16. Ryan #2
I go to the little utility cupboard beside the back entrance and find the toolbox right where I left it. Camille had found me holding the hammer yesterday afternoon, taken one look at my face, and said, “No.”
That had been the entire conversation.
It’s my property, so…
I carry the hammer back over to the section of wall, then stand there. I decide to start high enough above the baseboard to avoid anything running low, but not so high that I somehow attack a structural beam.
My heart is beating stupidly fast as I lift my arm and tap the wall lightly. Nothing happens, which is honestly a little disappointing, so then I put a bit more weight into it. This time, a thin crack appears, a spiderweb of fractures. Plaster flakes drift down like pale snow.
My breath catches. Camille is going to lose his fucking mind.
I swing again, this time with intention.
A chunk of plaster shatters off, clattering across the tile.
Gray dust puffs outward. The hollow knock behind it sounds like a distant drum.
I press the tip of the hammer into the gap and pry.
An older layer of mortar peeks through, rough and crumbly, darker than the fresh white surface.
I frown. This is no shallow cavity. I strike the mortar—tap, tap, tap, then a confident whack that pushes a piece inward.
A rush of cooler air brushes my knuckles, untangling the warm kitchen breeze.
I jerk back, goosebumps racing across my arms. The musty scent of enclosed stone slips through the crack.
“Oh my God,” I whisper.
My hammer rests against the wall as I shine my phone’s flashlight into the widening hole.
At first, I see nothing but jagged edges.
Then the beam stretches beyond the broken mortar, across a field of darkness, and lands on a second wall, several feet away.
My breath hitches so sharply I taste dust. This is real.
Holy shit.
I bang my shoulder against the cabinet, cursing under my breath at my clumsiness. Pain flares, but I barely notice. My mind pings between panic and exhilaration. I glance at my phone, feeling the tug of responsibility—should I call him?
No. I need to see this room first. Then I’ll call him.
I set the phone down, grip the hammer again, and begin to widen the opening.
This time I work more precisely, knocking away brittle mortar in measured strokes.
Fragments scatter on the floor. Dust coats my fingertips and becomes caked beneath my nails.
Fifteen minutes pass in hammer-strike echo and flake of debris.
The hole swells to the size of my palm, then an open maw.
My chest tightens with a mixture of triumph and dread.
I make the hole large enough to fit my head, then my whole body, prying at the edges until the old stone and plaster widen into a rough tunnel.
My hands are shaking so badly I nearly drop the hammer twice.
I cough, the dust clawing at the back of my throat.
If Camille were here, he would be yelling at me about inhaling asbestos or falling through a floor joist, but he isn’t. It is just me and the pulse of my own heart beating in my ears.
I wedge my shoulders through the opening, scraping my skin on the raw lip of the stone.
I am not claustrophobic—thank God—but I am sweating and slightly dizzy as I worm my way forward, feet scrabbling for purchase.
My phone’s flashlight bounces erratically off the rough interior, illuminating a stone passage that’s maybe a meter deep, then a sharp left turn into darkness.
I wriggle the rest of the way through, shoes slipping on a layer of fine powder. For a second I just crouch there, catching my breath, half convinced I’m about to find a nest of venomous spiders or worse, a mummified body waiting for me like a final fuck you from the Legrand bloodline.
I sweep the phone’s light. The space is narrow but tall, maybe a meter wide, running parallel to the kitchen wall. Mortar dust cakes the floor. The air inside smells ancient, a mineral tang overlying a faint undertone of something organic and rotten.
And there’s nothing here.
Not a coffin, not a chest of gold. I almost laugh, a ragged sound that echoes off the stone ceiling. Of course, it would be empty. Of course, after all this, there would be nothing left but dust and disappointment.
Except.
Except there is a faint discoloration in the rear corner, a patch of damp stone that looks darker than the rest. I approach on hands and knees, shining the beam low. The stones here are uneven, two of them sunken as if the mortar has caved beneath.
I press at the edges. The first one doesn’t budge, but the second wobbles just enough to suggest something underneath. I hook my fingers into the gap and pull. The stone grates up, heavy and wet, sending a trickle of black liquid down my wrist.
My stomach turns, but I keep pulling until the slab clears the hole. Beneath it is a shallow cavity, maybe the size of a shoebox, lined in black plastic sheeting that looks too modern for the rest of the construction.
