Chapter 9: The Gamekeeper’s Cabin
The door pushed open with a soft click, revealing the interior of the gamekeeper’s cabin. It was a rustic, single-room shelter dominated by a massive stone hearth, a heavy wooden table, and a narrow cot in the corner. Though dust coated every surface, the room felt immeasurably safer than the looming, trap-filled halls of the manor.
"We made it," Clara breathed, closing the cabin door and sliding the interior wooden deadbolt into place.
She immediately set about building a fire. In the corner of the room, a cast-iron woodstove sat beside a stacked bin of dry split birch logs and kindling. With stiff, shivering fingers, she stuffed crumpled newspaper from an old hunting magazine into the iron belly, layered on fine pine splinters, and struck a box of safety matches she found on the mantelpiece.
Within minutes, a bright, crackling flame caught hold, casting a warm, golden glow across the rough-hewn pine walls and instantly driving back the encroaching chill. Leo huddled close to the stove, stretching his ice-cold hands toward the rising heat, a soft sigh of relief escaping his lips.
Clara knelt beside him, checking his pulse and his skin. Aside from being deeply chilled and exhausted, he seemed remarkably resilient. "How long were you in that wall, Leo?" she asked gently, sitting back on her heels.
Leo stared into the flames, the flickering light dancing in his wide eyes. "I don't remember days," he whispered. "Uncle Julian put me there after the men in the black suits came to the house the first time. He said if I made a single sound, the bad men would take me away forever. He brought me bread and water every night when the house was dark."
Anger flared hot and bright in Clara’s chest. Julian had imprisoned a seven-year-old child to use as a living pawn against violent creditors, treating him like a smuggled artifact to be locked away in a structural cavity.
"You never have to go back there," Clara promised fiercely, placing a hand on his small shoulder. "I won't let anyone touch you."
She stood up and walked over to the corner of the cabin where an old radio console sat on a sturdy wooden bench. It was an antique military-issue shortwave transceiver wired to a massive copper antenna running up through the cabin roof and connected to a heavy bank of rechargeable marine batteries.
Clara flipped the master power toggle. The unit hummed to life, vacuum tubes glowing a soft, amber orange inside the metal housing. She adjusted the frequency dial, listening to the harsh, rhythmic crackle of static mixed with the howling of the wind outside. In a severe blizzard like this, standard emergency frequencies were often jammed or overloaded, but gamekeeper networks operated on independent, hardwired channels meant for isolated forestry stations.
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She began turning the tuning dial slowly, listening through the static for a human voice, unaware that back at the manor, Beatrice Highgate was walking down a very different path toward an inevitable confrontation.
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