Chapter 2 — What Lived Beneath the Cabin

They did not eat breakfast.

Thomas carried the baking dish outside and buried it beneath the snow.

They watched until the dish disappeared beneath the white surface.

Then they returned to the cabin and locked the door.

For nearly an hour, nothing happened.

Eventually Evelyn began to believe they had imagined it.

Fear could make strange things seem real.

The storm could make the cabin creak.

The berries could have shifted because of trapped air.

There had to be an explanation.

Then they heard the scratching again.

This time it came from beneath the kitchen.

Thomas grabbed an axe.

They moved the table aside.

Underneath it was an old wooden floorboard that neither of them remembered seeing before.

Thomas drove the axe into the boards.

The wood cracked.

Beneath it was darkness.

And a narrow stone staircase.

Evelyn stared at it.

“This cabin doesn’t have a basement.”

Thomas looked at her.

“It does now.”

They descended.

The air grew colder with every step.

At the bottom, they discovered a chamber carved directly into the mountain.

Old shelves lined the walls.

On those shelves were dozens of glass jars.

Each contained something different.

Dried flowers.

Black seeds.

Bones.

Strange roots.

And dozens of jars filled with dark purple berries.

Evelyn picked up one of the labels.

The handwriting was faded, but she could still read it.

BLACKBERRY — DO NOT BAKE.

Her blood ran cold.

Thomas opened another jar.

Inside was a collection of handwritten pages.

The first page had been written nearly eighty years earlier.

The cabin’s previous owner had described discovering a wild blackberry bush growing behind the mountain.

The berries looked ordinary.

But anyone who ate them began hearing voices beneath the ground.

According to the journal, the berries were not plants.

They were eggs.

Something beneath the mountain had been producing them for generations.

The previous owner had tried to destroy the bushes.

He failed.

Instead, he discovered one strange rule.

The berries could not survive outside the mountain for long.

Unless they were baked.

Heat awakened them.

Evelyn dropped the journal.

“We baked them.”

Thomas looked toward the stairs.

A low vibration passed through the stone beneath their feet.

Then came a sound.

A child’s voice.

Very faint.

“Let me out.”

Evelyn’s eyes filled with tears.

“Did you hear that?”

Thomas nodded.

The voice came again.

“Please.”

They followed the sound deeper into the chamber.

At the end of a narrow tunnel stood an enormous stone wall.

Purple roots covered its surface.

They pulsed slowly.

Like veins.

Thomas raised the axe.

“Don’t,” Evelyn whispered.

But it was too late.

He struck the wall.

A crack appeared.

Something behind it breathed.

Then dozens of tiny hands pressed against the stone from the other side.

Evelyn screamed.

The hands vanished.

And the voice changed.

It was no longer a child’s voice.

It was Thomas’s voice.

“Evelyn.”

She turned.

Thomas was standing beside her.

But his face had gone completely pale.

Behind him, in the darkness, something was crawling toward them.