The silence after Parrish's car disappeared down the lane was profound, broken only by the whisper of wind through dead hydrangeas. His words hung in the air, more solid than the fading light. *A tenancy agreement in time. The landlord.*
Eleanor shut the door, the heavy bolt sliding home with finality. She was no longer just a victim waiting for a date. She was a tenant behind on rent, and the eviction notice was plastered with her own face.
*Find the original terms.*
She turned from the door and stared into the heart of the house. The sitting room, where the mortar had fallen. The upstairs bedroom, the "west-facing room" with its "lineage requirements." That was her starting point. Not with the dead, but with whatever life had been bought.
The house seemed to watch her ascend the stairs. Every creak was a comment. The grandfather clock in the hall, silent for decades, gave a single, jarring *tick* as she passed. She didn't flinch. Fear had been refined into a sharp, cold purpose.
Her bedroom was spare. She'd brought little, and the old furniture—a four-poster bed, a heavy armoire, a writing desk—seemed to resent her modern sleeping bag and laptop. The western wall was mostly taken up by a large, mullioned window overlooking the tangled garden and, beyond, the darkening woods. The other walls were papered in a faded pattern of ivy and roses, stained with damp in the corners.
She started with the desk, pulling out every drawer, feeling for false bottoms. Nothing but dust and dried ink. The armoire yielded only the faint scent of mothballs and emptiness. She ran her hands over the carved panels of the bedframe, searching for seams or levers. Solid, unyielding wood.
The wall. Parrish's implication was clear. *Check your walls.*
She began at the corner by the window, pressing against the wallpaper, her fingers seeking any unevenness, any give. The ivy pattern was a maddening camouflage. Inch by inch, she worked her way along, her knuckles rapping lightly, listening for a hollow echo behind the plaster.
Halfway along, near the head of the bed, her knuckles met not a dull thud, but a slightly different sound. A faint, almost musical *tok*, not of solid plaster, but of something thinner. She pressed her ear to the wall, tapping again. There was a vertical seam in the pattern, cleverly hidden by a trailing vine. Her fingers traced it from the skirting board up to where it disappeared into the ornate picture rail near the ceiling.
A door. A hidden door.
Her breath caught. There was no handle, no keyhole. She pushed, shoved, tried to dig her nails into the seam. It didn't budge. *Lineage requirements.* What did that mean? A specific Wren had to open it? Or a specific action?
Frustrated, she stepped back. Her gaze fell on the armoire again, on its large, tarnished key still in the lock. An idea, desperate and irrational, struck her. She went to the family folio, lying open on the desk. The first entry. Alistair Wren, 1900. Died September 9th. What if… what if the mechanism wasn't biometric, but numerical? A date?
Heart pounding, she went to the seam in the wall. She imagined a keypad that wasn't there. *09.09.1900.* She pressed her fingers against the wallpaper in sequence: upper left, middle, upper left again, lower right…
Nothing.
*09.09.00.*
She tried again.
A soft, internal *click* resonated through the wall, a sound felt more than heard. A section of the wallpaper, about a foot wide along the seam, sank inward a quarter of an inch.
Eleanor jumped back. For a long moment, she just stared. Then, with trembling hands, she worked her fingers into the newly revealed gap and pulled. The hidden door swung inward silently, on perfectly balanced hinges. A wave of cold, dry air smelling of stone and old paper flowed out.
Behind the wall was not a room, but a shallow recess, a priest hole. And in it was a simple, wooden strongbox, no bigger than a large book. Carved into its lid was the same symbol she'd seen on Parrish's ceramic fragment: a complete, stylised flame enclosed within a pair of sheltering wings. The *Witness*.
This was it. The original terms.
She lifted the box. It was lighter than she expected. No lock this time. The lid lifted easily.
Inside, on a bed of faded crimson velvet, lay a single sheet of vellum, crackling with age. The handwriting was elaborate, formal, and in English.
**This Indenture, made this 9th Day of September, in the Year of Our Lord 1699, Between The Entity known herein as Keeper of the Threshold, of the First Part, and Alistair James Wren, Yeoman, of the Second Part.**
**WITNESSETH, that for the Consideration of the Preservation of the Life of the Said Alistair Wren from the Peril of the Plague now raging in the Parish, and for the Assurance of Future Prosperity upon his Line for Seven Generations hence, the Said Alistair Wren doth hereby Covenant and Grant unto the Keeper of the Threshold a Tenancy in the Bloodline.**
**The Terms:**
**1. The Keeper shall have Right of Abode within the Dwelling raised upon the Land herein specified, to be sustained by the Vitality of the Line.**
**2. In Consideration thereof, the Line of Wren shall be shielded from Misfortune, its Endeavours blessed, for the Term of Seven Generations.**
**3. Upon the Conclusion of the Term, being the Death of the Seventh Generation from the Said Alistair Wren, the Tenancy shall be renewed.**
**4. The Renewal Price shall be the Full and Final Vitality of the Seventh Generation, to be collected on the Anniversary of this Indenture.**
**5. A Witness is placed to observe the Covenant. The Witness is the Seal and the Record.**
**Signed,**
**Alistair James Wren (His Mark)**
**For the Keeper of the Threshold: (An unreadable sigil, like a knot of thorns and wings)**
Eleanor's eyes flew to the bottom. A list of names, confirming the lineage, each generation marked. Her grandmother, Helen, was the sixth. She, Eleanor, was the seventh.
