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“You first.”

He steps forward, reaching for the handle.

And then: a soft creak. I turn.

My father’s eyes are open.

Watching us.

The stairs groan beneath our weight as we descend, each step swallowed by the thick, damp dark pressing in around us. The air cools with every foot we drop, stale and metallic, heavy with something old and rotting beneath the faint tang of earth.

The air shifts the moment we step off the last stair. It’s colder down here. Denser. The kind of cold that’s been settling into the stone for decades, curling beneath the skin, crawling into the marrow. My boots scrape against the floor, rough concrete scattered with debris, bits of old straw, crumbled mortar, something darker staining the seams.

The bulb overhead sways gently on its fraying cord, casting a sickly yellow glow that barely touches the far corners of the cellar. Shadows puddle along the walls, thick and stubborn, swallowing what the light can’t reach.

He halts, eyes wide, scanning the room. “What the hell…” he murmurs.

I watch him as he takes it in.

The walls are lined with shelves, some sagging under stacks of leather-bound books, their spines cracked and flaking with age. His fingers hovering near the cracked spines of old ledgers, thick books with titles faded into nothing. Cobwebs cling between the shelves like veins, trembling in the light breeze stirred by his movement.

Others hold glass jars sealed tight, filled with murky fluids and things floating inside, things too twisted, too malformed to name.

But it’s the far wall that catches him. His eyes track the walls, lined with metal hooks, lengths of chain, belts hung like trophies, a cracked leather strap coiled around a rusting nail. Metal instruments he doesn’t have names for. There’s an order to it, even in the decay. Each tool arranged deliberately, like they were waiting their turn.

His breath hitches. “What… what is this?”

I step past him, my boots echoing faintly against the stone floor. “This is where they made saints,” I say, my voice flat.

“It’s a shrine,” he murmurs.

In the center of the room sits the long bench, scarred and darkened, its surface slick with old varnish, or something else. The straps are still fastened to the legs. Dried stains spider across the wood. Clyde moves slowly toward it, swallowing hard. His gaze flicks to the manacles bolted into the wall behind it, the faint scratches in the stone beneath.

Clyde moves toward it, swallowing hard. I watch him instead of the bench, watch see the exact moment his mind stops being able to explain any of this away to old farming equipment. His gaze flicks to the restraints bolted into the wall behind the bench. The faint scratches in the stone beneath it. I wonder if he’s counting them the way I used to. I wonder if he’s questioning how many hands made them. Should I tell him more than likely, they came from only my hands?

I could stop all of this. He’s smart, he’s already gotten the picture of what this space held for a moment in time. I could turn him around and walk him back up those stairs, never to mention this again. But I don’t. I let him keep taking it in.

My stomach twists. Memories come flashing back.

I see it again. I see me again, small, trembling, wrists pinned beneath those same straps. Leather cutting into skin. The smell of sweat, whiskey, damp concrete. His breath against my ear, his hand pressing down, the low rasp of his voice: “Shut your mouth.” As the pain of my lost innocence rips through me. My throat closes, the air thick with the ghosts of that night. I press my palm against the rough wall, grounding myself in the chill of the stone.

Not now. Don’t fall into it. Not here.

I swallow hard, forcing down the bile rising at the back of my throat. The bench swims back into focus, just wood. Just straps. Just history. But it’s still here. Still waiting.

I move past him, drop to my knees beside the bench. My palms press into the cold earth. “It’s under here,” I say, barely above a whisper.

He kneels beside me. “What is?”

“Proof.” The word scrapes loose, sharp and heavy.

I press my fingers into the dirt, digging with nails already chipped and raw. The soil is stubborn, packed tight by time, but each handful gives way beneath my frantic hands. My breath saws in and out, louder than I mean it to be, echoing against the stone walls.

Clyde crouches closer. “Lydia, let me…”

“No.” I shake my head, flinging dirt aside. “It has to be me.”

The first edge of the wooden box emerges, smeared with mud. My heart stutters.