Chapter 4
NOLAN
T he archives beneath Saltmoor House smell of old leather and secrets.
I descend the narrow stone steps, following the beam of my flashlight through corridors that predate the mansion above.
Ryan gave me access to the family's private collection—centuries of documents, maps, and artifacts that most scholars would kill to examine.
But I'm not looking for academic glory. I'm hunting for truth.
I spread the yellowed pages across the reading desk, my pulse quickening as I find the passage I remember:
El día quinto después del naufragio, we found a strange object buried in sand beneath el cacique's bones.
Golden mask, worked with symbols no Christian eye should witness.
Diego insisted we take it—'treasure from heathens,' he called it.
I warned against disturbing the dead, but greed makes devils of good men.
That night, Diego woke screaming. Said the mask spoke to him in dreams, voices of drowned warriors demanding blood-price for their stolen guardian. Told him of great waters rising, of souls trapped between sea and sky, hungry for release.
By morning, Diego's hair had gone white. By evening, he walked into the surf and never returned. The mask sat in our camp, innocent as carved wood, but I swear I heard it whispering when the tide came in.
My hands tremble as I photograph each page. The account continues for weeks—crew members succumbing to madness, speaking in languages none of them knew, drawing symbols that matched no European script. Three more men vanished into the ocean before the survivors buried the mask and fled inland.
I pull out my notebook, comparing Santos's sketches to my own drawings from the display case upstairs. The symbols match perfectly, down to the smallest detail. But there's something else—additional markings that aren't visible on the current mask, as if they've been deliberately obscured.
A leather portfolio catches my eye: Murphy Family Acquisitions, 1890-1920 . Inside, a photograph makes my blood freeze. The same mask, displayed in what looks like a prohibition-era speakeasy. The caption reads: Collected from estate of Silas Cord, deceased under mysterious circumstances, 1920.
I flip through more documents. A 1924 police report describes Cord's death: found on Pelican Point beach at low tide, face frozen in terror, no signs of violence. Witnesses claimed he'd been wearing the mask at a party the night before, boasting about its power to "command the spirits of the deep."
1945: A collector named Harrison Webb displayed the mask at a gallery opening. Three guests suffered simultaneous strokes. Webb himself was found in his study, pen still in hand, having written the same phrase over and over: "Miskito cahochee" —the water remembers.
1967: Another collector, this time in Miami.
The mask was stolen during a hurricane, recovered from a flooded basement where the thief had drowned despite the water being only three feet deep.
And a note, unsigned: The mask has returned to its original resting place.
I pray to God it never sees the light of day again.
Each incident follows the same pattern: public display, escalating supernatural phenomena, death by drowning or madness. The mask always survives, always finds its way to the next collector, as if it chooses them.
My phone buzzes—a text from Allison asking where I am. I almost ignore it, but then notice the time. Three hours have passed in what feels like minutes. The archive feels colder, my flashlight beam dimmer.
As I gather the documents, a page slips from the Santos account—one I hadn't noticed before. The chaplain's final entry, written in shaky script:
I have sinned greatly. We did not simply steal treasure from dead heathens. The shamans told us before they died—the mask was their prison, their way of binding the war spirits who refused to pass on. Calusa warriors who died in battle, too proud or angry to join their ancestors.
We broke their sacred trust. The mask was never meant to be worn by the living, only to contain the hungry dead. But now it travels, and with each new bearer, the spirits grow stronger. They learn our ways, our weaknesses.
God forgive us, we have loosed something terrible upon the world. The mask remembers every death, every drop of blood spilled in its presence. And it grows hungry for more.
The temperature drops so suddenly that my breath mists. Somewhere in the archives, I hear the unmistakable sound of drumming—rhythmic, tribal, impossibly ancient. The documents on the desk begin to flutter as if touched by an unfelt wind.
I don't run. Twenty years of academic training keeps me methodical, even as primal fear claws at my spine. I photograph the final page, close the books, and walk steadily toward the stairs. The drumming follows me, growing louder with each step.
