Brian Kelly Irons

Prelude

Black Creek, Indiana. 1884

“Father!” she cried again. “Lucy!”
Silence.
Then—A shift. Breathing. She sensed a change. Very close.
A whisper brushed the back of her neck.
From beyond the door came movement—slow footsteps across stone. Soft leather. Deliberate. Waiting.
Metal scraped metal as the lock disengaged. The door shuddered as it was released from within. Marigold stepped back, holding her breath, expecting to see her father—broken, unrecognizable—dragging something terrible behind him.
The door opened, and orange light spilled into the passage, slicing through the darkness like a dagger.
“Marigold?” came a voice from within the light. “What are you doing here?”
“Silas?” she steadied herself. “I could ask you the same thing. Where is father? And where has he taken Lucy?”
Silas Whitaker stepped into the threshold. He was tall, broad-shouldered, built like a man already grown into labor. His clothes were wrong for Sunday—dirt-stained trousers, a worn work shirt without a collar. Something about him felt wrong, as if he were assembled incorrectly. He shot a glance behind him nervously while blocking the entrance.
“Marigold,” he said, placing his hands on her shoulders. Firm, but not unkind. “You can’t be here. You don’t understand what this is. Go back to your room. I will explain everything.”
She looked up at her brother.
At seventeen, he was only a little older—one year, two months. But he always spoke like that mattered more than it should. Still, she knew she was sharper than him. Mother had said so often enough that it had become truth inside the Whitaker house. Mother… She swatted at the thought of their mother—a distraction she refused to tolerate at the moment.
Outwardly, she softened. She nodded slightly, as if surrendering. Silas turned back toward the door. That was when she moved. She shoved into him with all her weight. He stumbled forward, crashing face-first onto the stone floor. Marigold stepped past him.
The room beyond was enormous. A great hearth burned at its center, the stone blackened from years of fire. Heat rolled through the chamber in waves that felt too alive to be natural.
She stopped. Confused. She couldn’t possibly understand what she was looking at. Silas lay behind her, unmoving, one hand pressed to his face. Then came the realization of his stillness. He knew it was his fault that she was here. He allowed her in, to see it, to know. Know, but never understand.
What she saw there took the world from her lungs.
“Lucy…”