Page 20 of Where The Devil Kneels

I move through archways, discovering more chambers—a honeycomb beyond my property lines. Each holds glass-cased artifacts: Civil War insignia, 1920s beads, a 1970s concert ticket. Each card’s handwriting evolves from room to room.

The back room’s artifacts are old—Civil War era or older. At the centre rests a battered metal box, marked by the same eye symbol on my skeleton key. I touch it. A jolt runs up my arm as the box opens.

Inside is a leather-bound journal, its cover worn smooth. It falls open to the first page, as though it had been often read. The handwriting is elegant, practical.

“January 12, 1868 – I have taken my father’s role as sanctuary guardian. The burden is heavy, but I cannot abandon those needingrefuge from overwhelming forces. The passageways allow us to move unseen by those who would harm.”

I sink onto the stone floor, the leather journal heavy in my lap. My fingers tremble as I turn the pages: 1868. 1872. 1879. Each entry reveals more of the Merrick guardians’ world—watching from the shadows, mapping hidden paths, tending these rooms just as I’ve stumbled through them tonight.

“April 30, 1875 – Tonight, we led Margaret and her children through the east passage. Her husband’s family threatened pursuit, but by morning, they’ll be three states away, with new papers and a fresh start. The sanctuary is for transformation, not just hiding.”

I flip through page after page, hands still shaking. Generations of Merricks ran this place like an underground railroad for anyone desperate enough to need it. They didn’t do it alone. There was a doctor who asked no questions, a lawyer who could make new papers appear, a train conductor who’d learned not to look too closely at the faces boarding after midnight.

The final entries, dated early 1900s, speak directly to future guardians:

“To those who follow: The Merrick line vows to aid the vulnerable as long as needed. Some will call you a criminal, others a ghost. Be neither—be a guardian, be watchful, a shadow between the weak and those who threaten. The estate is your tool, not your cage. Use it well.”

The journal slips from my hands and lands in my lap. My vision blurs. Everything clicks—the watchtower, the hidden passages, the Watcher. He’s not here because of me. He’s here because of this. Because of all of this.

I clutch the journal and grab my camera, heart pounding. I thought I was alone in a haunted house. Instead, the Merricks protected others for generations. The deed in my name now feels heavier—a symbol of responsibility for those who vanished and found new lives here.

I make my way back, stopping at each display. The toy horse’s leg is chipped, a locket holds baby hair, and a watch is frozen at 3:17. No longer junk, these objects prove people survived. My fingers smudge the glass over the horse. “Huh,” I breathe. “This place was never haunted. It was always about saving them.”

I stumble up from the basement, journal pressed to my chest, mind racing. The house feels different now—not just boards and stone, but something built withintention. The Merricks made safety you could vanish inside. My hand finds the carved panelling, and I pause. Did he touch this, too? Run his hands over it to check if it would hold? How many times has he walked these halls, carrying the same secret I’ve just uncovered?

The grandfather clock chimes somewhere in the depths of the house, startling me back to reality. Maeve will be here tomorrow, today, technically, since it’s well past midnight. I need to understand everything I can before she arrives with her practical concerns, legal documents and complete inability to see this place for what it truly is.

I walk through the rooms and can’t help but see things differently. The patch in the floor by the window seat—I thought it was a half-assed repair, but it’s not. It’s a perfect piece of walnut, aged to match, the grain running in the same direction as the original wood. You’d walk over it without a second thought. The kitchen cabinet hinges—they should be screaming, given their age, but someone’s been oiling them. Not with WD-40. Something older. Something that smells of beeswax up close.

“You’ve been fixing things all along, haven’t you?” I whisper, running my fingers along the banister where someone — him — patched it so well you’d never know it had been touched. My fingertips catch on the seam where new wood meets old, like brushing two different centuries at once. No Home Depot shortcut. This is the real thing, done the way it would’ve been done when this house was first built.