Only when I reach the main floor do the sounds fade. But as I lock the archive door, I can swear I hear voices whispering in a language my grandfather once tried to teach me—the old words, the ones that weren't supposed to be spoken after dark.
" Miskito cahochee ," I whisper back, and the house falls silent.
The spirits are waking up. And they remember me.
The comms crackle with clipped voices, staff calling in positions as we race toward the north wing where a side window has been forced and the alarm tripped.
But all I register is Allison’s breath just ahead of me—fast, ragged, proof she’s alive and fighting the same current I am. Whatever sparked between us isn’t done.
By the time we reach the window, security has the breach contained and the intruder is gone. Not the worst outcome—the mask is safe. Still, the air vibrates with unsettled energy, the sense of a probe testing defenses before the real strike.
"They were checking our response time," Allison mutters.
I pace the length of the gallery whilst Allison questions the guards. Her tone is clipped, her posture straight, but I see the residual heat in the set of her mouth. She has to be feeling it too. Whatever flared between us isn't something either of us can bury under procedure.
"The window sensors worked," one guard reports. "We were here in less than thirty seconds."
"Not good enough," Allison replies. "They still got that window open. Next time, we may not be so lucky."
I fold my arms, letting my voice cut in.
"This wasn't about getting inside. It was about seeing how quickly we'd react.
Whoever's behind this is building a playbook.
Exactly the sort of probing raid the Calusa were described as using in the old accounts.
Hit, retreat, watch. I've seen men in Kandahar do the same—pressure our lines, clock our response, fade into the dark. Different continent, same strategy."
Allison's gaze sharpens, and I see her cataloguing the slip in my academic facade. A real art historian wouldn't reference tactical patterns with that kind of certainty. But before she can probe deeper, the guard interrupts with his report.
Her gaze snaps to mine, intent at first, then narrowing as if she's just realizing I'm not exactly the bookish historian I pretend to be. Allison take’s the guard’s report and sends him on his way.
Suspicion and curiosity flare in her eyes as if she can see through the mask I wear.
"You sound very certain for a man who claims to be an academic. "
"Maybe I'm more than that." I close the space between us, lowering my voice so only she hears. "Or maybe I'm just a simple historian, and you're the one reading more into it."
I hold her gaze, letting the suggestion hang.
She studies me as though weighing whether I believe my own words.
The look in her eyes says she's beginning to understand there's more to me than the neat story I spin.
She may not know what, not yet, but the questions are there now, simmering between us.
She tilts her head slightly, studying me. "You talk like a man who's done more than grade papers. Where exactly did you learn about probing raids?"
"Just stating historical facts," I counter with a shrug, though I can see she isn't buying it.
Her eyes stay on me a beat too long, weighing me, as if cataloguing each slip in my act. For the first time she looks like she's fitting the pieces together—that the man in front of her might not just be the tidy academic she was told to expect.
She tips her head, voice laced with that characteristic British bite. "So the professor plays soldier now? Interesting." The jab lands with deliberate sting, but beneath it her eyes search mine as if trying to catch me out. Her jaw tightens, daring me to slip.
I grin. "Careful, Bennett. The way you're poking holes in my cover makes me think you like soldiers more than scholars."
She rolls her eyes, biting back a retort, but the pulse at her throat betrays her before she growls, low and heated. "I might have kept my distance, Porter, if you weren't so bloody tempting. You're trouble, and I know it, and yet here I am."
The admission spears straight through me.
Trouble or not, she called me tempting, and that single word twists inside me.
I like the way it sounds on her tongue, the way she hates giving it to me and yet can't quite take it back.
It tells me more than she wants me to know—that she's already in deeper than she intended.
We circle back toward the ballroom, tension drifting behind us like a wraith ready to strike.
I think back on what happened with the guests who seemed to have been affected by the mask and file each detail away.
Threads weaving into a pattern, and at the center, the legend of the mask.
Someone is using that history, stoking fear and uncertainty, manipulating superstition to cover their moves.
The Calusa rites described masked dancers losing themselves in trance and frenzy.