James was completely taken aback when he discovered Liam crying alone in the attic, a stark interruption to what had otherwise been an ordinary, uneventful day. His heart thumped rapidly as he hurried up the narrow stairs, the sound of his son’s sobs echoing through the old house. The sight of Liam, his small frame trembling and eyes wide with fear, sent a wave of alarm through him. There was something in his son’s expression—something raw and unsettled—that made James instinctively know that this was more than a fleeting moment of sadness.
Liam struggled to put his feelings into words, hiccupping through tears, but fragments of his explanation emerged: something about the attic, an old box, and a strange noise. James sank to his knees beside him, wrapping his arms around his son in an attempt to offer comfort. Even as he held him, a gnawing sense of unease settled in James’s chest. There was an underlying tension, an unspoken weight, that suggested this was just the surface of a deeper, unfolding mystery.
The story, James realized, began years earlier—back in 2018—when the family’s arborvitae trees suffered damage at the hands of wandering deer. At the time, it seemed like a straightforward problem: replace the trees, restore the yard, move on. But as they prepared to plant the new trees, something caught their attention that didn’t quite belong. On the east side of the yard, partially obscured by branches and shadows, they noticed what initially seemed to be an ordinary electrical box. Its mundane appearance belied the strange sense it provoked—a subtle feeling that this object did not belong, that it was out of place.
Curiosity turned into perplexity when closer inspection revealed it was far from ordinary. Buried among the trees was a small, rusted container, locked and weathered, concealing secrets that had lain dormant for years. Its presence raised questions they hadn’t anticipated, questions that lingered in the back of their minds even as life carried on. Little did James know, that discovery would mark the quiet beginning of a mystery woven right beneath their feet—one that had been patiently waiting for the right moment to resurface, now emerging in the attic through the fearful sobs of his son.
What had once seemed like an everyday day, a familiar family home, had suddenly shifted. The attic, the old box, and Liam’s terror hinted at a hidden story, waiting to be uncovered, and James realized that the ordinary world he knew was about to unravel in ways he could never have imagined.