Even the creaking floorboards make sense: not rot, not neglect, but an early warning system, deliberately kept. The third step from the bottom always gives me away. The loose board outside the library. All of them were noisy on purpose, and all kept that way. This house doesn't just shelter; it speaks to those who listen.

In the library, I notice a section of panelling where the carved roses don’t quite match the pattern of their neighbours. It’s such a subtle deviation that I’d missed it during my previous cataloguing efforts. My fingers press against the wood, feeling for any give, and I am rewarded with a soft click as a small door swings open in the wall.

The panel swings open onto a network of gleaming brass pipes that curve and branch like arteries, valves that catch the dim light. Someone has kept them polished, maintained. Faded handwritten labels mark each one: “Northeast Rooms,” “Attic West,” “Library Air.” I run my fingers along the cool metal. This isn’t modern ductwork. It’s something older, something thought out—a whole system forcontrolling the breath of the house, built by people who knew how to move air and temperature with nothing but metal and gravity.

I run my finger over the valve labelled “Cold Air Release” and it hits me all at once. “Holy shit, this is how you did it.” All those cold spots. Nora Voss getting too nosy about the estate and suddenly feeling “a draft” that had her backing toward the door. Officer Peck asks his careful questions about the missing persons cases and gets a blast of cold air straight to the face, enough to have him buttoning his jacket and muttering about getting back to the station. Not ghosts. Just pipes and valves and someone with very good timing.

I trace the pipes as they disappear into the walls. Some sections look way newer than others — like every few decades someone came along and thought, well, let’s add this bit here. The whole thing grew with the house. Not some grand blueprint drawn up at the start, but generations of Merricks each leaving their mark, adding their own piece to keep the whole thing running.

One valve is marked simply “Tower,” confirming the connection between this system and the watchroom I discovered. I turn it slightly, just to see what happens, and am rewarded with a distant whoosh of air from somewhere in the ceiling. The house responds to my touch like a living thing, adjusting its breath to my command.

“God, this is incredible,” I say, knowing he might be listening somewhere within the walls. “You’ve kept all this running for how long? Years? Decades?”

The sound of tires crunching on gravel cuts through my wonder like a knife. I freeze, one hand still on the brass valve, straining to hear over the sudden hammering of my heart. It’s nearly five in the morning—who would be arriving at this hour?

I move to the window, careful to stay partially hidden behind the heavy curtains. A sleek black car I don’t recognize has pulled up to the front of the house, its headlights cutting bright swaths through the pre-dawn darkness. The driver’s door opens, and a familiar figure emerges, in a tailored pantsuit, perfectly coiffed hair, even after what must have been hours of travel, designer luggage that probably costs more than three months of my rent.

Maeve. Almost twelve hours earlier than I expected.

My stomach drops as I watch her survey the estate, her expression a mixture of disapproval and determination, even from this distance. She looks up at the house like she’s assessing a problem to be solved rather than a home to be appreciated. Her gaze lingers on the areas most in need of repair, the loose shutter on thesecond floor, the weathered paint on the south-facing eaves, before she retrieves her luggage from the trunk with sharp, efficient movements.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I hiss, scrambling away from the window. I need to hide the journal, close up the panel, erase all evidence of my night’s discoveries before she walks in and starts demanding explanations I’m not ready to give.

I snap the maintenance panel closed, wincing at the soft click it makes, and quickly straighten the books I’ve disturbed during my exploration. The journal from the basement, where can I hide that? Not in my bedroom; Maeve will insist on seeing every room in the house to “assess its condition.” Not in the library, where she might decide to browse while waiting for me to appear.

The grandfather clock in the hall shows 4:53 AM as I dart past it, journal clutched to my chest. Think, Elara. Think. The knock at the front door comes just as inspiration hits, the loose floorboard. I drop to my knees, pry it up with fingers made clumsy by panic, and tuck the journal into the cavity beneath. The board slides back into place just as Maeve’s knock grows more insistent.