You descend into the tombs below Volterra; an ancient and unsettling castle, the ruins of which, you and your team have been excavating for weeks. But you're not interested in what's above ground, are you? No... I know you. You're looking for the secrets buried beneath the dirt. Buried somewhere in the past.

The walls are unusually dry. Underground caverns left abandoned like this often drip with moisture and sometimes moss and other hardy plants get a foothold. But here is a lost palace of dust where nothing grows. You travel perhaps half a mile unperturbed into the darkness. The only light source comes from the bulb on the front of your hard hat. You can only see directly in front of you in one long line, leaving the shadows to envelop you on all other sides. They say monsters used to live in this castle. "They" are often fools.

You spend surprisingly little time inspecting the space around you. You can sense there's something hidden deeper and you know exactly the direction to go. You follow your instincts, as you always do. Knowing undoubtedly, they will lead you to trouble.

You find it. A door that to anyone else would look like a wall but you know, you know it's a door. You are not psychic and don't believe in such things. You're simply an archeologist with almost twelve years experience and besides, you always had a knack for finding yourself somewhere you didn't belong. You might as well make a career out of it. You know this is a door because you know what doors look like when someone tried to pass it off as a wall. And when someone does that, there is always something incredible hiding just beyond.

You push. And push. And push. And good lord, these stones have not moved in centuries. And you push. Again. And again. Put your legs into it. That's it. It's starting to budge now. You can feel it give an inch. Just need a little more... There.

A skeleton is lunging toward you. How very cliché.

In the light of your torch, your trained eyes notice the discrepancies right away. This is not an articulated skeleton. Each bone is in fact several feet from the others and only come together to form the image when the viewer stands in the right spot. You've seen artwork like this hanging from gallery ceilings. But only half these bones are suspended from chains. The other half is scattered on the ground, having fallen from the spikes on which they were mounted as they rotted through.

You are not shocked by your discovery but you are somewhat bemused. This isn't what you were expecting. The Volturi are recorded as being a sophisticated, intellectual group. You were looking for books or some other treasure from an ancient world worth protecting, worth building a door that looks like a wall. This appears to be nothing more than a prison cell. You hadn't characterized the Volturi as petty. But this person had clearly pissed them off a great deal.

There had to be a reason and you want to search for it. You want to look for clues as to who this person was. They wouldn't have put the corpse on display in such a way if not to publically humiliated the individual and make an example of their crime. But then, they hid it. This grotesque excuse for art might have been for private enjoyment but again, that doesn't fit your profile of these once-great leaders. To dismember the body like this in secret could only be one thing. Torture. But there was no way this person was alive to feel it. The yearning for answers grows intolerable in your gut. And yet you are fixed in place. Just like your new friend.

You don't believe in ghost stories, I know. You've always been a skeptic and you were never afraid of the dark. That's why you're leading this team, isn't it? That's why you're down here alone in the dark, rushing headlong into hidden places no one else dares go. But you can't shake the feeling that skull is watching you.

Well, that's because it is.

You stare into its sockets and even though they're not there, you can feel its eyes staring back at you. It holds you in place, almost like if you look away, if you run, those rotten bones will chase after you. The smells in here start changing but you know it's all in your head, just like the music you think is playing in the distance. You get deja vu all the time but not like this; you don't feel like you've been here before, you feel like you never left. Images start flooding your mind and you don't have the will to fight them off.

This particular ghost story begins in 1664, in London. And it involves, as so many stories do, a beautiful young woman.