Chapter 25
I was in the garden, here at the Breakers.
Warm sunlight kissed my face as I crouched behind the wide rose bush. The air smelled of roses and salt. A low giggle escaped me. Someone else giggled too. It was another child, not far off, searching.
A slow shadow passed nearby. It didn’t feel threatening. How could it, with laughter still bubbling from my chest? We had to be playing hide and seek.
The crunch of tires on gravel broke the spell. A car had pulled into the driveway.
My heart kicked against my ribs in fear. I rose and stepped out from behind the bush. Thorns tugged at my hair.
“He’s back!” I called out. It sounded like I was warning the person I’d been playing with. As if things were about to get bad.
A firm hand grabbed mine. I was yanked back, stumbling to keep up as someone dragged me away. But before I could turn to see who was fleeing with me, my eyes flew wide open.
I was lying on a stone floor, cold and wet. Blinking against the haze in my vision, I heard the muffled roll of thunder. It wasn’t outside a window, but farther away. I seemed to be underground.
The basement.
I sat up fast.
It took a second for the room to sharpen into view. A single candle flickered on a rickety table, casting shadows across walls I didn’t recognize. This wasn’t any part of the Breakers I’d seen before. The air smelled like mildew and old metal. The space was bare.
I started pushing myself to my feet but stopped when I heard the scrape of metal. I looked down and found thick iron chains circling my wrists and ankles. The chains were bolted to a rusted ring in the wall.
Panic lit up every nerve.
I leaped upright, yanking against the chains with a force that rattled the hook and tore at my skin. The metal scraped hard against my wrists, biting in, but I didn’t care. My heart beat in my throat.
The chains didn’t budge.
My eyes darted around the dim room, searching for anything useful.
Dusty, strange wooden machines leaned against the wall.
I’d seen something like them in a picture once—twisted pleasure chairs some king had back in the day.
A pair of cracked horsewhips hung nearby, limp and coated in dust. In the corner, a broken wooden bed frame sagged.
“What the fuck?” I said. Tears blurred my vision. “What the actual fuck?” I yelled, jerking again at my chains until blood dripped down my wrists. My arms trembled. So did my legs, but I couldn’t stop.
This was bad.
No, this was Hollywood-level horror movie batshit crazy.
“Daniel!” I yelled, my throat hoarse. The sound echoed in the basement. Useless. No one could hear me. “Daniel!” I screamed again anyway, louder.
Suddenly, a hand clamped over my mouth from behind.
I fought at first, but then a voice hissed in my ear.
“Be quiet,” Cynthia whispered. Her breath smelled sour.
She let go just as suddenly, and I spun around.
There she stood—the woman with the long white hair. Her face was shadowed, her eyes unreadable in the dim candlelight.
“What the hell are you doing?” My chains rattled as I held up my hands. My fingers were slick with sweat and blood.
“I didn’t do this,” she whispered, her voice tight with fury. “The monster did.”
My hands dropped to my lap. I stared at the ground, my brain spinning. Was she going to kill me? Or hold me here? Would Daniel tear this place apart with a jackhammer to find me? Would he be able to in time?
I had to be smart. Think. Work my way out.
Okay.
She believed there was a monster here.
Maybe I could make the monster a shared enemy.
“Quick,” I said, my voice shifting to a softer tone, a more believable one. “Untie me. Before the monster comes.” I nodded toward the strange objects in the room—the broken machines, the bed frame. “This looks like a dangerous place.”
She hesitated, then nodded slowly. Something in her shifted too. Enemy to ally.
“It is,” she said. “This was another of the first Winthrop’s secret rooms. A sick and evil one. He used to bring women down here. Desperate girls from the streets, starving, looking for work. He did horrible things to them. And his blood runs in the Winthrop men.”
“We have to hurry up, then,” I said. “Help me.”
Cynthia pulled a thin piece of metal from somewhere beneath her tattered dress and rushed toward my chains.
“I can’t believe those fools let you stay here during the storm,” she said, sliding the metal into the lock. Her fingers moved fast. “The monster wakes when hell’s gate opens. Even I can’t control him then. The storm gives him powers.”
“Who is the monster?” I asked, my voice low.
She froze. “You really don’t remember anything?”
I shook my head.
A crack of thunder exploded above us. It was louder than anything I’d ever heard before.
The sound tore through the ceiling and rattled the air.
My body jolted as the floor trembled beneath my feet.
The cold metal around my wrists and ankles vibrated against my skin.