The seventh generation. The renewal price. *The Full and Final Vitality… to be collected on the Anniversary.*
Not a curse. A contract. Her ancestor, Alistair, had bought his life and seven generations of good fortune from something that lived in the walls. The price was her life, due on September 9th, to "renew" the lease for another term. The boxes, the folio of deaths… they weren't the cause. They were the *paperwork*. The polite reminders before the final repossession.
The "Witness" was the seal. The ceramic fragment, the symbol on the box. It observed. It ensured compliance.
A cold, rational fury washed over her. This was a legal document, however monstrous. And every contract has loopholes.
Seven generations. *Upon the Death of the Seventh Generation… the Tenancy shall be renewed.* It didn't say the death *had* to be by collection. If the seventh generation died *before* the anniversary, of natural causes or otherwise, would the contract be void? Or would it simply reset with the next generation?
No, that was a dead end. Parrish said the answer was in a record of life, not death. What was the *Consideration*? Not just life saved. *Prosperity. Endeavours blessed.*
She needed to know what Alistair built with his borrowed fortune. What was the source of the family's later, fleeting wealth?
She took photos of the indenture with her phone, then carefully replaced it in the strongbox. As she did, her thumb brushed a rough spot on the underside of the velvet lining. She peeled it back. A small, folded square of paper was tucked beneath.
It was a much later note, in a flowing, feminine hand she recognized from her grandmother's letters.
*"My Robert is gone. Taken on the Day, as his father was, and his before him. The Keeper is restless. The Witness moves in the walls. I am the Sixth. My Eleanor is the Seventh. The Price comes for her. I have tried to break the chain. I refused the last 'keepsake.' I sent it back unopened. It did not matter. It came for Robert anyway. It is not the box that binds. It is the blood. The only way out is to revoke the Consideration. Undo the blessing. Find the Source and renounce it. But how does one renounce a life lived, a fortune spent? God help her. – Helen"*
Eleanor sank to the floor, the note in her hand. Nana had known. She had tried. Refusing the box wasn't enough. The contract was in the bloodline itself.
*Revoke the Consideration. Undo the blessing.*
What blessing? The Wrens hadn't been royalty. They'd been moderately successful merchants, then professionals. Nothing spectacular. What specific, tangible thing had Alistair's deal granted?
Her phone buzzed, shattering the silence. A notification from her security app. *Multiple Motion Alerts: Ground Floor.*
She pulled up the live feed on her phone.
The camera in the foyer showed nothing. The sitting room was still. The kitchen—
Something was wrong. The back door, which she knew she had deadbolted, was now slightly ajar. Not wide open. Just an inch, as if someone had just slipped out. Or in.
Then, the feed from the hallway camera fizzed, went black for a second, and came back.
The floor was different.
Scattered down the length of the hallway, from the foot of the stairs to the front door, were dozens of small, white objects. She zoomed in.
Teeth. They looked like human teeth, old and stained, lying on the polished wood like gruesome confetti.
A new alert popped up. *Motion Alert: Your Bedroom.*
She whirled around, her back against the cold stone of the recess.
The room was empty. But the armoire door, which she had closed, now stood open. Hanging from the hook inside was not a forgotten coat, but the cream-colored sweater from the photograph. And on the floor beneath it, placed neatly side-by-side, were her own running shoes.
It wasn't just showing her things. It was dressing the set. Preparing her for the final performance.
*The Keeper is restless.*
The Tenancy Agreement was nearing its end. The landlord wasn't just waiting for the rent. It was moving in early, asserting its domain, making the space its own.
Eleanor looked from the open armoire to the hidden recess holding the damning contract. Fury, cold and clean, burned away the last of her terror. This thing, this *Keeper*, operated on rules. It demanded a life for continued shelter. It left receipts. It was, in its own way, meticulous.
Very well. If it wanted a transaction, she would give it one. But not the one it expected.
She had four days to find the "Source," the prosperity bought with her life, and renounce it. To break the Consideration.
And she now knew the first place to look. Not in the house's records, but in the town's. What had Alistair Wren, a simple yeoman saved from plague, built or founded in the year 1699 that laid the foundation for a family's fortune?
She had to go out. Into the night. Leaving the house in the possession of the thing in the walls. But the note in her pocket, her grandmother's desperate warning, was a map. It was the only weapon she had.
As she stood to leave, her eye caught a movement in the dark window. Her own reflection, pale and determined. And behind it, for a fraction of a second, not the room at her back, but the impression of a tall, indistinct figure standing perfectly still in the corner, its head tilted as if reading over her shoulder.
She didn't turn around. She knew nothing would be there. The Witness didn't need to be seen to observe.
She simply walked out of the bedroom, down the stairs, stepping carefully over the scattered teeth on the hallway floor, and out into the cool, free air of the night. The house watched her go, every window a dark, knowing eye.
The race was on. Not to escape the date, but to void the contract before the landlord came to collect.