All Are Welcome Here – Chapter 10
Footsteps Above the Cellar Door
The footsteps upstairs moved slowly across the house.
Not dragging like the Hollowed on the roof.
Normal footsteps.
Careful.
Deliberate.
Each creak of the floorboards above the cellar made Elias’s chest tighten harder while the weak lantern light flickered across the cramped underground room.
Elias Ward instinctively stepped closer toward the staircase leading up to the locked cellar door. Mara immediately raised a hand toward him, silently warning him not to move.
The footsteps stopped directly overhead.
Silence followed.
The kind of silence where every breath suddenly sounds too loud.
Then something softly touched the cellar door from above.
Not knocking.
Just resting there.
Almost gently.
Elias held his breath.
A familiar voice drifted through the wood moments later.
“Elias?”
Emily again.
Soft.
Tired.
Human.
Mara closed her eyes briefly like the sound physically hurt her.
“You can’t keep hiding him down there,” Emily whispered through the door. “They’re already waiting in the forest.”
Outside somewhere beyond the house, the bells rang again.
Fifth bell.
The sound rolled faintly through the ground beneath the cellar while the lantern flame trembled harder than before.
Mara immediately looked toward Elias.
“You heard that?”
He nodded slowly.
The strange thing was how clearly he’d heard it now. The earlier bells had sounded distant, buried deep inside the mountains.
This one felt closer.
Warmer.
Like it had rung somewhere inside his own chest.
Mara noticed his expression changing.
“That’s how it starts.”
Elias frowned. “What does that mean?”
“The bells don’t call everyone the same way.” Her voice lowered slightly. “Some people never hear them at all.”
Cold uneasiness crawled beneath his skin.
“And the people who do?”
Mara didn’t answer immediately.
Above them, Emily slowly began walking around the cellar entrance upstairs. Her footsteps circled softly across the floorboards while she continued speaking through the silence.
“You should come upstairs,” she whispered. “You’ll understand once you see the forest.”
Elias moved toward the stairs instinctively.
Mara grabbed his arm immediately.
“No.”
“That’s my sister.”
“She wants you outside before sunrise.”
“And?”
Mara stared directly into his eyes now.
“Nothing human survives the sixth bell.”
The words settled heavily into the cellar.
Then the footsteps above suddenly stopped moving.
Complete silence followed again.
Elias slowly looked upward toward the ceiling.
“Emily?”
No answer.
Only faint wind outside.
Then—
something smiled above them.
Not physically visible.
Felt.
The sensation hit Elias instantly like icy water sliding down his spine.
Whatever stood upstairs no longer felt like his sister.
The lantern flickered violently.
And from directly behind the cellar walls—
came soft whispering.
Dozens of voices murmuring beneath the earth around them.
Mara immediately stood upright.
“No…”
The whispering grew louder.
Elias stared around the cramped cellar in horror while faint scratching noises slowly emerged from inside the dirt walls surrounding them.
Not rats.
Too large.
Too many.
Then one long pale finger slowly pushed through the soil beside the shelves.