Chapter 3 - THE CABIN IN BLACK RIDGE
Black Ridge sat deep inside the mountains.
Abandoned.
Forgotten.
The old cabin barely remained standing.
Local residents avoided it.
Some claimed people disappeared there.
Others claimed lights appeared underground every winter.
Evelyn dismissed the stories.
Until she entered.
The floorboards felt hollow.
Near the fireplace she discovered tiny scratches.
Not random.
Numbers.
The same number from the bank key.
She pressed the final board.
Click.
The fireplace slowly shifted.
A stone staircase emerged beneath decades of dust.
Cold air rushed upward.
Someone had built an entire structure beneath the mountain.
She descended.
Thirty feet underground...
she found electric lights.
Fresh footprints.
Medical supplies.
Someone had been living there.
Then a voice echoed through the darkness.
"Evelyn."
She froze.
The man stepping forward should have been impossible.
Gray hair.
Thin face.
Kind eyes she recognized from childhood photographs.
"Grandpa?"
May you like
Thomas Whitmore smiled sadly.
"I've been waiting almost thirty years."
