Chapter 12 - dust on the keys
The rain fell in heavy, rhythmic sheets against the windshield of my car as Sarah and I drove north toward Blackwood Ridge early the following morning. Lily slept soundly in the back seat, cradling a worn velvet pillow she refused to leave behind.
The key we found in the sewing machine hung heavy around my neck, threaded onto a simple leather cord. According to my mother's letter, this silver key did not belong to a standard door. It was designed for a heavy iron lock box manufactured by the long-defunct Crown & Anchor Locksmith Company, a detail I had researched frantically on my phone until three in the morning.
"Are you sure we should be doing this without calling the police?" Sarah asked, her hands gripping the steering wheel firmly as the road grew narrower and steeper, winding through dense pine forests.
"The police closed her case fifteen years ago as an accidental death," I replied, staring out at the grey mist swallowing the trees. "If I go to them with a photo with a scratched-out face and a mysterious key, they will call it the ramblings of a grief-stricken daughter. We need to see what is inside that cottage first."
When we finally pulled up to the overgrown driveway of the Blackwood Ridge estate, the sight that met us was bleak. The main mill building in the distance was a hollow shell of rusted steel and broken red brick, its tall chimney looming like a tombstone against the grey sky. Further down the path, half-hidden beneath dense briars and wild ivy, stood the weaver's cottage.
The wooden door was rotted at the edges, hanging loosely on a single rusted hinge. I stepped inside first, my flashlight beam cutting through dense clouds of suspended dust and cobwebs. The interior was surprisingly intact: a heavy oak workbench, shelves stacked with dusty spools of faded thread, and in the center of the room, a massive timber loom, its frame draped in decaying wool like a shroud.
"It looks like nobody has stepped foot in here for decades," Sarah murmured, holding Lily close to her side as they followed me in.
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"Look at the floor," I said, sweeping the beam across the wide pine floorboards.
Unlike the rest of the dust-covered room, a straight, clear line ran across the floorboards near the base of the loom, as if heavy furniture had been dragged across it repeatedly. I knelt down, pressing my palms against the cool wood. Near the right leg of the loom, embedded flush into the floorboard, was a circular brass plate containing a single keyhole shaped like a loom shuttle.
