Bat #3
“She sealed the entire chamber. Every exit. Cornelius is bound to the space itself—he cannot cross any threshold that leads out. We could all feel the change—like a great weight settling over the basement, pressing down, containing. Cornelius’s presence…
diminished. Not gone, but muted. Trapped behind layers of binding magic. ”
“So, he can’t get out,” Charlie said. “Can’t hurt anyone.”
“Well… no. Not entirely.” She pursed her two thin lips together. “Every so often—perhaps when he has a surge of power, or when the bindings weaken—something slips through. A part of him, at least. An influence.”
That conversation with Vivian, Molly, and Edmund just yesterday… Vivian’s theory about Catherine pushing Molly down the stairs. “What if the thing in the basement has been manipulating people for centuries? Whispering in their ears, feeding their darkest impulses?”
Edmund’s haunted voice. “I remember pulling the trigger. I remember thinking it was the only way. But I’ve never understood why I shot myself.”
“So he can still reach people,” I said slowly. “Even through the seal. He gets into their heads. Makes them do things.”
Lady Grimthorne nodded. “Whispers. Suggestions. Amplifying existing darkness, nurturing violent impulses, twisting grief into despair.”
The rain hammered against the windows with renewed violence.
Charlie cleared his throat. “Do you know what happened to Bat? How he died?”
Lady Grimthorne’s form solidified, then flickered, then solidified again. When she finally turned to look at me, her expression was stricken.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I know.”
Rage flooded through me. Hot and vicious and completely unfair. “All this time?” My voice crackled and sparked. “You’ve known all this time how I died and you never—”
“You never specifically asked!” Lady Grimthorne’s form blazed brighter. “In twenty-seven years, Bartholomew, you never once asked me what I witnessed that night!”
She was right. I knew she was right. But the anger still burned.
“I… I can’t remember,” I managed. “Only fragments. Flashes.” My hand went to the wound between my ribs, the puncture that never healed.
“I know I came here to teach guitar. I know Michael was there when it happened. I remember the basement. Pain. Blood.” I looked at her. “I remember him screaming my name.”
Charlie’s hand slipped out of my mine to wrap around my waist, pulling me to him. For a moment, his palm pressed solid against my hip—then his arm sank through my torso like water through a sieve.
“Oh.” The startled sound punched out of him. His arm hung there, inside my ribcage, warmer than anything had a right to be.
Fuck. I’d stopped concentrating. Lost the thread of solidity whilst my head spiralled through twenty-seven years of not asking the right fucking questions.
“Sorry.” I grabbed for focus, for substance, willing myself back together. His arm withdrew as I solidified, leaving a phantom sensation like pins and needles beneath my skin.
“I enjoyed when you came to visit,” Lady Grimthorne said. Soft, sincere. “Your weekly lessons with Michael. The music drifting through the house. It was…” She paused, searching for words. “It was lovely. Life. Youth. Beauty in a place that had seen so much darkness.”
“Lovely until I died in the basement,” I said.
Lady Grimthorne’s expression twisted. “Sort of. You died at the bottom of those stairs, yes. Right outside the sealed door. You didn’t get through it.”
I waited for the memory to come flooding back. For the final pieces to slot into place.
Nothing.
It was like trying to grasp smoke. The harder I reached for it, the more it dissipated. I could feel the shape of it—the terrible weight of that night—but the details remained frustratingly out of reach.
“Did Michael die too?” I braced myself for the answer, though I barely remembered the man. Only the faintest impression of deep loss. Of caring about someone. Of mattering to them.
“No.” Lady Grimthorne shook her head. “He lived. The family moved out the following week. I never saw them again.”
I frowned. Something about the whole thing didn’t make sense. “I remember him down there with me. Screaming. But…” I trailed off, confusion clouding my thoughts. “Michael used a wheelchair. After his climbing accident. He couldn’t have walked down all those stairs to the bottom of the basement.”
Conflictedness flashed across Lady Grimthorne’s face. As if she was weighing whether I truly wanted to hear what happened. What I’d forgotten or chosen not to remember.
I was conflicted too.
Part of me needed to know. Needed to understand how I’d ended up with a hole in my chest, trapped between life and death in this godforsaken manor.
But another part—the cowardly part—wanted to leave it buried. Keep the not-knowing as a buffer against whatever horror waited in those lost memories.
I looked at Charlie.
His blue eyes caught the grey light from the window, transforming them into something luminous. Concerned. Beautiful in a way that made me want to weep.
“Maybe it’s better if you don’t—”
The roar of an electric saw suddenly exploded through the manor, cutting off Charlie’s words.
And every ghost in the house screamed.
And somewhere below us, deep in the foundations of Grimthorne Manor, I heard it.
A laugh.
Low. Cruel. Triumphant.