dark, humming his little tune to keep the madness at bay, wearing this shirt until it was nothing more than a memory of the sun. A strangled sob escaped my lips, a sound of pure agony.

“Leo.” Harding’s voice was soft, but it held a sharp edge. He was giving me a moment, but only a moment. His flashlight beam was directed at a small wooden crate tucked under the cot. It was a makeshift nightstand. On it sat a single object: a thick, leather-bound ledger, its cover warped by the damp.

Harding picked it up, his movements precise, professional. He carefully opened the brittle cover. The pages were filled with a spidery, cramped script, the ink faded in some places, dark and angry in others. It was a journal.

“He’s not alone down here,” Harding whispered, reading a passage from the first page. His light illuminated the frantic scrawl. “The Old Man in the soil is hungry. He has been sleeping, but he is stirring now. The town forgets its tithes. It grows fat and loud and forgets the quiet hunger below.”

He flipped a few pages. “The Tending is a sacred duty. They are frightened at first, but they learn the quiet. They are the choicest offerings, the ones with the brightest light. The Old Man savors the light. It helps him sleep. He is a god of patience.”

The Caretaker. Tending to the things that were lost. The town legend wasn’t a ghost story; it was a job description. Silas wasn't a murderer, not in his own twisted mind. He was a priest. A groundskeeper for some ancient, malevolent entity that lived in the earth beneath Blackwood. He was feeding it. And for four years, Jacob had been the offering.

As the cosmic, incomprehensible horror of his motive settled over us, a sound echoed from the main tunnel, the way we had come in. A faint, dry scrape of stone on stone.

We both froze, our heads snapping toward the entrance of the cell. The sound came again, closer this time. A heavy, deliberate dragging noise. He was here. He’d been toying with us, letting us find his secrets, letting us discover the full scope of his world before closing his fist.

Then, from the direction of the stairs, came a deep, echoing BOOM. It was a sound of immense weight and finality, like a tomb door slamming shut. A cloud of dust and grit billowed down the tunnel, choking the air. Harding’s flashlight flickered once, twice, then died, plunging his side of the cell into darkness.

My own beam wavered, catching the sudden, wild panic in Harding’s eyes. We were no longer investigators. We were no longer the hunters. The entrance was sealed. The humming had stopped. The games were over. We were offerings, trapped in the dark with the god’s high priest.