The fog rolled low now, not blanketing the world in a smothering shroud as before, but crawling—clinging to the earth like an animal too stubborn to die. Elise stood motionless among the leaning gravestones of Briarwall Cemetery, her eyes fixed on the soft swell of earth where the mist seemed thickest. It flowed out from a particular grave, Lysander Thorne Marlowe's, with eerie purpose, curling around her boots and tugging lightly at the hem of her coat.
She wanted to believe it was natural. Some geological phenomenon—a fault, a vent, a hollow beneath the stone. But her body knew better. Every instinct, every academic discipline, every clinical defense rose in protest. This wasn't a hallucination.
It was a warning.
She stepped back.
And the fog followed.
Elise didn't return to the Holding House by the main path. Instead, she made her way around the cliffs, boots slipping on moss-slick stones, eyes scanning for signs—marks, symbols, footprints. Anything. What she found instead was a path overgrown by briars and nearly hidden between two crumbling headstones.
She pushed through the brambles, thorns scratching her hands and catching in her hair, until she emerged into a narrow clearing behind the cemetery.
There stood a stone wall, black with age and salt. Embedded in it, half-swallowed by ivy, was a rusted metal door.
It looked like it hadn't been opened in decades.
Yet at the base of the door, the earth was wet. Recently disturbed.
She crouched, brushing away leaves and grit with her sleeve. A faint groove marked the soil, as if the door had been pushed open—recently—and closed again.
Elise stood, heart hammering.
She touched the latch.
It opened.
Not easily. Not quietly. But it opened.
And beyond it lay stone steps leading downward into shadow.
She hesitated only once, then stepped through.
The air shifted immediately.
Gone was the salt of the sea. Gone the wind. Gone even the chill.
This place—this passage—was still.
The steps spiraled downward, carved directly into stone, worn by time and damp beneath her feet. Her breath echoed around her, shallow and quick. At the base of the steps, the passage widened into a corridor—arched, vaulted, and lined with rusted sconces and pipes that dripped steadily onto the stone floor.
A tunnel.
No—an extension.
Something beneath the Holding House.
Or more accurately…
Something the Holding House had been built over.
Elise moved cautiously, her fingers tracing the wall as she went. She passed empty alcoves—each wide enough for a person to stand inside. Old hooks lined the ceilings. Chains, some broken. And then… a sound.
Faint. Metallic.
A dragging.
She froze.
Listened.
Silence.
Then…
Click.
A whisper of a lock engaging.
Or disengaging.
She pressed on, heartbeat echoing like a drumbeat in her ears. The corridor opened into a chamber—circular, domed, with a rust-stained drain in the center. Faded chalk markings scrawled the stone walls—circles, eyes, sigils she couldn't decipher.
One symbol was fresher than the others.
It had been drawn recently.
And it matched one she'd seen before—carved into the side of Elena's wooden bedpost.
Elise stepped closer, studying it.
A circle with three spokes. Like a wheel. Or a watchful eye.
She pulled out her notebook and sketched it.
Behind her, something scraped.
She turned sharply, but the corridor was empty.
Still… that feeling.
Watched.
Always watched.
She made her way back up the stairs faster than she had come.
When she emerged from the hidden door behind the cemetery, the fog had nearly dissipated. The sun, pale and tired, hovered behind the mist like a dying candle.
But standing directly across from her, silent and unmoving, was Margery.
Her apron was stained. Her eyes bloodshot. Her hands at her sides.
"How long were you watching me?" Elise asked, her breath still ragged.
Margery blinked. "You shouldn't go into the old tunnels."
"You know about them?"
Margery looked away. "Everyone in Briarwall does. We just pretend we don't."
Back at the Holding House, Greaves was waiting in Elise's room.
She entered with barely restrained fury. "There's a system of tunnels beneath this building. Chambers. Chains. Symbols. You let me walk into this with no warning."
Greaves raised an eyebrow. "You went alone?"
"You let a girl with memory loss and seizures sleep directly above that?"
He didn't answer. Instead, he handed her a folder.
Elise opened it.
Inside were photographs—grainy, black-and-white images of the Holding House from the 1920s. One caught her attention: it showed a young girl—hair wet, skin pale, eyes wide—standing near the edge of the cliff.
She looked exactly like Elena.
"Where did you get this?"
"From the archives in the rectory. I wasn't lying, Dr. Marlowe. She's always new, and always the same."
Elise stared at the photo.
Behind the girl stood a man.
Half-hidden in fog.
Face indistinct.
Body tall and narrow.
Dressed in black.
Greaves whispered, "We call them the Watchers. They come when the fog rises. And when they do, something is always taken."
Later that night, Elise sat by Elena's bedside again. The girl was asleep. Her face softer, more human. She looked peaceful, even.
Elise took her hand gently, brushing her fingers with her thumb.
"Elena," she whispered, "Who are you really?"
The girl stirred.
Her mouth moved.
No sound came.
But her lips clearly formed a word.
"Elise."
Then she opened her eyes.
Staring directly into Elise's.
And she said, with a voice not her own:
"He knows you're here now."