Page 55 of Castle

I stayed put for a few minutes in case they were still there, listening against the door. I was trying to avoid trouble.

If Devin and Dayana wanted to plot Castle’s murder, why would they be so careless and leave the door open? There were a lot of servants in the house who would eavesdrop, and word would certainly get out.

Unless...

They were trying to bait me with it.

I pushed the inner closet paneling a little and noticed a small gap between them. When I pushed it harder, the entire thing just fell apart. There was a tunnel ahead of me, much similar to the one that I’d been to before.

This mansion had a lot of secret tunnels and passageways, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me, but something about this darkened passage made little sense.

They installed the entry to it through the old closet, which honestly looked out of place in a big room.

There was old furniture littering around the place, some vintage chairs, tables carved out of expensive wood, and a four-poster bed fit for a king. Because a house staff maintained the room by dusting and cleaning it, anyone finding the room wouldn’t suspect the closet’s inner paneling concealed a secret passage. It was meant to look like any other old furniture. The secret rooms or passages hid in plain sight.

I stepped from the closet and onto the narrow dingy passage that was pitch black. With shaky hands, I pulled out my phone and used its flashlight to navigate my way through it.

An unsettling feeling crept into my skin. I knew I was making the same huge mistake I’d done before by walking right into dangerous territory. If I was any smarter, I should have turned and walked back like I hadn’t noticed this, but I couldn’t.

Maybe it was the curiosity burning like a flame inside me. I wanted to play Sherlock Holmes. Or maybe it was the thrill to dig deeper into the family’s dirty secrets.

The passage turned narrower and narrower, dirt matted the floor. The walls that once had some nice wallpaper were now yellow and peeling. You wouldn’t even guess this place was inside the mansion. It was so dank and dirty.

At the end of the way, there was a steep set of stairs. I almost lost my footing. I wondered if one of the Mad Montgomery ancestors who had this built wanted unsuspecting people to run down this passage and fall down these stairs, possibly breaking their necks and end up dead.

When I took the stairs down, it hit a strange dead end. The stairs just ended with a wall, nothing after that. The Montgomerys were sick, but they were also trolls.

I climbed back up and started making my way towards the entrance. I needed to get back to Castle before he noticed me gone. He usually wrecked havoc if he didn’t find me.

I almost passed through when in my peripheral vision; I saw a tiny hole in the wall. I wouldn’t have noticed it in the dark if I hadn’t been so vigilant.

I peeped through it.

There were four people in the room, seated on a wooden chair—all of them staring in four different directions, facing the inner circle. I poked the hole in the wall, and the cement began falling off. That’s all I needed to get a clearer image.

The people were bound, and the chairs were positioned at the center of a large red pentagram. Similar symbols were painted on the walls, each one corresponding to the person seated in front of it.

They weren’t even people.

These were dead, decaying bodies, preserved like they were still alive.

A symbol marked each of their foreheads. I didn’t recognize the other bodies, but I knew one of them—Ollie the stable boy that Castle had killed and I’d helped him to bury.

Someone knew what we’d done and had dug up the body from the ground. The body that had a missing head because Castle had smashed it. They stitched a goat’s head onto the body in place of Ollie’s head.

I fought back the urge to hurl up my breakfast. I felt sick to the pit of my stomach, but I continued to watch. Tiny candles were lit in each of the circles.

I needed to leave right now!

I backed away from the wall and sneaked back into the wardrobe. Still shaking, I placed the wooden paneling back, and it clicked right into place.

I couldn’t concentrate on anything for the entire day. I kept seeing that horrible imagery of the four dead bodies in a circle, staring blankly ahead.

My appetite was completely lost by dinner time. I couldn’t eat the lamb chops without thinking of the goat’s head stitched onto Ollie’s head. Devin eyed me curiously, but didn’t say a word.

It was hard to read his expressions as he’d mastered the art of keeping his expressions poker face. If he knew I’d listened to their conversation, he didn’t let it show. Same with Dayana.

They spoke softly about business. Chandler was busy shoveling the food down his throat like he was an escaped prisoner who’d just discovered quality food. Theo, as usual, looked bored and texted under the table.

---