My Husband Dies Every Midnight

The Hand Below

Elena screamed as the hand closed around her ankle.

For a moment, she couldn't breathe. She couldn't think. Nathan's grip snapped around her waist and he pulled her back before the thing that lurked in the darkness could drag her into the hole.

"Hold on!" he shouted.

The hand below was not human. The fingers were too long, too spidery, the skin slick with something black and viscous. It drew her toward the crack in the floor, forcing her to slide forward inch by agonizing inch.

"Hold on, hold on!" Maris was right behind her, her eyes locked on Elena's. "Nathan, get her off!"

Thomas lunged for the broken slab, shoving his shoulder against it with all his might. The dust from the crack spilled into the room as the chamber groaned in protest. The stone had shifted and cracked open, and something within it was waiting for its chance to come out.

Tomas stood in the doorway, the rain falling heavily over his shoulders. The look on his face was unreadable as he watched the struggle unfold before him. He did not try to help. He did not move at all.

"Elena!" Lila cried, taking careful steps backward from the edge of the slab. Camera in hand, she watched the fight between Nathan and the hand gripping Elena's ankle with wide, horrified eyes.

Nathan gritted his teeth and shoved against the slab, forcing Elena to slide across the stone floor. Her body jerked violently as his hands caught her, and the cold fingers that had been coiled around her ankle loosened their grip.

Not because it wanted to.

Something below had drawn the hand away.

A strange sensation coursed through Elena's veins as the blackened fingers vanished back into the darkness. Her knees buckled and she landed heavily on her backside, slipping into Nathan's waiting arms. She gasped, her lungs burning, her whole body feeling as if it had been on fire. Nathan held her close, his breath coming in short, shallow bursts against her hair.

"Are you hurt?" he asked, his voice strained. "Elena?"

She gave a small, pained shake of her head. "N-no."

Something was happening below them.

Not a sound, but a feeling. As if something wet and delighted was writhing in the dark.

The creature in the pit raised its head, letting out a sound that was almost a laugh. White eyes blinked from beneath the mass of blackened rags that covered its body. Thin limbs trembled as it moved. Its chest rose and fell with steady, deliberate breaths.

The child at the edge of the crack had stopped crying.

And was now smiling.

Elena stared at the two figures in the pit and felt her whole world stop.

The memory surged at the edges of her skull, clawing at the tight space behind her eyes, begging to be let in.

The lost years. She could see them all now. The room. The door. The lanterns. Tomas crying. That was when she had been here—and where was she now?

She pressed a hand to her mouth. No.

Maris's face fell. "Elena—"

"No." Elena shook her head, a strange warmth blooming in her chest. "I remember some things. The lantern light. The door. Tomas was crying. I was here." She turned her eyes on Daniel and met his gaze with something like surprise. "You knew, didn't you?"

Daniel looked as if the question physically hurt him. "I knew something was happening," he said quietly. "I just didn't know what."

The creature wearing Tomas's face stood and stepped forward. Rain clung to its coat in long, dripping strands. It paused a few feet away from the edge of the pit and smiled.

"Enough of this," Tomas's voice said from the creature's mouth. But it was not entirely Tomas, not anymore. There was something else beneath his voice, something older, something patient. "She remembers." It gestured toward the child at the edge of the pit. "Now, let her see."

The girl tilted her head back and looked at Elena with eyes the color of the sky. "She is remembering."

Elena looked at the child and suddenly understood that this was not some strange memory of hers. This was an imprint, a shard of something else that had lived inside her for as long as she had lived. The air in the pit grew tense, and suddenly her wrist felt unbearably tight. The charm she wore burned against her skin, and before she could stop herself, she found her hand flying open, revealing the contents of the clock charm.

Nathan looked up sharply. "What is it?"

Elena's hands trembled as she carefully unfurled the tiny scrap of paper inside the charm mechanism. Her eyes widened as she read the words in Maris's familiar script.

When the memory returns, the father must choose the child or the door.

She looked up slowly, meeting her mother's eyes. Maris's face had gone completely pale.