My mind goes blank for a second. I blink, then reach in. My fingers close on a rectangle—some kind of notebook, wrapped in double layers of Ziploc. I lift it out, set it on the stone ledge, then reach back in.
A battered envelope comes next, followed by a slim plastic case like the kind you’d store old photographs in. The envelope is sealed, the paper discolored and brittle.
I stare at the trio of items for a long moment, my heart pounding so hard my ears ache.
For several seconds, I don’t touch anything.
I just kneel there in the dust with my phone clenched in one hand, staring at the three objects arranged on the stone ledge as if one of them might suddenly explain itself.
The notebook is the most obvious place to start.
It is thicker than I first realized, bound in faded green cloth beneath its protective plastic, the corners softened from use.
Something has been written across the front in black ink, but the plastic is cloudy enough that I can’t make out more than the shape of handwriting.
The slim plastic case is equally tempting. I can see pale rectangles stacked inside—photographs, probably, maybe documents folded down to fit.
But it’s the envelope that bothers me. I don’t know why. It is the least impressive of the three—an old cream-colored thing, yellow at the edges, the paper faintly mottled with age. There is no name on the front, no address, nothing to indicate who it was intended for.
Except when I pick it up, something shifts inside.
I freeze.
That is not paper.
I tilt the envelope carefully. Something small and hard slides from one end to the other with a muted scrape.
“Oh, what the fuck?” My voice sounds strangely loud inside the narrow space.
I turn the envelope over.
The flap has been sealed with what looks like ordinary adhesive, though age has dried it until the edges are beginning to lift.
For a second, I consider preserving it exactly as it is because Camille has apparently infected me with some respect for evidence handling, but then I remember I already smashed through a wall with a hammer and crawled into a hidden compartment without telling anyone.
The chain of custody is fucked.
I slide one fingernail carefully beneath the loosened corner. The paper resists, then gives with a brittle whisper. I stop breathing as I peel the flap back. Inside is a folded sheet of paper and something black. I tip the envelope and watch as a tiny rectangular object drops into my palm.
“A USB?”
It’s an old flash drive, the kind I remember teachers using when I was a kid, thick compared to the newer ones. The metal connector is hidden beneath a removable cap that looks like it has been taken off and replaced a thousand times.
No label, no markings at all.
I stare at it.
My grandfather sealed a USB drive inside a wall.
My grandfather, who fled France in 2003 after three researchers disappeared from the private estate owned by his murderer boyfriend.
A USB drive hidden with a notebook and photographs.
My skin goes cold despite the stale heat trapped beneath my shirt. “Okay.” I swallow thickly, then cough at the dryness in my throat. Stupid dust.
I set the drive carefully on top of the notebook, then unfold the paper.
It crackles as I open it, and the handwriting takes up the entire page, compact and slanted, written in dark ink that has bled slightly into the fibers over time.
It’s in fucking French.
I stare at the first line.
Si vous lisez ceci, c’est que…
I know vous.
I know lisez.
I think? Maybe. Actually, no, I don’t.
I squint harder, as if insulting the handwriting with my eyes will force fluency into my brain.
“Si vous… li… sez…”
I recognize ceci. Possibly?
The next line contains Henri’s name. That I recognize immediately.
Henri Voclain ne doit jamais…
“Ne doit jamais…”
Never?
Something never.
Great.
Excellent.
I have successfully translated three words out of an entire fucking page.
There are several other names scattered through the text, some familiar from Camille’s explanation yesterday, others meaningless to me. Le Mas appears more than once. So does preuves.
I stare at that one. “Proof?”
I’m pretty sure preuve means proof. Maybe.
I turn the page over, only to find more of my grandfather’s script. Fuck. There is no universe where I am going to sit inside a secret room for two hours manually typing this into a translation app, one tortured sentence at a time.
Then I remember my phone can translate images.
“Thank fucking God for technology.”
I take several photographs of the page, adjusting the flashlight until the shadows from my hands stop falling across the writing. It comes back with several chunks of nonsense because apparently Grandpa’s handwriting is difficult even for artificial intelligence.
I retake it, flatter against the stone. I watch the little loading circle spin as the app processes for several seconds.
Then English replaces the French, and I start to read.
To whoever finds this,