Neve never liked funerals, but when her father passed, she knew she couldn’t make up an excuse not to go. She had done that too many times in the past already. Over the years, family had thinned out of that old dusty town. Some died, others drifted away to better places with more things going on. One thing was certain: family wasn’t what it used to be.

Her mother, Ann, only made that truth sting harder. Age and the illness of dementia had stripped her of herself. Most days she barely remembered Neve’s name. Every story Neve told her during visits at the care home evaporated before the words finished leaving her lips. Her father, Gary, had always been the one to lean on for advice and comfort. But most of all, for connection. Neve was a daddy’s girl all the way, and she missed those moments with him since he passed away.

Back at the house, everything was still just as Gary had left it. The coffee cup from the morning he collapsed with a heart attack still sat on the kitchen table, ringed with old stains. Neve told herself she’d start clearing things, either to move into the house herself or rent it out. But every object she touched stirred memories, each one heavier than the last. All of which made it emotionally unbearable to actually pack up her dads things.

And then, something unexpected happened: she heard his voice.

Faint at first, only a whisper. But Neve knew it. She followed the sound from room to room, sometimes catching the warm smell of pipe tobacco trailing after it. A scent she knew all too well. Soon, the task of gathering his belongings became a reason to linger and she didn’t feel that deep loss anymore. She eagerly paced the house, talking out loud, and sometimes he answered.

Not always, but enough to make her believe.

The day his voice grew loudest is when he when he said something she desperately needed to hear. “I love you and miss you every day,” he said softly. Her heart bloomed with bittersweet joy. She carried that warmth straight to the care home, even though she knew her mom Ann likely wouldn’t believe or remember.

With her, she brought a photo album, flipping through pages of her childhood—birthdays, summer picnics, and both parents beaming with Neve in their arms. They were all pictures of better times. Times, when her parents were happy and healthy, and Neve still had the joy of life showing through her youth. Not the heaviness of adulthood.

At first her mother responsive, smiling, and able to recall some of the details of when those pictures where taken. But other pictures were blank, as though she had no recollection of them at all. Several pages were like that, until Neve turned a page with pictures of their barn.

Ann froze. Her gaze locked on those photographs as if they alone held the weight of something serious. Neve asked her what was wrong, but got no reply. Neve had never got such a reaction from her mom until now. Even after asking repeatedly, her mom responded with the same concerning look on her face. Neve panicked and raised her voice, desperate to snap her mother out of it.

Suddenly, Ann shoved the book away. Her voice was thin and urgent, “Stay away from there.”

Neve stared. “Why? What’s in the barn?”

But Ann turned her face to the window, drifting into silence until Neve later left.

That evening, back at the house, Neve couldn’t shake the warning. She told her father’s ghost about it, how Mom had recoiled at the pictures of the barn. As a child, Neve had never thought anything was wrong with the barn, but earlier when mom acted like it wasn’t a random confusion.

It was a real warning.

The voice grew clearer and coaxed her toward the kitchen. A faint thud made her pause suddenly. The sound was the photo album she had brought back to the house. It had slid from the counter and sprawled open on the floor. A picture of the barn staring up at her.

Mom’s words echoed in her head and curiosity lead her back to the barn. Inside was a mess of old equipment from the farming days of her youth. Many of it had not been used in years and was merely collecting dust. But that night, part of the mystery would be solved.

She found the key.

It was hidden in a secret compartment under a loose stair tread, just where the voice led her. The key was heavy, iron, and old. So old that it looked an antique. As she looked closer, there was an “f” engraved on the key. She thought it may stand for “Foster,” their family name.

“Where does it go, Dad?” she asked upon the dimly lit barn walls. But the voice didn’t answer.

The next afternoon, she returned to Ann’s bedside and held up the key. Her mom’s cloudy eyes widened with something sharp and lucid. She lifted a trembling hand, pushing Neve’s wrist away. Her lips trembled as she uttered:

“Don’t… open it.”

Neve wanted to a clear answer, but her mother’s condition soon took over. Ann began drifting off into space again, becoming unreachable. Neve tried desperately to get her to respond, causing those nearby to be concerned as Neve raised her voice. There was something about that key, she knew it.

By evening, Neve stood at the barn. The heavy doors gave way with a screech as they opened. Dust swirled like ghosts in the flashlight beam as she stepped inside. For an hour she searched, asking her father aloud where the key belonged. She was met with only silence. Then, the comforting voice finally guided her in the right direction.

In the far corner, something solid under the stacks of hay. A trapdoor. With a lock that fit the key. It had taken Neve a while to dig out the hay, leaving mounds of it scattered around her. The hinges groaned as she pried open the trapdoor, revealing a stairwell carved into the earth. Her flashlight cut down into darkness. The air that rose up was cold, metallic, and dingy.

The first room below was comforting—almost. Framed photographs of Gary lined the walls. Photos of places she didn’t know he had been before. Shelves of trophies gleamed of bronze rodeo statues, engraved plaques for bull riding, belt buckles from county fairs. Neve nearly laughed in relief. This was the man she remembered. She knew he had been riding bulls since he was a boy, but she didn’t know he was so accomplished.

But the next room is what she wasn’t expecting. Another door stood across the room. Once opened, another set of stairs lay. Neve shined her light downward as she descended the stairs. There, inside the next room weapons lined the walls: axes, saws, and hammers. Some rusted. Some still tacky with dried blood. Tables were laid out with restraints and chains. There was strange contraptions built. They were torture devices.

“No,” Neve whispered.

She slowly staggered forward, scanning old newspaper clippings tacked to the walls with headlines about missing people, unsolved murders, and bodies never found. Then, the Polaroid photos: victims tied, beaten, and terrified. And in many of the pictures was her father, smiling beside them.

Tears blurred her eyes but she could still see another door which lay on the other side of that room. She froze not wanting to see what new nightmare may lay ahead but, the voice spoke to her again, urging her to continue. When she refused and tried to turn back, something stopped her, and pushed her forward.

The next door opened by itself and from it came a foul stench. Neve, summoned every ounce of courage to see what lay inside the next room. It was gruesome. There were bodies everywhere. What remained of them, at least. Bones piled in corners, meat stripped and dried. Skulls hung from hooks like trophies.

Neve screamed.

The door behind her slammed shut. Then the other one. Lastly, the barn doors flung closed, She was locked inside. The flashlight flickered as the voice appeared again—louder than ever, and everywhere at once asking, “Did you really think it was me?”

Neve trembled as she tried to figure out what was going on.

“I only wore him. I whispered to him. I made him strong. I made him kill. And now…” The voice thickened, closer, wrapping around her like smoke. “Now it’s your turn.”

The air pressed down. She dropped the flashlight, and in the dark, something possessed her. Something cold, vast, and unstoppable. Her scream broke off in silence.

When the barn doors creaked open at dawn, Neve walked out. Calm. Smiling.

Later that day, she visited Ann at the care home, pulling up a chair at her mother’s side. She held mother’s hand, her smile warm and fairly familiar on that day.

“Don’t worry, Mom,” Neve said softly. “I’ll take care of everything now.”

Her mother’s eyes filled with terror, fearing what she had believed all along: that evil was in the blood. But that revelation only made Neve smile wider. She glared into her mother’s eyes, absorbing her fear until it dissipated back into the forgetfulness of dementia.

The family curse continued.

Gary’s secret, now passed down to her.

A secret passed down, in the blood.