The diary were smaller than Hans expected; thin, worn, the leather peeling in strips along the spine. He carried them to the table closest to the hearth. The fire had long since died, leaving nothing but cold ash and the faint sour smell of wet soot. The officers hovered nearby, murmuring in low voices while Bastrava paced behind him with restless, heavy steps.
Hans opened the first page.
The pages were filled with the clumsy innocence of a child's world:
sketches of birds perched on wobbly branches, a fox with impossibly round eyes, a horse drawn so stiffly it looked carved from wood. Under each drawing were small notes written in a jagged, overly-pressed hand.
"Bird too fat."
"Mother says foxes don't smile but I saw one smile today."
"Horse… legs wrong."
Marcus stood up and leaned in slightly, his voice tentative. "So… normal kid stuff, right?"
"Normal," Hans said. "For now."
He flipped to the next few pages; more drawings, more harmless musings. Then he turned to page six.
And froze.
A family portrait spanned the entire page. Childlike. Uneven. But deliberate. A mother. A father. A little girl with pigtails. A young boy with a slight smile.
And another boy.
Five figures. Not four.
Marcus stopped pacing. "That's not just a doodle."
"No," Hans murmured. "It isn't."
He scanned the entry beneath it. The words were smudged slightly, as if the boy wrote them with excitement.
"My brother taught me how to draw faces. It was fun."
Sergeant Bastrava stepped forward. "Brother? There's no record of-"
"I know," Hans said quietly.
Bastrava frowned. "Maybe he meant a cousin?"
"Then why draw him in the household?" Marcus countered. "Kids draw what they see. And what they know."
Hans flipped the page again, slower now, each turn revealing something subtly wrong. The next sketches were darker; not in theme, but in pressure. As if the boy pressed harder into the paper. Shadowed corners. Strange doorways. A staircase drawn beside a wall with no explanation.
Hans felt something tighten in his chest.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Marcus nudged him gently with his elbow. "You're making a face."
"It's nothing."
"Bullshit. Spill."
Hans didn't answer. He couldn't—not yet. The shapes felt familiar in a way he couldn't articulate, like an echo of a memory he wasn't sure was his.
He continued flipping.
More drawings.
More shadows.
More hints that the child's world had begun to narrow.
Then he found the line.
A single sentence pressed into the margin of one page, cramped and hesitant.
He read it once. Then again.
"I heard father kept my brother in the basement. It has been a week. I miss my brother."
The air in the room shifted.
Bastrava swallowed. "What… what basement? There's no basement in the blueprint."
"Maybe it was sealed," Hans muttered. "Old houses sometimes have-"
Marcus snapped his fingers. "Or maybe someone made damn sure any access to it disappeared."
Hans placed his hand on the page, feeling the slight indentation left by the child's writing. The grip tightened without him meaning to.
"What?" Marcus asked.
"The pressure," Hans said. "He pressed hard here. Harder than the earlier entries."
"So he was scared?" Bastrava ventured.
Hans shook his head. "Scared children write shaky. This is controlled. He wanted to remember what he wrote. As if… he thought someone might erase it."
The others remained silent.
Bastrava rubbed the back of his neck. "We searched the whole place. Every room, every wall. Nothing."
Hans closed the diary, but his eyes lingered on the edge of the ash-covered fireplace.
"Then we didn't search deep enough."
Marcus raised a brow. "You're thinking hidden passage?"
"I'm thinking," Hans replied, voice steady but taut, "the Delacourts had something they didn't want anyone to find."
There was a moment of silence.
Then Marcus asked quietly, "You feel it too, don't you?"
Hans didn't answer.
Because he did feel it.
A heaviness; like the house itself was holding its breath, waiting for something to be unearthed.
And buried beneath that weight, something else tugged at him.
A faint impression.
A whisper of déjà vu he couldn't trace.
A sensation that the missing boy; the one no records acknowledged—was not just another piece of the puzzle.
He mattered.
More than they realized.
More than Hans dared to admit.
Hans exhaled slowly. "This investigation just changed."
Bastrava nodded grimly. "We'll find this basement."
Hans rested the diary on the table, fingers brushing the child's shaky confession.
"Whatever's down there… it cant be good."