Under the Stairs

When Ivo Rask returns to Morrow's Inlet to prepare his late aunt's house for sale, he expects rot, rain, paperwork, and the usual trouble old houses leave behind. He does not expect the sound beneath the stairs. At first, it is easy to explain away. Wet wood. Bad pipes. A house settling after years of neglect. But when Ivo opens a walled-in space beneath the staircase, he finds something no repair can explain. As Ivo and his sister Sarai are pulled into old records, family silences, and the uneasy memory of a town that protects itself by forgetting, every wall begins to feel less like shelter than evidence. Some secrets are not buried once. Some are maintained, repaired, and painted over by people who still call it mercy.