No one used the old passageways since the larger, airier cellar had been installed. They were deemed unsafe. Blocked off. The bodies could have easily languished there for two hundred and fifty years, hidden in some easily forgotten corner.

Margot exhaled slowly as she turned to the door. She knew how foolish this was. She didn’t know the tunnels. Many of them had collapsed. Her chances of finding the bodies were slim at best.

But she still had to try.

She placed the bottle of holy water into her pocket and switched on her poor, abused cell phone’s flashlight function. Then she stepped outside, carefully closing the door behind herself.

The tunnels were supposed to weave right through the hill, even underneath the house. Margot circled the building, aiming for the sheds behind it. Her light caught on the grapevine, promising bounty but delivering rot. Insects flicked through her beam, tiny beads of light set against the dark. It was almost shocking how quickly the last of the daylight had faded.

The two sheds waited for her beneath leafless, spreading trees. The loose door rocked on its hinges as its sharp, metallic wails cut through the night. Margot put her head down as she stepped into the other shed.

She raised her light high, darting it across the tangling storage heaps. At the back, near where she’d found the stepladder, was a shovel. She stepped over old planters to reach it.

The wails were growing thicker, discordant. Margot kept her face to the shed’s back as she lifted the shovel. She tucked it beneath her cast arm, wedging it against her side, and then slipped the bottle of holy water out of her pocket.

It had a small cork sealing its top. She pulled it out with her teeth, then, holding it in the hand that was wrapped in the talisman, turned back to the door.

Two piercing white eyes stared into her, less than a foot away.

Margot’s voice choked. She grit her teeth and slowly, carefully, let several drops of the water fall. “Please show me mercy tonight.” Her words were rough, gasping, barely audible, but she pushed on. “I want to help. I want to make this right.”

She didn’t aim the phone’s light at the specter, no matter how badly she wanted light. It felt as though it would be disrespectful. Margot directed her beam at the floor instead.

She could see the body’s ragged edges against the open doorway. The long, windswept hair, tied back by a headscarf. The outline of the dress. The shoulders, quivering with each wrenching cry.

“I want to do the right thing for you and your family,” Margot whispered.