Read Chapter 25: The Voice Below

The voice came again, muffled but unmistakable—a woman’s cry, thin as wind through a cracked window. Elowen pressed her palms flat against the damp stone wall, her breath fogging in the cold air of the hidden room. The photograph of Lillian and Clara Polwhele lay on the desk beside the typewriter, their faces caught in a laughter that now felt like a lie.

“Help me,” the voice said. “Please. I know you’re there.”

Elowen’s heart slammed against her ribs. The voice wasn’t coming from the wall itself—it was coming from behind it, from somewhere deeper in the cliff. She traced the stones with her fingers until she found a seam, a doorframe disguised by mortar and grime. A thin line of light bled through at the bottom edge.

“Who are you?” Elowen called out, her voice shaking.

A pause. Then, softer: “Elowen.”

The sound of her own name sent ice down her spine. Only one person had ever spoken it with that particular weight—that mixture of love and guilt that had haunted her for years.

“Lillian?” The name cracked in her throat.

“Open the door. There’s a latch, left side, about waist height. It’s rusted—you’ll have to push hard.”

Elowen found the small iron lever buried in the shadow. She shoved it sideways with both hands, and something clicked deep within the wall. The door swung inward, and the smell hit her first—damp, sweat, and the sour tang of a body that hadn’t been washed in days.

Lillian Ash stood in the narrow passage beyond, gaunt and hollow-eyed, her dark hair greasy and matted against her skull. She wore a man’s sweater that hung off her thin frame, and her wrists were raw with red welts. Behind her, the passage stretched into darkness, lit only by a single guttering candle stub on a stone ledge.

“God,” Elowen breathed. “Lillian. You’re—you’re alive.”

Lillian let out a sob that was more air than sound. She stumbled forward, and Elowen caught her, feeling every rib beneath the wool. Her sister trembled violently, her fingers clutching at Elowen’s coat like a drowning woman.

“I didn’t want you to find me like this,” Lillian whispered into Elowen’s shoulder. “I wanted—I had a plan. I was going to come to you properly.”

“You locked me in my room,” Elowen said, pulling back to look at her. The words came out sharper than she intended, edged with betrayal. “You and William—“

“Not William.” Lillian’s head snapped up, fear flashing in her eyes. “William isn’t the one you need to worry about. He’s been trying to protect me.”

“Protect you? He locked the door—“

“He locked *me* in to keep me safe from *her*. And then you ran, and I couldn’t get out, and she took me.” Lillian’s voice dropped to a rasp. “She brought me down here. Three days now. Maybe more. I’ve lost count.”

Elowen’s mind raced, pieces falling into place like stones in a landslide. “Clara’s daughter. The one who watches from the village. Maeve.”

Lillian nodded, a convulsive jerk of her chin. “She’s the one who found me when I first came back to Cornwall. I thought she was helping me. She knew everything—about Father’s threats, about Merrick, about my plan to disappear. She said she wanted to help me tell my story.” A bitter laugh escaped her cracked lips. “She said the world deserved to know what the Ash family had done.”

“The letters,” Elowen said slowly. “The ones I’ve been receiving. The ink match. The drafts in this room. Maeve wrote them.”

“No.” Lillian shook her head, then winced as if the motion hurt. “No, I wrote the first ones. The early ones, years ago. I wrote to you from hiding, trying to explain—but I could never send them. I was too afraid.” She swallowed hard. “Maeve found them. All of them. She kept my drafts, copied the typewriter ribbon, learned my voice. After Mother’s death—Clara’s death—Maeve… she didn’t let the story die.”

Elowen stared at her sister. “So she’s been impersonating you. Writing as you.”

“Writing as all of us.” Lillian’s eyes welled with tears. “She’s obsessed. She thinks she’s finishing her mother’s work. Clara kept a record of everything that happened at the manor—every secret, every sin. Maeve believes she has the right to control how the truth comes out. She tried to make me tell the story her way, over and over, in that room where you found the typewriter. And when I wouldn’t—when I said I wanted to come to you honestly—she locked me in here.”

A sound echoed from somewhere deeper in the passage. Footsteps, slow and deliberate, approaching.

Lillian’s face drained of what little color remained. “She’s coming. She checks on me every few hours. You have to go. Go back through the room, take the second exit, run to the manor and get Merrick—“

“I’m not leaving you.”

“Elowen, you don’t understand what she’s capable of. She has keys to every door in this cliff. She knows the tunnels better than anyone alive.” Lillian grabbed her sister’s forearm with surprising strength. “She wants you here. That’s the real reason you’ve been getting those letters. She didn’t want me to tell you the truth—she wanted to lure you down here herself. She thinks *you’re* the one who should write it.”

Elowen’s blood ran cold. “Write what?”

“The story. The final chapter. Her mother’s masterpiece.” Lillian’s voice broke. “Clara spent thirty years observing this family, recording everything. She saw Merrick’s father as a villain and Merrick as a fool for loving me. But the ending—she never got to write the ending. She died before she knew how it would all turn out.” She looked past Elowen, eyes full of dread. “Maeve thinks the ending should be justice. Her version of justice. And she thinks the only way to get it right is to make you tell it.”

The footsteps grew closer. A shadow pooled at the far end of the passage, cast by someone carrying a lantern.

“She’s not going to let either of us go, Elowen.” Lillian’s fingers tightened. “She knows how to fake every death this family has ever seen. That’s what Clara taught her. That’s what she did with the body in my grave—she was the asylum keeper’s daughter’s contact, the one who arranged everything. She’s been waiting for this moment for years.”

Elowen pulled her sister deeper into the hidden room, back through the false door, and pressed the latch closed. The stone clicked softly into place.

On the other side, the footsteps stopped.

Then a voice—calm, almost maternal—drifted through the stone. “Lillian, darling. I know you have company. The door was unlocked.”

Elowen pressed her back against the wall, her arm wrapped tight around her sister. Lillian was shaking, her breath ragged in her throat.

“The manor,” Elowen whispered. “If I can get to the second exit, we can make it to Merrick before she—“

“She’s blocked the second exit,” Lillian said. “She knows you found this place. As soon as you left the room above, she sealed the way out. We’re trapped down here.”

The voice came again, closer now, pressing against the stone like a second heartbeat. “Elowen. I know you can hear me. I’ve waited so long to meet you properly.”

Elowen closed her eyes. In her pocket, she could feel the edge of the photograph—Lillian and Clara, heads together, the kind of intimacy she hadn’t understood until now.

Clara hadn’t just been watching the family.

Clara had been telling them a story. And her daughter was determined to finish it—with or without the truth.