It sounded like the world was splitting open, like something ancient had just been unleashed.
Cynthia’s face twisted in fear. Her eyes widened. “Oh, no. He’s here,” she whispered. Then she spun and bolted toward the table.
“Wait!” I begged. “Please don’t leave me!”
“Be quiet!” she snapped before blowing out the candle.
Darkness fell like a curtain.
Not dim. Not dusk.
Pitch black.
No window glow. No slit of light under a door.
Nothing.
Just silence and my heartbeat in my throat.
I realized I’d never truly been in this kind of darkness before.
My eyes widened as if my brain was trying to reassure me: Don’t worry, they’ll adjust, you’ll start to see shapes soon.
But that moment never came. Nothing took form.
No outlines. No shadows. Just a thick, suffocating black that pressed against my face like a blindfold.
Then a creak.
Somewhere close, a door opened.
I stopped breathing. I couldn’t move, couldn’t think.
A shuffle across the stone. Then another. And another.
Heavy. Slow. Followed by strange breathing, just loud enough to make my blood freeze.
Whatever it was, it was coming closer, one step at a time.
My hands fumbled along the ground, searching frantically for a weapon. The floor was cold and rough. I ran my fingers over every inch I could reach.
Anything.
Please, anything.
But there was nothing.
The shuffling stopped—right in front of me.
For a split second, everything stilled. Even the heavy breathing cut off.
Silence.
I felt sick from fear. I was about to throw up.
Then something slammed into me, knocking me flat onto the stone. A body pressed down. Fingers locked around my throat like iron, squeezing.
“Stop!” I choked out, clawing at the hands. My nails scraped skin, but the grip didn’t loosen.
The high-pitched ringing returned, tearing through my skull, shrill and relentless, drowning out everything else.
“No!” I screamed, flinging the word more at the noise than at whoever was crushing my windpipe. “Not now! Not fucking now!”
But it was too late.
The ringing yanked me under like a rip current, dragging me into a flashback before I could brace for it.
I was still being choked, but suddenly, I wasn’t on the floor in the basement. I was upright, standing. The chains were gone. The stone was gone.
I was in the library of the Breakers.
It wasn’t the one I knew, though. It was the same space, but different. It was dim and shadowy. A CD player sat next to the antique bookshelf. Nearby, a landline phone rested on a side table. Its coiled cord was stretched and tangled. It was as if I’d been dropped into the 1990s.
Outside, a storm raged, wild and furious. Wind screamed and rain hammered against the window in rapid bursts. It sounded just as violent as the storm currently hitting the Breakers.
Maybe even worse.
Looking up, I saw him, standing in front of me.
The man from my nightmares. Only this time, he wasn’t blurred. His features were razor clear.
A chill spread through my chest as the realization sank in: He looked just like Daniel. He was almost the spitting image of him.
The man was older, maybe in his forties or fifties, but he had the same deep brown eyes. The same facial bone structure. His nose was broader, but the resemblance was impossible to miss.
He wore a fine tailored suit, polished and dark, as if he’d stepped out of a portrait. Everything about him looked expensive.
And he knew me.
Without a doubt.
“Did you do that?” he bellowed into my face, close enough for spittle to hit my cheek. The rage radiating from him was a living thing.
His hand shook with fury as it clutched a crumpled letter. The paper was yellowed, the words typed unevenly. He shoved it into my face, forcing me back a step.
I looked down at the page.
Dear Police,
Please save us from Michael Winthrop. He is a monster who hurts
I couldn’t finish reading. My vision blurred. My lungs still screamed for air from the real world.
However, somehow, this man terrified me more than the hands strangling me in a basement.
My body trembled uncontrollably.
Just like in my other flashback, his hand flew. The slap cracked against my face, snapping my head to the side.
“DID YOU DO THAT!?” he screamed, his voice raw with rage.
I covered my ears with both hands, my teeth clenched against the sound. Still, I said nothing.
He spun away and stomped toward someone else—someone cowering behind him.
At first, I thought it was Cynthia.
Then he stepped aside, and I saw the child.
A little boy. The same one who’d played hide and seek with me in the garden.
The boy crouched against the wall, his knees tucked to his chest, his hands pressed tightly over his ears. His eyes were squeezed shut. Blood dripped from his mouth. A yellow stain spread across the front of his pants. A puddle of urine pooled beneath him as he shook.
“All right then,” the man growled. “If it wasn’t you, it was your stupid—”
“It was me!” I yelled, the words fighting through the invisible hands at my throat. “It was me!”