On the third day, Ida appeared at the door with a tin of biscuits and a look of sharpened anxiety. She didn’t step inside. Instead, she gripped Clara’s sleeve, her knuckles white. “Mark was a man of his word,” she whispered, her eyes darting to the dark hallway. “But he had heavy work on his shoulders. Lock the brass bolts as he used to. The mountain has its own song, and we all need to abide by it, don’t we?”
Clara nearly asked, “What work?” but Ida was already shuffling off. Clara laughed it off as local superstition until that night. At 2:14 AM, a sound vibrated through the mattress—a slow, metallic clack-shush, clack-shush. It was the sound of something heavy sliding over iron. It was coming from directly beneath her bed. She lay paralyzed as the floorboards groaned under the pressure of something massive moving in the earth below.
She grabbed her torch, her heart hammering. As she swept the light across the floor, she saw a single, heavy brass bolt on the mudroom door slowly, silently sliding back. There was no one on the porch. The lock was being turned from the inside of the wall. She couldn’t believe her eyes, and yet, she had no practical explanation for it. When the noise finally subsided, Clara crept back into her bed tired and her mind buzzing with dark thoughts and questions.