The “scratching” sound was finally explained. A primitive, mechanical bellows—a ventilation system designed to run on a slow-release weighted pulley—was still wheezing after eighty years, trying to cycle air through a room that had been walled up and forgotten. It was a masterpiece of illicit engineering, but as Sarah looked closer at the canisters labeled with skull-and-crossbones icons, she realized the “bellows” were actually leaking a concentrated, odorless gas into their home.
The worst part of the truth wasn’t a monster or a crime. It was the “radium room”—a private, illegal site for early radiation experiments. Dr. Thorne hadn’t just been a physicist; he had been obsessed with perpetual energy, and he had left behind several unstable, glowing chemical compounds that had been slowly degrading for decades. The mechanical system, meant to contain the toxins, was failing, causing the “ionisation” Luna had been sensing.