The Inheritance

Chapter Eighteen - Searching for Clues

The next morning, Mike woke up feeling more stable than he had in days. It wasn't that the shadows were gone—he could still sense them, watching from the edges of his vision—but Sara's presence had anchored him. She hadn't judged him, hadn't dismissed his fears as irrational. She had listened and stayed by his side when he needed it most. Now, with her help, maybe he could find a way to confront the darkness that haunted him.

Sara had stayed the night, sleeping on the couch. When Mike stepped into the living room, he found her already awake, sitting cross-legged with a notebook in front of her, scribbling down something with intense focus. She glanced up when she saw him and smiled softly.

"Morning," she said. "I was just thinking. You mentioned that your grandfather went through this, right? Maybe there's a pattern—something we're missing."

Mike nodded, his chest tightening at the thought of his family's history. "Yeah, it's been happening for generations. My grandfather, my great-grandfather... even my mom has had her own struggles."

Sara pushed the notebook toward him, revealing a list of questions and possible connections. "We need to figure out why it's happening and why it's tied to your family. You said Abraham Dunn thought destroying the house would help, but... maybe there's more to it. Maybe it's not just about the house."

Mike sat beside her, running a hand through his hair. "There's the journal my grandfather left. He wrote about Dunn and the shadows. But there's still a lot we don't know. I think we need to dig deeper into Dunn's life. Something's missing."

Sara nodded. "Then let's start there. There's got to be records, archives—maybe even people who still remember him. And we should look into your family's past too. If this has been happening for generations, there might be clues about how it all began."

The day passed quickly as Mike and Sara dug into the available records, piecing together fragments of Abraham Dunn's life and trying to connect the dots between the haunting and Mike's family. They visited the town's library again, combing through old newspapers and historical archives, looking for anything that might explain Dunn's connection to the shadows.

It wasn't easy. Most of what they found about Dunn was scarce—just like before, he seemed to be a ghost in the town's history, disappearing without a trace after his strange disappearance was reported. However, they did uncover a curious detail: there had been talk among the locals at the time about strange occurrences at Dunn's property. Neighbors had reported seeing strange figures lurking around the house at night, and several people had claimed they heard whispers in the wind whenever they passed by his land.

"Look at this," Sara said, pointing to an old clipping from a local newspaper. "It mentions that Dunn was obsessed with something he found near the house—a place he called 'the source.'"

Mike leaned closer, reading the article. It was brief, almost an afterthought in a column about the local rumors surrounding Dunn's disappearance. But the mention of "the source" intrigued him.

"The source? What do you think that is?" Mike asked, his mind racing.

Sara frowned. "I don't know, but it sounds like Dunn thought it was connected to whatever was haunting him. Maybe it's a physical place, or maybe it's something else—something that started all of this."

The idea that there might be a specific location tied to the haunting made Mike's skin crawl. What if the source wasn't just tied to Dunn, but to his family as well? Could this place be the origin of the curse that had plagued them for so long?