Six ancient oak barrels stood against the back wall, carefully positioned on a wooden stand that locked them into place. They had been carved from the wood of the hanging oak tree. The tree that had claimed every life that followed her through the passages.

Margot put her phone down while she crawled over the desk to reach the room proper. She’d entered through the passageway she’d seen when Kant had first showed her the chamber. It had been collapsed then. But it was the only way into the room that wasn’t locked.

She found a box of matches and carefully lit the lantern. The light was warmer and stronger than her phone’s, so she turned the mobile off and tucked it back into her pocket to preserve the battery.

A speck of dirt fell down before Margot’s eyes. That had been commonplace in the neglected, abandoned pathways, but the chamber was supposed to be maintained meticulously. Margot lifted her eyes.

There was a crack in the ceiling. It was small, but as she watched, it grew larger. Jagged lines spread outward, widening. Color seeped from its center. A dark, poisonous, staining liquid, the shade of rot, the shade of death.

Fingertips emerged through the widening crack. Margot pressed her back against the desk, her heart in her throat, as she watched the fingers curl around. They weren’t natural. They didn’t have the gray hue of the dead ones, but they weren’t alive either. Their edges were sharp, but the centers were vague. As though she was looking at a silhouette of a hand.

Clumps of dirt rained as the crack grew. The color darkened as toxic liquid flowed into it. A single drop fell free, and then another, and then more, until the crack was dripping like an overflowing drainpipe.

Another hand reached through the opening, this time stretching to its shoulder. Margot thought she could see something beyond. A pinprick of light. An eye.

This is how my parents died.

The thought felt as sharp and harsh as a slap. She knew it was the truth, though, as the dead hand reached toward her, and the head—horrific, long dead, cleaved in half by an axe—forced its way through the opening.

“Esther,” Margot whispered.

She would have come through the crack in her parents’ ceiling like this. Crept down to them as they lay frozen. Reached the rotting fingers into their mouths, into their throats, and drawn the life out of them.

Margot couldn’t move. She could only stare, her mouth open, her heart skipping beats.

She knew what was coming as the fingers reached for her lips. They touched her, and she felt death itself in those fingertips. And she still could not move.

The pinprick lights for eyes stared into her, too wide, split apart by the axe.

And then they vanished.