Brooke Beretta File

Some buildings, she had learned, were better left unrestored. But others—others just needed the right person to walk through their doors.

The man who had called himself Julian Cross smiled. It was the same smile Brooke had seen on the carved faces, too wide and full of too many teeth. "Clever girl. But if the house is dead, then I'm free. Truly free. And I've had a hundred years to think about what I want to do."

Silas has gathered his followers in the basement. Twelve of them, plus Blackwood. They are chanting in a language that makes my teeth ache. I have locked myself in the library with my daughter, Margaret. She is only five years old. She does not understand why the walls are bleeding. brooke beretta

Brooke did not panic. She was not the panicking type. Instead, she went back to the basement, opened Evelyn Ashworth's book again, and read the missing pages.

The first page was dated October 31, 1892. The handwriting was elegant, feminine, and increasingly frantic. Some buildings, she had learned, were better left unrestored

And then there was the basement.

Brooke hung up and spent the next four hours doing exactly what Julian Cross had told her not to do: she tried to research the Ashworth House. But it was as if the place had been erased from memory. The local historical society's online archives returned nothing. Newspaper databases from the 1890s through the 1920s had no mention of the address. Even a search of property records showed only a blank placeholder—the house existed, but its past had been meticulously scrubbed. It was the same smile Brooke had seen

Brooke turned the page, but the next hundred or so had been cut out, leaving only ragged stubs. Then, near the middle of the book, the writing resumed, this time in a different hand—a man's, sharp and angry.