"It's real," Thomas murmured. "This is why you're here. So we could find the key."

"It means," Daniel said quietly, and when he met Elena's eyes, she could see the words in his expression as clearly as if he had written them on a page before her, "the hidden memory was not the only thing buried here."

Elena's voice wavered as she looked from Daniel to the child in the pit. "Then what else was buried here?"

Daniel's gaze flicked toward the pit and then back at her. "The child was not the only one who was lost that night."

The room seemed to grow heavier around her, and even Tomas in the doorway went stiff. Elena's heart pounded in her ears as she turned slowly to look at her mother. Maris's tears had stopped flowing, and the silence that hung between them seemed to press against her ribs.

"You took something else from me," Elena said softly. "Who was it?"

Maris closed her eyes. And from the depths of the pit, the creature answered for her.

"The brother."

Nathan steadied her as the words seemed to make the room sway around her. "Elena."

She barely heard him. Another memory surfaced in her mind, one that was not her own. A boy's small hand in hers, snow drifting lazily past the window. Tomas's laughter echoed through the room.

And then another child. Another body curled in the far corner of the basement. Not Tomas. Not her. But someone else. A brother she had never known because no one had ever told her he was gone.

Her breath came faster. Faster. "I had another brother."

"I'm sorry," Maris's voice was barely a whisper. "Elena, please—"

"No." Elena tore herself from Nathan's grasp. "How many children did you hide from me?"

Maris's face crumpled. "One was hidden from all of us."

Something deep and terrible seemed to sigh within the pit. Elena barely heard what the figure below said next.

"You left me."

The room was spinning, and all she could think about was the small, pale hand she had never known was hers. The way that it had curled around her own when she was little. The way it had disappeared the night the fire had come.

Nathan was saying something as he steadied her once more, but she only barely registered his words. Every sound seemed muffled, distant.

The floor was cracking again, and this time the opening was big enough for her to see the stairway winding down into the pit. The hand that had nearly taken her life had been trying to draw her attention to it all along. To show her the entrance to the lost chamber below.

Thomas frowned. "We should get out of here."

"There is no getting out of this now," Daniel said grimly.

Elena looked from the stairway to the child to Tomas watching from the doorway. It all made sense to her now—this place, this memory, this strange, awful feeling that she was not meant to leave until she had seen everything. She looked down at the child in the pit and suddenly understood what this chamber beneath the basement had become. A choice carved into the very bones of the city.

The creature in the pit raised its head slowly, fixing Elena with a long, steady look. "Come down, and remember the one you abandoned."

Nathan tried to pull her back. "Don't listen to it."

But the child near the edge of the pit raised a small hand and pointed.

Something was happening at the bottom of the stairway. Something was waiting for her. As Nathan struggled to keep her from following the child's gaze, she saw it—a small form curled at the base of the steps. Another body. Another child. Only this one was not dead, because it was alive.

His eyes were Nathan's.

It all happened too fast, but somehow she was sliding down the steps before she could stop herself.

Her knees buckled and then Nathan was catching her, steadying her as she stared into the eyes of the boy on the floor. Around her, she heard shouting—Maris's sobs, Thomas's curse, Daniel's sharp protests to the others in the room, Tomas watching it all with the same silent expression as he had always worn. But beneath all those sounds, the sound of the child curled on the floor of the pit was the whisper of the empty chamber, speaking her name.

"Elle-nah Hol-lo-way."

The lights in the basement seemed to flicker as she looked down at the boy on the floor. His eyes were wide and waiting, watching her just as she looked down on him. And slowly, Elena realized she was seeing her past for the first time. Not as a memory, but as a dream, and in it was her future. Something else. Something the hollow had preserved for her all this time. Somewhere below the city. Somewhere in his voice.

"Come home."

But it was no longer her voice. It was the voice of the chamber, and suddenly the floor beneath him seemed to dissolve.

As the last thing she saw before passing out was the boy's body on the floor of the pit, his eyes wide and watching her, his body curled toward her.