As Priscilla and I approached the Devore Mansion, it looked like it had seen better days. Old and faded paint that could've been almost any color was chipping away from the prehistoric wooden planks, and the house groaned as the wind blew. The ancient porch creaked as we stepped onto it, and as we paused in front of the front door, I asked, "You think anyone's home?"

As if on cue, the front door opened to reveal an old woman who I estimated to be somewhere between fifty to eighty years old due to her graying hair, dressed in a very nice sweater and pair of trousers, both of which looked more expensive than all of the clothes on my back, and probably the rest of my bargain bin wardrobe, combined. "Good morning, you two."

"Good morning, ma'am." I said, acting as if she hadn't taken me by surprise. "My name is Chase Mercer, and this is Priscilla Ross. We, uh… came by to check out the house. I-If you don't mind, of course."

"Don't mind at all." The old woman said as she held the old door open for us. "Come in, come in, and the name's Eleanor Franklin. I was just about to start making lunch."

Not wanting to be a burden, I volunteered to help Mrs. Franklin in the kitchen, and she accepted my offer. Within half an hour, there was a jug of milk sitting on the table next to two plates, one with green apples and the other with roast beef sandwiches of my creation. Years of being left home alone have allowed me to refine sandwich-making down to an art form, and after inhaling my third or fourth sandwich, I remembered to breathe and engage our host in conversation. "You look nice, Mrs. Franklin. Were you expecting company?"

"Why, thank you, dear — they're Saks Fifth Avenue." Mrs. Franklin said. "As for my company, well… My husband told me to expect you two, so I threw on the glad rags."

Priscilla and I exchanged glances as Mrs. Franklin stared out the big French window of the sitting room. "I used to take any excuse to socialize, threw the best parties this backwards island has ever seen. But that coach turned into a pumpkin a long, long time ago."

"It must be pretty lonely out here all alone." I remarked as I gulped down my glass of milk before I could choke on my bite of roast beef. Mrs. Franklin just shrugged as she looked back at us.

"Eh, not really. I share this old pile with all my cats and all the ghosts. I even moved the furniture down to give them the run of the upstairs, and the view from those big windows…" Mrs. Franklin sighed again as she stared out the window again. "Oh, it was a peach of a view when I shared it with my husband Ed, but the peach trees are rotten through now."

"So do you know anything about… the Blue Ridge Mine?" Priscilla asked cautiously, and she bit into and chewed on her apple as Mrs. Franklin sighed again, turning her head to stare down at the white milk in her glass.

"Well… things started changing back in that cold, cold summer of '71 — even before the ruckus with the Indians over that damned hole in the ground. Something happened up there, and it started eating away at Ed, but he wouldn't admit to it. When he came home — if he came home at all — he shut himself in his study with all the books and maps. And then there was the incident with the Indians…"

Priscilla and I kept our mouths shut as Mrs. Franklin monologued, her eyes staring past the glass and table. "Ed didn't need to kill anyone — it was self-defense, but he was tormented by it. He couldn't sleep, suffered night terrors. He'd stay up all ways scribbling in his books, on magazine covers, on the table cloths, on the walls. I could hear this incessant scratching in the dead of the night. After a while I stopped asking him to come back to bed. I never did figure out where he kept all that writing.

"When his crew was found dead in the mine, it was the straw the broke the camel's back, so to speak. I found him hanging in the attic, his face was the color of a ripe plum. But that's not how I remember him, not how I want to remember him. He was a good man, my Ed. A good husband. A good friend.

"There's no shortage of secrets in this house, but Ed lost his way and his mind. Says he wants to know how to put it all together, but he's just broken memories now. None of them good. Says the dreams came through and ate him up, and unless something is done, they'll eat us all. Says it's all in here somewhere, but he can't remember where."

We were silent for awhile, save for the sounds of us slowly crunching, chewing, and swallowing our food. As I finished off the last of the milk in my glass, I stood up from my seat on the couch and wiped my mouth clean. "Thank you for telling us, Mrs. Franklin. It must've been hard for you. If you don't mind, we'd like to search the house."

"Go ahead — whatever skeletons in my closet have long since stopped haunting me." Mrs. Franklin said, and Priscilla got up from her seat in order to follow me out of the sitting room. I paused for a moment in front of one particular painting just outside the sitting room. It depicted a red-skinned horned demon with leathery wings and a face on its stomach flying above people burning in the great maw of some great beast. Above the demon was a twisty scroll with words printed on it.

IN INFERNO NVLLA-EST REDEMPTIO.

"There is no redemption in hell." Priscilla said aloud, and I glanced out of the corner of my eye at her in mild surprise.

"I'm taking Latin back in London." Priscilla explained. "Latina lingua mortua est, mortua quam maxime. Prima necavit Romanos et nunc necat me. The Latin language is dead, as dead as it can be. First, it killed the Romans, and now it's killing me."

I laughed at that as I laid a hand onto the golden picture frame, and on a hunch, I pulled the painting towards me to reveal the threshold of a hidden room. As Priscilla shut the painting door behind me, I switched on my flashlight in order to have a look around. Paper rustled as I stepped onto them, and an entire wall of the room had been devoted to papers yellowed with age, whose cursives I couldn't read. Opposite the wall of paper was a bookshelf filled to the brim with books, and a giant globe depicting the world sat next to a desk and chair.

Atop the desk was a small, unadorned metal box, and to my surprise, it opened fairly easily, the difficulty coming from how long it had been since the box had last opened. Inside was a yellowed paper whose bottom corner seemed to have had some honey spilled on it. Listening closely, I could hear the soft rumble of a distant machine from the stain, and I shone my flashlight onto the scribbled letters of the page.

No Good. No God. No saving me now from what's waiting under Blue Ridge, deep down in the Deep Shaft locked away. Oh, Ellie, you don't understand what a man works on in here, down there. Been so busy, me and the man I shot dead. Me and all the dead men, the vikings and braves, our honeyed ancestors…

"Vikings? Braves? Honeyed ancestors?" I wondered aloud as Priscilla came to look at the page over my shoulder. "The heck?"

Priscilla took the page away from me, and after studying it for a moment, she folded it up and stuffed it into her pocket. "I don't get it either, but it's clear to see that whatever drove Mr. Franklin to madness, it's in the Blue Ridge Mines. Let's go, Chase."