The basis of all human fears, he thought. A closed door, slightly ajar. —Salem's Lot

October 17, 1944

Thomas Lahey looks around the burned shell of an Institute with a curled lip. His father has owned the property for four years, but now he actually has the money to do something with it. Men move around them like busy little bees trying to assemble the perfect hive.

"Isn't it wonderful, Tommy," Bernard asks, resting a heavy hand on Thomas' shoulder. "I'm going to make this a hospital that actually treats the mentally ill." Thomas has heard stories of this place, has a vague idea of the atrocities Peter Hale had committed here. He doubts even the most mentally vacant patient would ever feel safe on these grounds.

They step inside what remains of the old hospital, a mural composed of mangled stained glass casting colorful shadows over the toes of his shoes and the smell of smoke thick in the air. He imagines what it must have been like to live here, how leather straps would dig into his thin wrists and the crazies would chatter and scream at the full moon.

"It's full of echoes," Thomas says. Bernard tilts his head to the side, considering.

"I could call it Echo House." Thomas wrinkles his nose and draws away from his father. The heels of his shoes click loudly against the floor, soot and dead leaves scattering ahead of him like they're trying to hide. Thomas doesn't blame them, he'd want to hide if he was stuck here; hide away and never be found or tortured.

As his father talks to the construction manager, Thomas walks farther into the Institute. He stops in front of a door that's crooked on melted hinges, hanging drunkenly and creaking when he pulls it open. Sunlight outlines the first few steps, but the rest are lost in a darkness that smells of the damp and growing things.

"Thomas…." He glances over his shoulder, but his father is still talking to the other man. "Thomas, come down…." The voice calling his name is coming from the basement, echoing brokenly off old brick and stone. Thomas doesn't want to go down there, but curiosity won't let him run back to his father. He goes down the stairs at a sedate pace, pale fingers touching the wall on his right once the darkness swallows him. The voice calls again, directing him through the maze until he comes upon a room covered in something black. He thinks of tar and hellfire and a dozen other things, knows that to step inside that room is to be lost forever.

"Hello," Thomas calls.

"Hello," answers his echo, thin and reedy. He's just about to turn and go back upstairs when movement catches his eye. There, in the darkest corner of the room, a man rises out of the hellfire and stalks forward until he's standing in the dead center. Sunlight drifts down like smoke through a thin crack in the ceiling, turning the man's eyes a bloody crimson.

"Who are you?" The man's smile is more like a snarl, his teeth sharp and glistening with saliva. He looks hungry, the wolf that ate Red Riding Hood and her grandmother. Thomas stumbles back a step, bringing his arm up in case this man strikes.

"I'm the one that's going to rip your throat out with my teeth." Thomas is running even before his mind processes it, his feet carrying him through the halls and up the stairs until he's got his arms wrapped tightly around his father's waist. Bernard chuckles and rests a hand on his son's head, blaming his trembling on the cold.

Thomas vows to brick that room up one day so that nobody falls into the Darkness.

October 30, 2019

It's a Wednesday and the leaves have changed to shades of red, brown, and gold. Ethan loves this time of year, especially since Fall means candy. They don't even go trick or treating (the twins feel too old for that), but Erica and Boyd buy an absolute shitload of candy and they'll all crash on the couch and watch horror movies the whole night. Halloween week in the Boyd-Reyes house never disappoints.

"I hope we watch Ghost Ship tonight," Ethan's saying as he and his brother walk down the street. "Oh, and Cabin Fever!"

"Cabin Fever's disgusting," Aiden says.

"You're just a chicken." Aiden snorts and nudges his brother with his elbow. When he doesn't offer some type of comeback, Ethan glances over at him again. Aiden's the biggest smartass out of the two of them, he's been slinging comebacks since he came out of the womb. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I just…. I'm curious about something."

"About what?"

"About what happened to Boyd and Erica." Their adoptive parents didn't like to talk about that night, the one that's basically italicized and lit up in neon in all their minds. All the twins know for sure is that some dudes disappeared in the old Institute in Beacon Hills and their parents were the only ones not gobbled up by shitty architecture. Well, that and they came out rich.

"I tried to ask them about it once."

"Yeah?"

"They clammed up on me. Erica kind of, like, checked out or somethin' and Boyd wrapped her up in a bear hug. After he got Erica tucked up in their bed, he made us some hot chocolate and told me that I shouldn't bring it up again. That me and you were the only good results."

"I think they mentioned it on the news once."

