Chapter 6 - The Plunge Into Darkness
Clara was the first to move. With a desperate surge of adrenaline born from the terrifying revelation, the wet maid scrambled up from the cold concrete, ignoring the throbbing pain in her bruised knees. She bolted toward the deep end of the swimming pool, where the surface water was still rippling from the initial disturbance that had triggered the chaos hours ago.
“No!” Julianne shrieked, dropping the porcelain vase. It shattered loudly against the flagstone, sending ceramic shards skittering across the patio, but Julianne didn’t even flinch. She lunged after Clara, her brown heels catching on the uneven stone, sending her tumbling hard onto her hands and knees.
David was instantly over his wife, pinning her shoulders to the ground as Julianne thrashed and clawed like a trapped animal. “Get off me, you coward!” she hissed, scratching at his forearms until blood welled up in neat red lines. “He belongs to the water! The prophecy demanded it!”
Eleanor stood frozen near the edge of the pool, her mind racing through the horrific implications. The missing baby. Julianne’s psychological break. The forged journal. But beneath all of that, a colder, darker realization began to take root in her chest. Clara had known the journal was there. Clara had been in the house at midnight, wet before anyone else arrived on the patio.
At the edge of the pool, Clara had dropped to her stomach, plunging her bare arms deep into the freezing, chlorinated water of the deep end, groping blindly along the tile floor. Her fingers brushed against something soft and buoyant.
“I found him!” Clara screamed, her voice echoing off the stone walls of the courtyard.
Eleanor rushed to the edge, dropping to her knees beside the maid. Clara dragged a second bundle out of the water—another white blanket, heavier this time, waterlogged and dripping heavily. Eleanor’s hands shook uncontrollably as she helped Clara peel back the heavy, soaking fabric.
Inside lay a tiny infant, pale and motionless, his lips tinged with a faint, terrifying blue.
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Eleanor pressed her ear against the baby’s chest. There was no heartbeat. But as she looked up into Clara’s desperate eyes, she noticed something chilling: Clara wasn’t looking at the baby at all. She was staring intently at the blood on David’s arms.
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