Forces Beyond The Grave

5.6

Lennox reminisced on collapsing on the manor floor with exhaustion. She could feel the emptiness in her stomach after not eating for so long, cutting the feeling off when it became too real.

"The only place I hadn't searched was the basement, I think I was just scared of going down there and not coming back up. When I got down there the doors closed on me so I was trapped, I had a flashlight but no phone because it was above ground, and while I was down there I found the photograph, it'd fallen out of one of the books I'd tossed. But the black mist came around, like in my dream, and it made the hole in the ground, that Kaila fell down, it tried to drag me too. I resisted as long as I could, but I had the riddle in my head, about being hidden beneath. I thought maybe whatever I was meant to find was down that hole, so I worked up to it and jumped down myself. It led to a cave underneath the manor, I don't know how far down we were, but it was complete darkness, and I could hear someone else's breathing. I thought it was impossible but when I spoke, I got a reply, it was Kaila. She was locked in a cage. Somehow the room was getting lighter by the minute and I found something to break the cage open with, so then we had the problem of trying to find a way out of the cave. By that point the cave with light enough for us to see the smoke, and when I looked back up the tunnel to the basement I saw the fire. We got lucky, there was a trap door we managed to break open, it was our only hope, and it came out across the field from the manor, so we'd escaped right before the place collapsed. The whole thing, it just burnt down. We figured it wouldn't be long before somebody saw the smoke so we had to get out of town, and we disappeared. I sent you the picture because I knew I wouldn't be back for a while and I thought you'd have more luck than me figuring out who she was. I thought about texting, or calling. But Kaila said that just to be safe we shouldn't contact anyone, and honestly it was over. I wanted it to stay that way. If you were all safe then I had no problem staying away."