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I start to dig.

My fingers claw through the earth, wet, gritty, reluctant to give. The dirt clings to my skin like it’s trying to keep its secrets buried. My breath comes fast now. Furious. I want bone. I want cloth. I want names. I want the truth.

Behind me, the floor creaks. I picture him upstairs, rotting in his chair. Sweating. Gasping. Straining to hear every scrape of my nails through the dirt. Wondering what I’ll find.

Let him panic.

Because I’m not the child anymore. I’m not the sacrifice. And I’m not afraid of what’s down here. They should’ve been afraid of me.

A sharp edge bites into my fingertip.

I hiss, instinctively pulling back. A bead of blood wells up, bright against the dirt. I brush the soil away with my knuckles, heart ticking louder in my ears.

Something wooden.

The corner juts out from the packed earth. The surface is dry, splintered, the grain warped from time and weight. My breath catches.

It’s a box.

Metal banding around the edges, thick and dulled with rust. Like the one upstairs… but bigger. Twice the size, at least. Heavier. Older. Like it’s been waiting.

I dig faster, ignoring the sting in my fingers. Dirt cakes beneath my nails. I claw and scrape until the box gives way with a groan and rocks loose.

It takes all my weight to pull it out. I collapse back onto my ass, dragging the thing with me. The lid is streaked dark, old water stains maybe.

The air shifts around me. Cold. Close.

I brace the box against my legs and grip the lid. The hinges resist, stuck fast with years of disuse, until something pops, metal shrieking in protest.

It opens.

And I stare.

Photographs. VHS tapes. Journals. Newspaper clippings.

A shrine built from silence and shame.

My stomach twists hard, like it’s trying to fold in on itself.

I reach for the photographs first. The edges are damp, curling with age. They stick together, thick with mildew. I peel them apart, breath shallow, hands shaking.

The oldest ones are curling at the edges, sepia-toned and stiff, paper thick like it came from another era. A girl is in a baggy smock of a dress. Her hair pinned back, eyes the same hollowness as the rest of them. Further down the stack, the color shifts, faded reds and yellows, Polaroid squares with white borders gone soft and brittle. Then glossy drugstore prints, colors too bright, too saturated, a girl in nothing but her nightgown, staring at nothing. And new the bottom, newer still, the photos are crisp and digital sharp, printed on cheap photo paper with no grain at all. These pictures are proof this has been going on far longer than I suspected.

Decades. Not years. Decades

So many little girls. All frozen in stiff, uncomfortable poses, pale, blank, posed in ways no child should ever be. Each photo is a quiet scream. A frozen echo of something stolen.

And then: Cindy. Clyde’s sister.

Twelve, maybe. Her dress wrinkled, her arms limp at her sides.

But it’s her eyes that catch me. They’re hollow, empty, like she’d already checked out long before the shutter clicked.

My heart lurches against my ribs.

It’s not surprise that hits me.

It’s recognition. A sick, sharp confirmation of what I already knew and couldn’t say out loud. I press my thumb hard into the photo’s edge, willing it to steady me. But the cold keeps spreading.