Chapter 6: Beneath the Ashes
1339 Words
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Clara held the letter until the paper softened under her grip, worn by the salt of her tears and the weight of the moment. It was Ethan’s voice, quiet but defiant, echoing through the years with clarity she hadn’t expected — and a pain that sliced deeper than any memory.
He hadn’t fallen.
He hadn’t wandered too close to the edge.
He’d been silenced.
And somewhere between the pages, between the ink and the fear, Ethan had known that no one would believe him — except her.
Clara pressed the letter flat on the table and whispered, “I believe you now.”
---
The next morning, Clara drove out of town.
She needed air, distance, and space from Fairhaven’s suffocating stillness — the kind that made lies feel like lullabies and truth like poison. She followed the winding roads out past the river and through the skeletal remains of what once was a thriving logging town. Now it was just rusted railways and ghosted windows.
She parked outside a small diner. Not for coffee. For someone.
She was waiting for Lena Marlowe.
The girl who had once lived next door. The girl who, at ten, had been Ethan’s shadow.
And the girl who had vanished from Clara’s life the moment Ethan died.
Daniel had found her — now a nurse at a rehab center on the outskirts. He’d left her a message, no details, just Clara’s name and a request to meet.
Lena arrived just before ten.
She looked different — older, of course, and thinner, with sharp eyes that scanned the diner like she expected ghosts to be hiding in the booths. Her blonde hair was clipped short now. Her expression was wary.
But when she saw Clara, her face softened into something else. Not warmth. Recognition.
“Hey,” Lena said, sliding into the seat across from her.
Clara nodded. “Hey.”
There was a silence between them — the kind only shared by people who remember the same horror but from different angles.
“I’m sorry about not coming to the funeral,” Lena said eventually. “My mom didn’t let me. Said it would mess with my head.”
Clara swallowed. “Did it?”
Lena looked out the window. “It already had.”
---
They sat in the booth for over an hour.
Clara told Lena everything — the notebook, the shack, the drawings, the letter. She didn’t sugarcoat anything. And Lena didn’t flinch.
When Clara finished, Lena whispered, “I knew he was scared.”
“What do you mean?”
Lena fiddled with her napkin. “A few weeks before he died, Ethan came to my house. He was crying. Said he saw something in the woods. Said it was your dad, but not your dad. That he was... acting weird. Saying weird things. Talking to someone who wasn’t there.”
Clara’s heart thudded.
“I told him it was just his imagination,” Lena went on. “He got mad. Said I’d see. That he was going to catch it on tape.”
Clara looked up. “Do you remember where he said he saw it?”
Lena hesitated. “Near the back of the property. The trees behind the old shack. Said he wasn’t allowed back there. That your dad would get angry.”
---
After leaving the diner, Clara drove straight to Daniel’s place.
He wasn’t surprised to see her. He opened the door with a mug in hand and his phone pressed to his shoulder.
“I’m off in five,” he mouthed, then turned his attention back to his call.
Clara stepped inside and waited by the window. She couldn’t stop thinking about what Lena had said. Ethan had known. And he’d gone back again and again, trying to prove something no one had believed.
When Daniel finally ended the call, she turned to him. “We need to go back.”
“To the shack?” he asked.
She nodded. “I missed something. I know I did.”
---
They returned that afternoon.
The fog had rolled in heavier than usual, curling through the trees like breath.
The shack loomed in the gloom, still half-buried in weeds and silence. Daniel went in first, flashlight sweeping.
Clara followed with Ethan’s compass in her hand.
She walked straight to the corner where the coat had been, where the rope had hung loose, frayed like an old secret. But her eyes scanned higher this time. Toward the rafters.
There.
A sliver of wood slightly askew — part of the beam above.
“Help me up,” she said.
Daniel braced her as she reached upward, pulling at the board.
It gave way with a creak.
Behind it: a plastic cassette case wrapped in old cloth.
Clara’s breath caught.
She opened it.
Inside — a tape.
A label written in child’s handwriting:
> “The night. Don’t forget.”
---
They didn’t wait.
Back at Daniel’s, he pulled out an old tape player. After a brief struggle with batteries, the machine whirred to life.
Clara sat on the edge of the couch, heart pounding in her ears.
Daniel pressed play.
At first: static.
Then a quiet shuffle. Breathing.
Then Ethan’s voice.
> “Okay. I’m hiding now. He doesn’t know I brought the tape. I think he’s in the woods again. He talks to something. I don’t know what it is. It’s not a person. It doesn’t answer like people do. It’s... it’s like it’s inside him, too.”
Clara’s stomach twisted.
> “He said I had to forget. That I saw something I shouldn’t have. But I don’t want to forget. I won’t. Clara says memories are art. That even bad ones matter. So I’m going to remember. Even if it hurts.”
A branch cracked in the background.
Then a new voice.
Muffled. Deep. Familiar.
Her father.
> “Ethan? Are you out here again? You know you’re not supposed to be here.”
> “Why are you talking to the trees, Dad?”
A pause.
> “Go home.”
> “Who’s ‘him’? You said ‘he told you what to do.’ Who’s he?”
Silence.
Then suddenly — footsteps. Fast. The sound of the tape recorder being jostled.
Then...
Nothing.
Static.
---
Daniel turned it off.
Clara stared at the machine, hollow.
“He knew,” she whispered.
Daniel nodded. “And someone made sure he never told.”
---
That night, Clara confronted her mother.
Anna sat in the kitchen, peeling apples like nothing had changed, like the house wasn’t shaking from the inside.
Clara placed the cassette on the table.
“I know,” she said simply.
Anna looked at the tape.
Then at her daughter.
She didn’t deny it.
Instead, she said, “I was scared.”
“Of him?”
Anna nodded.
“Why didn’t you stop him?”
Anna looked away. “Because I didn’t know who he was anymore.”
---
There was no resolution.
Not yet.
Just pieces — shattered and sharp.
But Clara had something now she hadn’t had before: the truth.
Or at least part of it.
And the rest?
She would dig. Tear the roots out one by one if she had to.
Because Ethan deserved more than silence.
Clara sat on the porch that night, Ethan’s compass in one hand, the cassette in the other. The wind was soft now, brushing her skin like a memory instead of a warning. Somewhere out there, her brother had stood with this same fear in his chest, hoping someone would hear him. And now, after all the years of silence, Clara had heard him. Truly heard him.
She looked up at the stars — dim behind the clouds but still stubbornly present — and whispered, “I won’t let them erase you again.” The promise didn’t feel like vengeance. It felt like love. Like healing. Like something sacred taking shape in the space where grief used to live.
- Writer
