The $450 Manhattan Room Mystery: Why Was a Famous Surgeon Performing Midnight Blood Rituals Behind My Wardrobe Wall?
👉 Previous Decision: You chose Option A – Sneak into the brownstone basement using the exterior fire escape to find the original house ledgers.
The evening air was cool and damp. I crept down the rusty fire escape, each step a metallic groan against the brick wall. The basement entrance was a dark, inviting maw. I slipped inside.
The boiler room was a cramped, echoing space, smelling of dust and damp earth. Pipes snaked across the ceiling, dripping intermittently onto the concrete floor. My flashlight beam cut through the gloom, dancing over forgotten tools and cobweb-draped shelves.
Behind a loose brick, near an ancient, humming furnace, my fingers brushed against something cold and hard. I pulled it out.
It was a leather-bound book, heavy and brittle with age. The year “1888” was etched into its cover. An old hospital ledger.
I knelt, flipping through the yellowed pages. Each entry was in a precise, looping script, detailing strange medical conditions and even stranger “treatments.” Then, abruptly, the handwriting changed. Modern entries, typed and dated, were interspersed among the antique ones.
My breath hitched. An entry dated exactly ten years ago, during my mother’s first serious decline, caught my eye. Below a precise record of “Recipient: Clara Hensley,” was a signature.
It was my mother’s. Her familiar, elegant hand, trading my medical destiny to Finch’s care. The words blurred before my eyes. My mother. She had made a covenant, as Rivera warned. She had given me to Finch.
➡️ Read CHAPTER 7 to continue the story
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