PART 3 — THE SECRET BENEATH MARTHA BELL’S CABIN

The three knocks came again.

This time, the wooden floor trembled beneath Martha’s boots.

Elias moved toward the fireplace.

“Where’s your cellar?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Every old cabin has a foundation.”

“Not one my father built.”

Elias looked at her sharply.

“Show me the kitchen.”

Martha hesitated.

Then she led him past the pantry.

At the back wall stood an enormous wooden cupboard that had belonged to her father.

Elias examined the floor.

He crouched and brushed away a layer of dust.

There was a small iron ring hidden beneath the cupboard.

Martha stared.

“I’ve lived here for seventeen years. I’ve never seen that.”

“Your father didn’t want you to.”

Together, they moved the cupboard.

Beneath it was a square wooden hatch.

The iron ring was cold.

Elias reached for it.

Martha caught his wrist.

“Before you open that, I want the truth.”

He looked at her.

“All of it?”

“Every word.”

Elias slowly lowered himself onto the nearby chair.

“My real name is Elias Blackwood. Twenty years ago, I worked with your father, Thomas Bell, and a physician named Dr. Gideon Mercer.”

“What were you doing?”

“Studying something we discovered beneath the northern mountain.”

“What kind of something?”

Elias glanced at the jar.

“Something that had been there long before any of us were born.”

Martha folded her arms.

“And these creatures?”

“They were guarding it.”

“Guarding what?”

“A chamber.”

He took a breath.

“Your father believed the chamber contained an ancient biological colony. Something capable of surviving conditions that should have destroyed any ordinary living organism.”

Martha looked toward the ceiling.

“And you brought one here?”

“I brought a piece of what we found.”

“Why?”

“Because someone has been searching for it.”

“Who?”

Elias didn’t answer.

Instead, he removed a folded document from his pouch.

It was an old map.

Martha recognized the handwriting immediately.

Her father’s.

The map showed the cabin, the surrounding forest, and a network of underground pᴀssages.

At the bottom was a sentence written in red ink.

If the signal returns, do not let them open the eastern chamber.

Martha felt cold.

“What signal?”

Elias pointed toward the jar.

“The sound you heard.”

She stared at him.

“Why would my father hide this beneath our home?”

“Because he discovered the creatures were responding to something inside the chamber.”

“What?”

“A living organism.”

Martha stepped backward.

“That’s impossible.”

“That’s what I thought.”

He looked at her.

“Until three weeks ago.”

“What happened three weeks ago?”

“I found your father’s old research station. Someone had broken into it. Every document was gone except one.”

He handed her a pH๏τograph.

It showed a stone doorway buried beneath ice.

And standing in front of it was a woman.

Martha’s breath stopped.

Her mother.

Older, but unmistakably alive.

On the back of the pH๏τograph were four words.

She is still waiting.

Martha pressed the pH๏τograph against her chest.

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then why did you come here?”

“Because your mother left a message.”

He reached into his coat and produced a small brᴀss cylinder.

Martha recognized it.

Her father had owned one exactly like it.

Elias opened the cylinder and removed a narrow strip of paper.

There were only two lines.

Martha knows the way.

The blood remembers what the mind forgets.

She stared at the message.

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I.”

A sudden clicking sound interrupted them.

The creature beneath the table had disappeared.

The glᴀss jar was still on the table.

But the specimen inside had stopped moving.

Elias stood.

“Something’s changed.”

Martha looked toward the ceiling.

The broken boards were motionless.

Then the floor hatch began to vibrate.

A faint blue light appeared around its edges.

Elias stepped away.

“Don’t touch it.”

Martha stared at him.

“You said my father built this cabin.”

“He did.”

“Then whatever is beneath it belongs to my family.”

“Martha, listen to me. Your father spent twenty years trying to keep that door closed.”

“And my mother?”

Elias looked away.

“She went inside.”

Martha felt the room tilt.

“What?”

“Your mother entered the chamber nineteen years ago. Your father never found a way to bring her back.”

Tears filled Martha’s eyes.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

“Because your father believed the truth would put you in danger.”

She shook her head.

“He let me spend seventeen years thinking she was ᴅᴇᴀᴅ.”

“He was trying to protect you.”

“Everyone says that when they’ve decided someone doesn’t deserve the truth.”

Elias had no answer.

Then the hatch made a deep metallic sound.

Something underneath it had turned.

A narrow line appeared across the wood.

And from below came a woman’s voice.

“Martha?”

Martha froze.

It was faint.

Almost impossible to hear.

But she knew that voice.

She had heard it in childhood memories, in dreams, and in the lullaby she still sometimes hummed when she couldn’t sleep.

“Mother?”

Elias seized her arm.

“Don’t answer!”

The voice came again.

“Martha, darling. Open the door.”

Martha pulled away.

“That’s my mother!”

“No.”

His expression was terrified.

“Your mother would never ask you to open that door.”

The voice beneath the floor changed.

It became deeper.

More urgent.

“Martha, please. It’s cold down here.”

She stared at Elias.

“How do you know?”

He swallowed.

“Because I heard her say those exact words nineteen years ago.”

The hatch suddenly lifted by itself.

A thin line of blue light spread across the kitchen floor.

The black stone in Elias’s pouch began glowing brighter.

And the creatures inside the cabin all turned toward Martha at once.

For several seconds, everything was silent.

Then a small hand appeared beneath the hatch.

It was pale.

Human.

And around its wrist was a familiar silver bracelet.

Martha recognized it immediately.

It had belonged to her mother.

She took one step forward.

Elias grabbed her shoulder.

“Don’t!”

But Martha was no longer looking at him.

She was staring at the bracelet.

Because engraved along its surface were five words.

Martha, your father is alive.

A sudden crash shook the cabin.

The hatch flew open.

Cold blue light flooded the room.

And from the darkness below, someone began climbing the stairs.

Elias raised the iron poker.

Martha stood motionless.

Because the figure emerging from beneath her home was not her mother.

It was a man wearing her father’s old wedding ring.

And he was holding a pH๏τograph of Martha taken only three days earlier.

To be continued in Part 4…