What Lies Beneath

Chapter Forty-Five: Gwyneth

Gwyneth's story began a very long time ago. Now deep within the grip of old age, she had come to learn many things throughout her lifetime. She had known love and what it felt like to lose it. Her heart had broken many times due to disappointments and words left unspoken. Her eyes showed her age well before the rest of her body.

The world was an unfair and cruel place. She had learned this specific lesson more times than she would care to admit. Her parents had thrown her to the wolves so to speak when she had returned from university. They refused to take her in while she established herself. That is how she had ended up at the boarding house. She didn't know what to expect when living in such a place, but the outcome had haunted the rest of her remaining years.

There was more to life than what loomed within the walls of the house she now found herself trapped within. In a twist of fate, the decisions that led to the death of a young girl had doomed not only herself, but all who had ever darkened the entryway. Every man, woman, and child who had ever come to know that house, whether before or after the incident, was now destined to return after death for the remainder of their existence. Unfortunately, the curse did not stop there, it affected those who descended from them until the end of the universe itself.

She hadn't believed this when Agatha first came to her spouting all the nonsense about how it was her fault and therefore her responsibility to fix it. However, when she was shown all the obituaries and the current remains of the old boarding house she had escaped to so long ago, she found her doubt dwindling and her belief gaining ground.

The house had always seemed to be alive during her early days in it. Little did anyone know how much truth was in the old fables that befell the land that it was built upon. From the moment she first stepped through the door, she found that her life vastly improved. She fell in love, acquired a job where she was respected, and she even bore a child.

It was only after the incident that things turned sideways. Her small child caught a case of pneumonia and died. Her husband, a great man and entrepreneur, decided that she wasn't worth anything to him without the ability to care for a child and left her for a younger woman. She heard, a few years later, that he had been struck down by a train on his way to witness the birth of his second child. In light of the news she felt almost vindicated by the universe. The world, no, the house had taken so much from her and yet it still contained many of the memories that she held dear.

None of these things could be found in any records. People had a tendency to only remember the bad things and forget the good. While she wished that she had never come to the house, she was still grateful that she had. Everything good that ever happened to her happened within these walls, yet many of those precious moments were tainted with the darkness that ebbed in the background always infringing upon anything that would bring a smile to one's face.

It wasn't that she hated the house, she simply wished to restore it to the way it was before that day. The day when Cassie died. Her mind was now consumed with the thought of rescue. She wished to rescue all those who she had trapped within its festering walls of doom.

Gwyneth was the first to find the bodies. The body of her once friend laid at the base of the stairs that led down into the old cellar. She had told Agatha that she did not wish to know where she took the dead, but after all that had happened in the time they'd returned, she found a sudden curiosity. It broke her heart to see her friend in such a way, but she knew that there was nothing that could be done. The body that was left behind did not try to hide how it met its demise. It was clear that the weapon of choice was an axe.

When Gwyneth was a young girl, she would watch her father chop wood behind their rickety old cottage. The tool marks were exactly the same on Agatha's body. Yet another happy memory tainted by death.

It was in the cellar where she came to find the answers that she had been longing for. The bodies of all those who had perished within the walls loomed in a distant darkened corner. The smell of decomposing flesh filled the air. All the children, old and new, were piled on top of each other. Alone in life, but together in death.

HOPE YOU GUYS ENJOYED THIS CHAPTER. STAY TUNED FOR CHAPTER FORTY-SIX: THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 

THIS NEXT CHAPTER IS MAINLY GOING TO BE ABOUT THE JOHN, BOBBY, AND JOE. THIS CHAPTER IS GOING TO CONTAIN A NEW DEVELOPMENT IN THE STORY.

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