Chapter 1: The Empty Drawer

Chapter 1: The Empty Drawer

The city noise—a symphony of sirens, horns, and the distant rumble of the train—was the only thing that could drown out the ghosts. Trey Blackburn had built a fragile peace in this anonymous chaos, a life held together by grease-stained hands and the constant forward momentum of a man running from his past. Then the phone rang.

The caller ID was a name he hadn't seen in two years: Neil. Trey’s hand hesitated over the screen, his thumb tracing the crack in the cheap plastic. A call from his younger brother could only mean one thing: trouble. The kind of trouble that didn't stay buried.

He answered. "Neil? What's wrong?"

"Trey... you have to come home." Neil's voice was thin and reedy, stretched taut over the line like a fraying wire. It was the same voice that had echoed in Trey’s nightmares for a decade.

"I'm not coming back to Harrow Creek," Trey said, his voice flat and hard. He stood, pacing the confines of his small apartment, the worn leather of his jacket groaning with the movement. "We're done with that place. He's dead. It's over."

"No," Neil whispered, and the single word was laced with such profound terror that the hair on Trey's arms stood up. "No, you don't understand. He's gone."

"Gone? What do you mean, gone? He's dead, Neil. We buried him." A lie. They hadn't buried him. The state had taken the body after the... incident.

"From the morgue," Neil clarified, his words tumbling out in a rush. "Old Wajeski from the funeral home called me. The... the drawer is empty. The lock was broken from the inside. They think someone stole the body, Trey. But who would steal him?"

A cold dread, familiar and sickening, coiled in Trey's gut. The city noise faded, replaced by the phantom chirping of crickets and the rustle of dead leaves. The ghosts were getting louder. Broken from the inside. The detail was absurd, impossible, and yet it snagged in his mind like a fishhook.

"I'm on my way," he heard himself say, the words tasting like ash. The old, familiar weight of guilt settled back onto his tense shoulders. He had run, yes, but he'd only run so far. Neil was still there, trapped in that house, in that town, and a part of Trey had never left with him.

The drive back to Harrow Creek was a journey through degrees of decay. The sleek, modern architecture of the city bled into sprawling suburbs, then withered into forgotten strip malls with boarded-up windows. Finally, the highway narrowed into a two-lane road flanked by skeletal trees whose branches clawed at the bruised twilight sky. The town sign, when he passed it, was riddled with rust and buckshot: Welcome to Harrow Creek. Pop. 412. It hadn't been updated in twenty years.

The Blackburn house stood at the end of a long, unpaved lane, a two-story silhouette against the dying light. It sagged in the middle, like its spine had been broken long ago. The paint was peeling, the porch was sinking, and the windows stared out like vacant eyes. This wasn't a house; it was a mausoleum for a family that had died long before its patriarch.

He cut the engine. For a moment, he just sat in the truck, the silence pressing in. He could almost feel the phantom presence of his father, Jason Blackburn, a man carved from violence and cheap whiskey. He could hear the echo of his roars, feel the sting of his belt. He could see the terror in his siblings' eyes, the terror he had fled from, leaving them behind. The guilt was a physical thing, a hand squeezing his heart.

Pushing the door open, he stepped out. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and rot.

Neil met him at the door. He looked smaller than Trey remembered, fragile, with wide, innocent eyes that seemed too still. A faint, silvery scar gleamed on his temple, a permanent reminder of their father's final, explosive rage.

"You came," Neil breathed, a flicker of relief crossing his face before being replaced by that placid, unreadable calm that always unsettled Trey.

"The drawer was empty, Neil?" Trey asked, his voice rough as he stepped over the threshold. The air inside was stale, heavy with the ghosts of every argument, every blow.

Neil nodded, his gaze drifting towards a dark window as if he were listening to something outside. "Wajeski is losing his mind over it. The sheriff, too. They're talking about grave robbers. Vandals." He had a slight, almost imperceptible stutter, another souvenir from that night.

"And what do you think?" Trey pressed, watching his brother closely.

Neil just shook his head, a placid smile touching his lips. It didn't reach his eyes. "I don't know what to think. I'm just... glad you're here." He seemed less like a victim of a recent trauma and more like a host waiting for a guest to arrive. The thought was disloyal, and Trey shoved it away. Neil was vulnerable; he'd always been the one who needed protecting.

The conversation was a dead end. They sat in the grim living room, the silence stretching between them. Trey felt caged. He needed to do something, anything. An old excuse came to mind. "I need to find the deed. The insurance papers for the house. They have to be around here somewhere."

Neil just nodded, his attention already elsewhere.

Trey's feet carried him, not to his father's old desk, but up the creaking stairs, towards the one place he hadn't been in over a decade. The attic.

The air grew thick and hot as he ascended. He pulled the cord, and a rickety set of stairs unfolded from the ceiling with a groan of protest. Dust rained down, dancing like malevolent sprites in the weak light from the hall. He climbed, his boots thudding on the old wood, and emerged into a cramped space choked with the detritus of a miserable life. Piles of forgotten junk, broken furniture, stacks of yellowed newspapers.

A single, grimy circular window at the far end of the attic allowed a sliver of moonlight to cut through the gloom. It illuminated a column of swirling dust, landing on the rough-hewn floorboards. Trey walked into the beam, the light catching the determined, grim set of his jaw. He wasn't looking for papers. He was looking for an escape, a moment of solitude from the suffocating presence of his brother and his memories.

His boot heel caught on something. Not a nail, but a board that shifted under his weight. He stopped, frowning. He nudged it again. It was loose. Years of working with his hands, of fixing things, had taught him to recognize when something was out of place. This was deliberate.

Driven by a sudden, inexplicable curiosity, Trey knelt. The wood was cold beneath his palms. He dug his fingertips into the seam and pried. The board came up with a dry screech of old nails, releasing the smell of packed earth and something else... something cold and ancient, like stone from deep underground.

There, nestled in the dark space between the joists, was a box.

It wasn't made of wood or metal. It was carved from a single piece of dark, veined stone that seemed to drink the moonlight, leaving no reflection. It was about two feet long, a foot wide, and heavy. He grunted as he hooked his fingers under it and dragged it out onto the floor. There was no visible lock, no seam, just a heavy, perfectly fitted lid.

Trey sat back on his heels, his breath catching in his throat. He stared at the impossible object, his mind reeling. He had come back expecting to deal with a missing body, with the familiar demons of his past. He had not expected this. A secret. A heavy, stone-cold secret, hidden in the heart of the house by the man he thought he knew only as a monster.

What in God's name had his father been hiding?