Ashes of the Soul Keeper

Chapter 3

Beneath the Ashes.

“The dead have stories to tell. You just have to listen.”

The hidden room seemed colder now, the air thick with something ancient, something heavy. Evelyn stood before the fractured mirror, her reflection fragmented across the cracks, pieces of herself staring back at her from strange angles. Her heart pounded in her chest, the echo of that whisper…..“I see you”.....still lingering in the air.

She stepped closer, her breath fogging the glass. That’s when she noticed it, faint markings smeared across the cracked surface, almost invisible beneath the dust and age.

“Not all of them crossed.”

The words scrawled like a dying breath, barely there. Evelyn reached out, fingers trembling as she traced the letters. The moment her skin brushed the cold glass, the words vanished, swallowed whole as though they’d never existed.

She staggered back.

“Not all of who?” she whispered into the silence.

But the mirror gave nothing back.

That night, sleep came in jagged, restless waves.

Evelyn drifted into a dream heavy with smoke and heat. She stood in the estate’s grand hall, but it wasn’t the decaying, hollow place she knew now. It was alive, ornate chandeliers glowed above, velvet drapes hung at the windows, but the air felt thick, charged with something wrong.

A figure stood across the room.

Vivienne Hale.

Her grandmother’s face was lined but strong, her sharp eyes softening when they found Evelyn.

“You shouldn’t have come back,” Vivienne said, her voice cracking with urgency.

“Why? What happened here?”

But before Vivienne could answer, the fire roared to life, walls crumbling, flames licking up toward the ceiling. Vivienne was engulfed in smoke, her outline blurring.

“There’s a darkness still buried,” she gasped.

Then she was gone.

Evelyn shot awake, heart racing, the scent of smoke still heavy in the air.

The house was quiet.

But she could still feel the heat lingering beneath her skin.

The bell above the café door chimed as Evelyn stepped inside, the warm scent of coffee pulling her briefly out of the haze of the dream. She spotted Ethan Calloway at a small corner table, shoulders tense, a file splayed open in front of him.

He didn’t look up when she slid into the seat across from him.

“You’re persistent,” he muttered, flipping through paperwork.

“Curiosity’s a curse,” Evelyn replied, folding her arms. “But you agreed to meet.”

Ethan sighed, jaw tight. “You had questions.”

She cut straight to it. “The missing kids. The fire. What aren’t you telling me?”

His hand hesitated over the file before he finally shut it. “My sister was one of them.”

The words hung heavy between them.

Evelyn’s throat tightened. “Ethan, I……”

“Don’t.” He leaned back, his storm-gray eyes shadowed with something deeper than anger, grief buried under years of denial. “I’ve spent my entire career trying to find out what happened that night. But people in this town? They don’t talk. They bury things. Literally.”

She studied him, this detective who wore his armor thick but cracked at the edges.

“You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?”

His jaw worked. “I believe in unanswered questions. And bodies that never got found.”

Evelyn swallowed hard. “But something’s off here, Ethan. I’ve seen things, heard them. That house…..”

He cut her off. “Don’t get dragged into it. This town chews people up.”

But Evelyn leaned forward, lowering her voice. “You’re already in it, Detective. And I think you know more than you’re letting on.”

For a moment, something flickered in his eyes.

Then he stood, tossing a bill on the table.

“Stay out of this, Evelyn.”

But as he walked away, she could see it, he wasn’t just chasing answers.

He was running from them.

Rain slicked the ground, turning the estate’s once-grand courtyard into a swamp of mud and dead leaves. Police tape cordoned off the twisted iron gate, its yellow bands fluttering like broken wings in the damp wind. Red and blue lights painted the stone walls of the Hale Estate, their flicker rhythmic, almost like a warning.

Ethan Calloway stood at the edge of the crime scene, jaw tight, eyes fixed on the body crumpled in the grass. Another one, burned beyond recognition. Smoke still curled from the charred flesh, the air thick with the iron tang of scorched blood.

Sheriff Morton hovered nearby, his face pale beneath the brim of his hat. “Second one this week, Calloway. And on the same damn estate.”

Ethan crouched, running a gloved hand across the damp soil where the fire had seared the earth. The sigil was there again, deep and jagged, burned into the dirt like a scar.

“This wasn’t random,” Ethan muttered. “It’s a pattern.”

