Inkwell of Shadows 21: Roots Beneath the Floorboards
November 12, 2024. Moonlight Curiosities. Some history never dies; it just lies in wait for a better moment to be discovered…
Author’s Note: Inkwell of Shadows is a serialized fiction story in Moonlight Curiosity Mysteries, set in Blighridge County, Alabama. A quiet corner of the world where old ghost linger, cursed objects refuse to stay quiet, and some secrets never stay buried—at least, for long.
New installments or chapters will materialize every Monday…
Missed a chapter? You can find the full list here.
Previously. A careful search through Valeria Moffet’s journals confirmed the worst. She wasn’t acting alone. Daniel, Cassidy, and Dorian uncover that she’d been paid by someone only listed as “V” to collect the cursed pens. All over the belief that the curse could be made stronger if the pens were together. Worse? Valeria had murdered Meredith Rawls in an act of mercy while she was looking to steal the fountain pen Meredith had stashed away. But it was the arrival of Caleb Hayes that put a sharp twist to events, with Dorian saying he knew the man as Price Hayes. All of that send Daniel and Cassidy downstairs to uncover just what secrets the desk in the hidden basement actually had…
November 12, 2024. Moonlight Curiosities. Some history never dies; it just lies in wait for a better moment to be discovered…
The afternoon was a breath of fresh air. I’d stuffed Valeria’s murder journals into an office closet for good measure. Out of sight had always sounded easier than out of mind. That alone seemed to scrub the gloom from the air, bleeding a little of the tension off my shoulders.
Cassidy and I coasted through the fading day, helping the few customers that came by. It was mostly locals, like Naomi, who dropped off a fresh pecan pie and then left with two Mason jars. Once the last customer left with a pair of checkerboard quilts late that afternoon, Cassidy flipped the sign to ‘closed.’ I headed upstairs for bottled water and sandwiches. We weren’t about to head back into that basement without provisions.
An hour later downstairs, organization was a lost cause. We covered all available space on both the table and the desk with every book and loose scrap of paper we found. Cassidy sat on the floor, back against the side of the roll top desk, scowling at one of my uncle’s notebooks. I stood beside the old wooden table with my collection of history spread out in front of me.
“Anything?” I dropped a sepia-soaked newspaper clipping onto a stack just like it with a sigh. “New hidden codes in the margins?”
She looked up from reading, shaking her head. “No, not this time.” Setting the journal beside her, she took a drink from her water bottle. “Your uncle sometimes references other journals, like ‘see notes from the end of last August,’ but it’s nothing like what we found in the store-all.”
I scowled at the stained antique desk, mouth in a tight line. “Yeah. Almost as if he expected this secret basement was enough security.”
Cassidy took another drink of water with a slight frown. Leaning back against the desk, she stared at the ceiling dotted with its drops of sallow light bulbs on black cords. Her expression tightened, lightly chewing her lower lip in thought.
“Daniel? If Valeria was stalking your uncle, trying to cozy up to him, surely she tried to break into the shop. I mean, she murdered for fun and profit; breaking and entering just feels like her average Tuesday.” She squinted gently at me. “How did she miss the basement? Yeah, we stumbled into that knothole switch, but that seems…” Cassidy waved a hand at nothing for the right words.
“… too easy?” I suggested.
“Yes!” She sipped more water. “All right, maybe not all that easy. It just seemed too simple.”
I shrugged, walking around to the front of the now empty desk. “Maybe that’s why it worked?”
There wasn’t much left on or in the desk that we found. At most there was the inkwell, a forgotten pencil, or an old stamp in a cubbyhole. I knelt down, pulling out the now-bare drawers, then felt around inside the wooden cavities. Dust, grit, and ancient cobwebs greeted my fingers.
Cassidy picked up the old journal beside her to go back to reading. A letter-sized manila envelope slipped out the back, falling open onto the floor. Inside were more photographs and decades-old newspaper clippings. We exchanged a curious look before she reached over and sorted clippings from photographs.
“It’s Naomi, Issac, your uncle, Meredith, and Sheriff Branham.” She held up a faded photograph.
I paused, groping inside the desk. “That doesn’t look that old. A few years, maybe?”
She flipped the photo over, frowning. “No date. But Issac and Meredith are alive in this. So, it’s at least a few years old.”
“What’s the rest?”
She swapped the photo for the small stack of clippings. They were gray with age, some paragraphs circled in faded ink.
“Unsolved murders.” She wiggled the clippings. “Notes in the margin mention Nighthunters. I think these are hints where they might have been running around then.”
I shook my head as I resumed poking at the insides of the desk.
“Nighthunters. They’re killers. Why were they even chasing down Nighthunters?” I let out a ragged sigh. “I mean… yes, I remember what you told me about Nighthunters being a weird murder-cult that went after anything not human, but still!”
