Chapter 5 - THE EMPTY CABIN AND THE HIDDEN TRAPBlackwood Cabin sat at the end of an overgrown dirt track, surrounded by dense timber and choked blackberry bushes. Its weathered cedar siding looked like peeling skin, and the front porch boards groaned loudly under the weight of three pairs of footsteps as Grace, Robert, and Katherine approached the front door.
Katherine didn't wait for Robert to knock. She drew a small brass key from her pocket—the spare key Caleb had given her during their engagement—and slid it into the lock.
The door clicked open, swinging inward with a dry, mournful squeak.
The interior of the cabin was dark, smelling strongly of old cedar, dust, and a faint, lingering trace of lemon-scented cleaning fluid—the exact same brand of cleaner Katherine used in their apartment kitchen back in Richmond.
"Caleb?" Robert called out, stepping cautiously across the threshold, his hands raised. "Caleb, son, we know everything! Come out and let's talk like men!"
Only silence answered him. A heavy, suffocating silence that felt like a physical presence.
Katherine stepped past Robert, her eyes scanning the living room. The wood-burning stove was cold. The furniture was draped in faded canvas sheets. But on the center coffee table sat a single, neatly folded white envelope with my name written across the front in Caleb’s precise, architectural handwriting.
"Don't touch it," Robert warned. "It could be a tripwire—"
Before Robert could finish his sentence, Katherine stepped forward and ripped the envelope open. A single photograph slid out and landed on the wooden table.
It was a picture of Katherine sitting in the bridal suite, taken just ten minutes before she screamed on her wedding night. But what made the blood freeze in her veins wasn't her own image—it was the reflection in the vanity mirror behind her.
Standing in the doorway of the bridal suite, watching her with a cold, dead smile, wasn't Caleb.
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It was Frank—Grace’s brother-in-law, who had stayed overnight after the wedding and supposedly driven back to Richmond at dawn.
On the back of the photograph, scrawled in red ink, were these words: “You thought it was just a husband's revenge? Family business runs much deeper than marriage, Katherine. Welcome to the family.”