A car door slammed in the distance.

Ethan’s head snapped up just as Evelyn Drake ducked beneath the police tape, her jacket soaked from the rain. Her eyes darted to the body, then locked onto the blackened sigil.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Ethan growled, striding toward her.

“I had to see it,” Evelyn shot back, ignoring the tension crackling in the air between them. “It’s the same mark. The one from before.”

“Could be a copycat.” He crossed his arms, but there was doubt in his voice.

“No,” she snapped. “It’s connected to the house. To the spirits here.”

Ethan’s jaw ticked. “Spirits didn’t do this.”

Evelyn crouched close to the edge of the charred symbol and moved passed him. Her fingertips lingered on the edge of the ash. She muttered, "You don't have to believe me." "However, things will only get worse."

Thunder cracked overhead.

Somewhere in the woods behind the estate, something moved, too heavy to be the wind.

The hidden room reeked of damp stone and old secrets. Dust floated in the narrow beam of Evelyn’s flashlight, swirling in the stale air like restless spirits. She crouched by an ancient wooden chest, its hinges rusted, and forced it open with a groan of protest.

Inside lay brittle town records, ledgers with ink faded to ghostly lines. She flipped through the fragile pages, careful not to tear them. Dates, names, property transfers, then her fingers froze on a page stained with soot.

“Unaccounted Children,” the heading read.

Her throat tightened as she scanned the list, seven names. Seven missing the night of the fire. Ethan’s sister among them.

She shivered.

“Vivienne knew,” Evelyn whispered into the cold silence. “She knew they didn’t make it out.”

A sudden gust of wind snuffed out the single candle flickering in the corner.

Darkness swallowed the room.

Evelyn’s breath came faster, her fingers fumbling for the flashlight, but the click of the switch brought only dead silence.

Then the floor creaked.

Heavy footsteps, slow, deliberate, echoed through the stone chamber.

Evelyn’s heart hammered against her ribs as she pressed herself against the wall, the cold seeping through her jacket. The air grew colder, each breath coming out in a thin cloud.

The steps stopped behind her.

Fingers, ice cold, closed around her shoulder.

She twisted violently, but there was no one there. Only the dark.

But a voice rasped close to her ear, dry and hollow. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

Evelyn stumbled backward, her foot catching the edge of the sigil still faintly visible on the dusty floor.

The flashlight sputtered to life.

And in its weak beam, she saw it, handprints. Burned into the stone walls. Small. Childlike.

But they weren’t static.

They were moving.

The air in the hidden room thickened, cold enough that Evelyn could see her breath swirling in pale clouds. Her flashlight flickered weakly, the beam cutting through the dust that now seemed to hang motionless, like time itself had stalled.

“Who's there?” she whispered, voice trembling despite herself.

The handprints on the wall deepened, their outlines smudging as though invisible fingers dragged them downward. Then, from the shadows, a figure materialized, a small boy, no older than seven. His form flickered between solid and transparent, skin mottled with blackened scars, clothes tattered and singed at the edges. Hollow eye sockets bore into hers, empty and endless.

Evelyn's breath hitched.

The boy’s voice came fractured, like shards of glass scraping metal. “She tried... to save us.”

“Who? Vivienne?” Evelyn stepped forward, careful not to disturb the sigil at her feet.

The boy nodded, barely, before his mouth twisted in a grimace of pain. “But... he burned us alive.”

The weight of those words pressed hard on Evelyn’s chest. Her throat felt raw. “Who did this? Who burned you?”

The boy’s small hand lifted, fingers blackened as though charred, and pointed toward the far wall. Etched into the crumbling stone, the name bled through the dust, letters sharp and jagged: Caleb Vance.

Evelyn’s mind raced. She didn’t recognize the name, but something about it twisted deep in her gut, like a door unlocking in the dark.

“Who is Caleb Vance?” she pressed, but the boy’s form was already unraveling, thinning into mist. His face twisted in a final expression of fear and sorrow.

“Stop him,” the boy rasped, before his body crumbled into ash, scattering through the room.

Evelyn staggered back, heart hammering.

The name echoed in her head, Caleb Vance.

Ethan would know it.

She grabbed the journal, the flashlight, and ran, because the dead weren’t the only ones with secrets.

And somewhere in the house, something heavy shifted in the walls, as if it, too, had been listening.