Cassidy’s mouth tightened, giving me an uneasy look. “Don’t forget you. Human or not, they’d still murder you and bury you in the swamp because you’re married to me.” She drew a long breath. “Your uncle never wrote what happened if they actually caught a Nighthunter.”
Satisfied all I’d done was coat my fingers in grime, I reached into the next drawer cavity. “Let Sheriff Branham handle it? Nighthunters are still committing murder.” I glanced into the cavity, then leaned in up to the shoulder. “I’m realizing all of this is what Sheriff Branham meant. We inherited way more than just a shop. I just wish we could figure out where they got this desk from.”
A section of wood in the drawer cavity shifted under my fingers. I froze, words fading out. Gingerly, I hesitated, then touched the wood experimentally. It replied with a muffled rattle. Cassidy sat bolt upright, shooting the desk a sharp look.
I glanced at her, then reached deep inside, breathing in dust, old wood, and a faint scent of overturned earth the basement never quite shook. The panel was loose but lacked a handle. Slowly, I tugged at the wooden panel, sliding it back. Inside a narrow gap, my fingers touched paper.
“Found something.” I pulled my hand back with what I’d found, then sneezed as a cloud of dust splattered me in the face. “Manila envelope.” A cough ripped out of me as I handed it to Cassidy. “Kind of thick.”
She offered over her water, then opened the musty envelope while I drank. Folded pieces of paper fell out with a set of photographs in a garden.
“Hey.” I scooped up the papers, gingerly unfolding them. “Beloved? It’s more of that story the curse victims keep writing.” It felt as if the air had chilled several degrees as I read the first few passages. “They’re not a part I’ve seen before. Near the beginning, I think. I also don’t recognize this handwriting.”
Cassidy’s face turned dark as a storm cloud, eyes shifted from human to full bat-brown. She gave the pages a sidelong glance, then sifted through the faded photographs. There were three people; two men and one woman. I didn’t recognize a single one of them.
“There’s a date on the back and some names.” Her eyes slowly widened. “These were taken in the 1960s. It’s an Ollie Hayes, Amanda Price, and… Martin Altamont.”
I nearly choked trying to drink the water.
“W-what? Hayes? Price? Altamont?”
“The same.” She met my eyes, drawing a breath. “Caleb’s either a con artist, or he’s actually related.”
I sat down next to her. “Both could be true. So Martin Altamont’s estate sale was in 1977. Now we know he was alive in 1960.” I patted the side of the desk. “This thing has that engraved plate for a ‘Eugene Altamont,’ and Sheriff Branham mentioned Meredith found the pens from either the Altamont or Price families. That could also be how my uncle got the desk.”
Cassidy stared holes into the photographs, then ran a hand through her auburn hair, shaking it out along with her frustration. “It could be a really wild coincidence.”
We exchanged a tense look that said everything, punctuated by the soft whir-tick of the ceiling fans.
“Anything on those pages, or is it just more of that creepy story?” she asked with a thin smile.
I took the excuse and scooped up the brittle paper. “Same. Just near the beginning, based on the chapter numbers…” I blinked, then brushed a thumb along the top right corner where a set of faded, tiny letters ran along the top. “J. Stewart,” I read. “Name doesn’t ring a bell.”
Cassidy shook her head, staring off into the dim air. “Me either…” She hesitated, eyes blown wide as she slowly reached over to grab my arm.
Before I said a word, I heard it, too. The faint sound of a metal pen nib against paper, quickly scratching out a nerve-fraying rhythm. On the desk, a soft, algae-green light spilled over the side like the memory of a swamp’s waterfall.
For a frozen moment, we sat still as if avoiding a predator’s gaze. Then we eased to our feet, keeping the desk at arm’s length.
The sound suddenly stopped.
It hadn’t come from the desk but from the table where we’d stacked most of the desk’s contents. We eased closer, tense as coiled springs.
“Daniel, I closed that bestiary,” Cassidy said in a hushed voice. “I know I closed it.”
“Yeah. I believe you.”
It lay open on the worn wooden table, half-buried in old newspaper articles I had been sorting through. Fresh ink glistened across the same page that held the diagrams of Mason jars. The name ‘J. Stewart’ now sat above the list of names with a question mark beside it—underlined twice.
“Daniel, where’s the pen that keeps writing this stuff?” she asked in a brittle voice.
I swallowed. “No idea. Issac said the Bestiary would enjoy the attention…”
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Moonlight Curiosity Mysteries is a work of pure, unabashed fiction. To be honest, it’s a bit creepy, if not spooky, when is isn’t beside itself with nerves. It tends to be a little shy. Did I mention it likes to needlepoint because there’s lots of stabbing? Names of characters, places, events, organizations and locations are all creations of the author’s imagination for this fictitious setting. Which means, really, he gets all the blame.
Any resemblance to persons living, dead, undead, or why-aren’t-they-dead-YET is coincidental. The opinions expressed are those of the characters and should not be confused with the author’s, since the characters and the author tend to disagree a lot. Like daily.