I walked past Julian, the cold wood of the floorboards creaking under my boots. His cold ultimatum still hung in the air, but I would not yield to it.
His shadow stretched long and distorted behind me as I moved toward the old, heavy-set safe built into the library wall. It was meant to protect family secrets, not just financial records.
“You’re wasting time, Clara,” Julian’s voice cut through the silence. “That house is a sinkhole. You can’t save it.”
I ignored him, spinning the dial on the safe. The old mechanism groaned, a familiar sound from my childhood. Inside, Beatrice’s meticulous research journals lay stacked. Her theories about the house, about the light station.
I pushed them deeper into the safe’s cavity, clicking the heavy door shut.
“I’m calling Arthur Abernathy,” I announced, turning back to him. “An independent auditor. He’ll look at everything.”
Julian’s face tightened, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes.
“An auditor?” he scoffed, but his voice lacked its earlier conviction. “For what? There’s nothing to audit.”
I walked over to the antique rotary phone on the small oak table. The numbers felt heavy under my fingertips as I dialed Abernathy’s office.
As I spoke to the receptionist, explaining the urgency of an immediate estate audit, a sudden, sharp rap echoed through the library. It wasn’t from the door.
It came from the large windowpane directly behind Julian.
*Rap. Rap. Rap.*
Julian froze mid-sentence, his head snapping around. His shoulders hunched. The color drained from his face, leaving a pale, almost greenish tint under his skin.
He stammered, “What… what was that?”
The cold wind that usually only brushed through the outer corridors now swirled noticeably in the library. My hair lifted slightly.
“It’s just the house,” I said, my voice steady, though a shiver traced its way down my spine. “It tends to speak its mind when it doesn’t like visitors.”
He stumbled backward, bumping into a tall, empty bookshelf. A stack of dusty, leather-bound books shifted precariously.
“This is ridiculous,” he muttered, his eyes darting around the room, avoiding mine. “You’re trying to play mind games.”
“No games, Julian,” I said, disconnecting the call, Abernathy’s appointment confirmed for tomorrow morning. “Just a professional audit. And I won’t sign a thing until it’s done.”
He made a strangled sound, pushing past me toward the front door. The phantom knocking intensified, rapid and insistent, not just on the window now, but seeming to emanate from the very stone walls.
He didn’t look back as he practically ran from the house.
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