Beneath the moon

Chapter Five

Chapter Five: Maggie’s Secret

The diner was closed by nine. Lights out, blinds drawn. A hand-written “CLOSED” sign dangled from the front window, swaying gently in the breeze.

Elena waited in her truck across the street, heart thudding like a second engine beneath her ribs. She didn’t know what she expected from Maggie. A photo? A journal? Maybe another town rumor dressed up as truth?

But something in Maggie’s voice earlier told her this was different.

When the front door creaked open and Maggie stepped out, waving her in, Elena didn’t hesitate.

Inside, the diner smelled like old coffee and fried onions. Everything looked the same as it had ten years ago same red booths, same cracked counter stools, same wall clock stuck at 5:16.

Maggie locked the door behind her and motioned for Elena to follow. Not to the back office. Not to the kitchen.

But through a narrow hallway Elena had never noticed before, hidden behind a fake pantry shelf near the restroom.

At the end of the hallway was a door. Heavy. Steel. Maggie produced a key from a chain around her neck and unlocked it.

“You’re not the first to come back asking questions,” she said, opening the door. “But you’re the first that might survive the answers.”

Elena stepped inside.

It wasn’t a room. It was a bunker. Concrete walls. Metal shelves lined with notebooks, audio cassettes, faded Polaroids, jars of ash and what looked suspiciously like bone fragments. In the center stood a table with a single item resting atop it.

A bloodstained shirt.

Elena stepped closer, stomach twisting. She knew that shirt. She’d helped her mother fold it a hundred times. Her brother’s.

“This was found at the base of Hollow Ridge,” Maggie said. “Six weeks after Mark disappeared. Your father brought it to me. Told me never to show it to anyone. But I think he knew one day you’d come back.”

“Why hide it?” Elena asked, voice barely a whisper.

“Because if people knew what really lived in Ashwood, they’d burn this town to the ground.”

Maggie sat across from her, eyes heavy with years of silence.

“Your father and I weren’t just friends, Elena. We were part of a group Ashwood’s old families. Keepers, we called ourselves. It started back when strange deaths first happened out by Silver Pines. Your grandfather was one of them too.”

“Keepers of what?”

“Balance,” Maggie said. “Protection. Secrets. Call it what you want. There’s a line between this world and whatever’s on the other side of the trees. And sometimes, that line bleeds.”

Elena looked down at the shirt. The blood had dried black. She didn’t cry. She couldn’t.

“Mark went into the woods that night because of what he found in our father’s workshop,” she said quietly. “He saw something. Something he wasn’t supposed to.”

Maggie nodded.

“He was brave. Stupid. But brave. He followed a trail your father had been tracking for years. Thought he could end it himself.”

Elena’s voice cracked. “And he paid for it.”

Maggie didn’t argue. She only said, “He’s not the first. And he won’t be the last.”

They sat in silence for a while. Then Maggie stood and pulled an old, leather-bound ledger from one of the shelves.

She flipped through the pages until she found a name. Then she turned it toward Elena.

“Lachlan Wolfe.”

Elena frowned. “That’s not a real name.”

“It’s real enough in Ashwood. He lives beyond the northern ridge. Keeps to himself. But your father visited him often—always came back shaken. Lachlan’s one of the last true-born. The blood runs deep in his line.”

“What is he?”

Maggie didn’t answer right away.

Instead, she leaned in and whispered, “He’s what comes between man and monster.”

A soft knock echoed through the building.

Elena jolted upright. Maggie turned toward the sound, eyes narrowing.

It came again.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Three slow, deliberate taps coming not from the diner’s front, but from inside the bunker. The far wall. The concrete wall.

They both froze.

Then, from the other side, a voice whispered her name.

“Elena…”

Her blood turned cold.

Mark’s voice.

Maggie grabbed her arm. “Don’t move. Don’t answer it. It’s not him.”

The whisper came again, more urgent this time. “Elena… help me…”

She took a step forward before Maggie yanked her back.

“I said it’s not him!”

Elena’s hands shook. Her brother’s voice still echoed in her head, so familiar it almost hurt.

“What is it?” she whispered.

Maggie’s face was pale, her eyes wide.

“It’s the forest. It remembers. And now it remembers you.”