Chapter 5 - The Blue House on Cedar Street
Aunt Sarah was standing on the porch with a yellow plastic watering can when the twin girls burst through the hedge gate, their clothes torn, covered in white plaster dust and red brick powder.
"Lily! Emma!" Sarah dropped the watering can, the water splashing over her boots as she ran down the wooden steps. "What happened to you? What is that on your hands?"
Lily collapsed onto the bottom step, her chest heaving so hard she couldn't form words.
Emma pulled her phone out, her fingers covered in dirt, and shoved it into Sarah’s hand. "Call... call the State Police... not the town police... the State Police..."
"What are you talking about?" Sarah asked, her face turning pale as she looked at the blood on Lily’s cheek—a light scrape from the broken dormer glass. "Did someone attack you?"
"In the house," Lily gasped, reaching into her backpack with hands that wouldn't stop shaking. She pulled out the green leather journal. "Julian Vance... he’s alive... he’s chained inside the attic wall..."
Sarah froze. The name seemed to strike her like a physical blow.
"Julian Vance?" Sarah whispered. "Julian Vance died in a boat accident in 1994. It was in all the papers."
"He didn't die!" Emma shouted, grabbing Sarah’s arm. "His brother Arthur has him locked in a three-foot room behind the chimney! He tried to shoot us, Sarah! He had a gun!"
Sarah looked at her two nieces—the dust, the blood, the terrified truth shining in their identical brown eyes—and her composure transformed instantly into the cold, protective fury that had kept them safe since their parents died six years ago.
She pulled her cell phone from her sweater pocket and dialed a direct ten-digit number.
"Captain Miller," Sarah said into the receiver, her voice dropping into a register the girls had never heard before. "This is Sarah Carter. I need a full tactical team at Hillrest Manor right now. Arthur Vance is on the property with a firearm, and he has a hostage."
She listened for three seconds, her eyes fixed on the green journal in Lily’s lap.
"No, Captain," Sarah said coldly. "Not the local precinct. Bring the state troopers. And bring an ambulance with bolt cutters."
She hung up, looked down at Lily, and reached for the green journal.
"Where did you get this?" Sarah asked softly.
"It was on the floor beside his chain," Lily said.
Sarah opened the leather cover.
On the front flyleaf, written in faded black fountain-pen ink, was a date: October 14th, 1992.
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Below it, in a small, precise handwriting, was a single sentence:
If anyone finds this book, know that my brother did not kill me for money. He killed me because I found what our father buried beneath the cellar floor.