"Maybe it was in the papers." And just like that, with barely a few sentences exchanged, they've both decided to go to the library instead of class. Who cares about finding X when they could be solving a mystery? If they get caught ditching, then Ethan will just say they were protesting having letters in math. He knows damn well that their parents would support them because Boyd deeply believes in standing up for yourself and Erica just likes to cause a scene. One time, after the twins were first adopted, someone had written a slur on Ethan's locker and Erica went to the kid's house just to kick the parents' asses. Then she stood outside the school everyday for a week to remind them that no one messes with her kids. That was the first time Ethan thought of her as mom.

The town's library isn't far from the school, only a couple blocks, and the librarian doesn't even seem to notice them. She's too preoccupied with some podcast about manifesting destiny or crystal polishing. They head straight to the little room tucked behind the stacks where newspapers have been kept for centuries. The room itself is pretty clean considering its only visitor is an older guy researching his family history. There's one of those microfiche things in the corner, a desktop on the same table, and shelf after shelf of old newspapers. Some of them have gone yellow with age, others are still in plastic wrap, and one newspaper has become home to a fuffle of dust bunnies.

"Where should we start," Ethan asks, gazing around the cramped room. Now that they're here, he feels a little overwhelmed with it all. There's so much shit to slog through that he doesn't know how they'll find the right newspapers.

"Look for anything from October of last year," Aiden says. You start on the left side and I'll start on the right." Ethan nods and they set to work, shifting newspapers this way and that. Dust motes are swirling through the air by the time Ethan finds anything remotely useful.

"Found the stack, Aiden." His brother lets his own stack fall back to the shelf with a grunt of relief. He comes over and helps Ethan bring the full stack to the table, then they begin sorting through the papers. There's twelve in all and there's no mention of Eichen House until the tail end of the October paper.

Birthday Party Stunt, the section title says.

Celebrity couple Derek and Mieczysław (Stiles) Hale threw a birthday party for Stiles this past weekend. The party was meant to last the full night with each remaining guest getting a million dollars for surviving the night in Eichen House. Instead, the night ended with all but two of the guests disappearing. The press team for Hale Industries assure this reporter that it's all a stunt to promote Hale's newest park in San Francisco.

Aiden flicks through the November paper and finds another section, this one not even a full paragraph. It's just two sentences: Hale Industries under new management after the founder's disappearance. Cora Hale vows to spend recent funds to find her brother and the other missing guests.

There's nothing else after that, no obituaries or even names other than Derek and Stiles. Ethan supposes local celebrities are a better draw than the nobodies that had been invited. It's like old school click bait or something. He feels a little sad at the thought and wonders if the families left behind had been given any sort of explanation of what had happened that night.

"I want to know more," Aiden grumbles, glaring down at the papers.

"There's a box in the garage," Ethan says tentatively. "It looks fancy and it's kept on the highest shelf so that Boyd doesn't have to look at it when he tinkers with his bike."

The box is a heavy thing made of metal, the edges sharp enough to cut if you aren't careful. Aiden sets it down on the desk in his room, he and Ethan studying it in the muted Fall sunshine. The metal gleams dully, highlighting a little plaque above a lever. Beneath that is an opened section with a tiny metal skeleton inside, complete with scythe.

"Man, this thing is morbid."

"It's cool," Ethan says, running his finger along the sharp edge of the scythe. He snaps the skeleton off and stuffs it in his jacket pocket as a good luck charm or just something to convince Mason to go out with him on an actual date and not a movie at Liam's house.

"Is that a business card?" In the opened section is a little scrap of card stock, the fancy kind with embossed edges and tiny words in the typewriter font. Or maybe whoever sent this had used an actual typewriter like some kind of dinosaur. 'Derek T. Hale commands you to attend a very unique birthday celebration for Mister Stiles Stilinski-Hale terror, humiliation, perhaps even murder will be the entertainment with ONE MILLION DOLLARS paid to those that survive the entire night inside the walls of the Hale Institute'

"It's an invitation to the party," Ethan says, impressed. "I can't even blame them for attending a party for someone they didn't know. If I got this thing in the mail, I'd go, too."

"Hold up, the newspaper said the place was called Eichen House."

"That must be its real name. Google it and find out." Aiden turns to his desktop, opening two tabs; one for Eichen House and the other for the Hale-Stilinski family. The first tab comes up with a Wikipedia article about an old asylum that burned down in '31 and was rebuilt in '44, the second tab is mostly tabloid drama surrounding the controversial marriage of Derek Hale to small-town nobody Stiles Stilinski. According to all the articles and the Wikipedia entry, Stiles and Derek are still considered missing. Cora really did devote a good amount of money to finding them, but there are no leads other than the Institute. It's all a big mystery, open-ended misery.

"What caused the original place to burn down," Ethan asks.

"Let's find out."