Six months passed after the last incident in Rivergate.
Nothing else happened. No new bodies. No answers. No arrests. The silence that followed was heavier than the fear that came before it. It felt deliberate, as if something had completed its work and no longer needed attention.
Rivergate became a name people avoided. Friends stopped visiting. Cab drivers hesitated when we mentioned the location. Even the police grew distant, their questions fewer, their eyes unwilling to linger.
We left quietly.
There was no farewell, no relief—only the sense that we were escaping something that might follow if we waited too long.
The farmhouse in Blackwood appeared almost accidentally, listed by an agent who spoke too quickly and asked too few questions. It stood on the outskirts of the city, beyond the reach of traffic and noise, hidden behind rows of dying trees and cracked earth. The structure was old—century-old, at least—its wooden exterior darkened by time and neglect.
The rent was absurdly cheap.
I noticed that immediately.
I didn't ask why.
Some instinct—cowardly or wise, I still don't know—told me that certain questions invite answers you're not prepared to hear.
The house had a presence. Not warmth, not hostility—something quieter. As if it had learned patience long ago. The floors creaked even when no one walked on them. The walls seemed to hold sound, releasing it only after long pauses.
Upstairs, there were three rooms. Downstairs, two. And then there was the basement.
The door was old, reinforced with metal strips, secured by a heavy lock. I noticed it the moment I stepped inside. I told myself it didn't matter. Old houses had basements. Old houses had secrets.
I chose not to care.
There was a smell in the house.
Metallic. Persistent. Like old coins soaked in blood.
At first, it made me nauseous. I opened windows, lit candles, blamed the plumbing. Over time, the smell faded—not because it disappeared, but because I stopped noticing it.
That was when I should have been afraid.
Mia changed after we moved in.
Not dramatically. Not in ways that demanded attention. She grew quieter, more inward. Her silences stretched longer, her thoughts seemed heavier. Sometimes I caught her standing still in doorways, listening to nothing.
Or something I couldn't hear.
When she told me she was going to visit her parents for a week, I felt a strange relief—and immediately hated myself for it. I told her to take care. She smiled, kissed my cheek, and left without hesitation.
Her hands were colder than usual.
Alone in the farmhouse, time slowed. The silence wasn't empty—it pressed in from all sides. I unpacked methodically, room by room, as if routine could keep my thoughts from drifting back to Rivergate.
That was when I found the box.
It was hidden beneath folded clothes, heavier than it should have been. Old. Wooden. The surface scratched, the edges worn smooth by handling.
It wasn't mine.
I told myself to put it back.
I didn't.
Inside lay a book.
At first glance, it looked ancient—thick, bound in deep red leather, its spine cracked with age. Then I touched it. The surface was stiff, uneven. The pages inside were darker at the edges, stained in places with something that wasn't ink.
Dried blood.
The realization hit slowly, like a delayed scream.
This wasn't decoration. It wasn't symbolism. It wasn't a collector's curiosity. It was real—heavy with intent.
The writing was precise. Cold. Methodical.
The book spoke of resurrection.
Not metaphorically. Not spiritually.
Physically.
It described rituals in clinical detail. Measurements. Timings. Preparations. Sacrifices.
Four in total.
Three sacrifices to assemble the body—limbs, structure, form.
The fourth sacrifice—the final one—had to be a blood relative of the deceased.
I closed the book and sat there for a long time, listening to my own breathing. The house felt quieter than before, as if it were waiting for my reaction.
My hands were shaking when I searched Mia's suitcase.
I told myself I was being paranoid. That grief and stress had warped my thinking. That doctors don't believe in this kind of thing.
Then I found the album.
It was old, its pages worn soft from being turned too many times. I flipped through it without looking—vacations, smiling faces, moments frozen in better times. And then I reached the last page.
Time stopped.
Mia stood beside a man who looked exactly like me.
Same face. Same eyes.
Except it wasn't me.
It was Ryan Cole.
My twin brother.
Dead for twelve years.
Diphtheria.
A hospital room that smelled of antiseptic. Machines that beeped until they didn't. A silence that followed me into adulthood, settling into the spaces where laughter used to live.
I remembered the way Mia had looked at him in old memories—before she ever looked at me that way. I remembered her grief, sharp and consuming, the way she never truly spoke of him after his death.
And suddenly, everything aligned.
The precision of the murders.
The missing limbs.
The timing.
The farmhouse.
The basement.
Grief hadn't destroyed her.
It had transformed her.
I realized then that belief doesn't always come from ignorance. Sometimes it comes from love that refuses to accept loss. And sometimes, love becomes something else entirely.
The house creaked.
Not loudly.
Not suddenly.
Just enough to remind me that I wasn't alone.
I locked the book back inside the box, though I knew it changed nothing. The knowledge had already settled into my bones.
The fourth sacrifice.
A blood relative.
Me.
And somewhere beneath the floorboards, behind a locked door I had never opened, something waited—patient, unfinished, and very, very close.