Chapter 4 - The Ghost of Summer Lake
The official documents smelled of aged paper and mold. They were court records from 1986 from an unincorporated county in upstate New York. Words like Witness Protection Program, Relocation Directive, and Custodial Severance jumped off the pages in bold, unforgiving typeface.
According to the records, my real birth name was not Sarah Jenkins. It was Sarah Vance. My biological father had been a key state witness against a brutal organized crime syndicate operating across New England. In the autumn of 1986, just before he was scheduled to testify before a grand jury, our family home was ambushed in the dead of night. My parents were killed in the assault, but my older brother had hidden me inside an underground root cellar behind the barn.
That older brother was Daniel.
I slumped against the base of the desk, my lungs refusing to draw in air. Daniel was not my husband.
Daniel was my brother?
A scream tore from my throat—a sound so raw and guttural it terrified me. My mind spun into a terrifying spiral of horror and disgust. How could this be? We had shared a marriage bed! We had talked about having children! The sickness in my gut rose like acid, threatening to swallow my sanity whole.
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Desperate for answers, I grabbed the old tape player Daniel kept on his bookshelf, slammed the cassette into the deck, and hit the play button with a trembling fist. The tape hissed with static for several agonizing seconds before a familiar, deep baritone voice filled the dusty room. It was Daniel. His voice was thick with emotion, sounding tired, older, and laced with immense sorrow.
"Sarah... my sweet, darling girl," Daniel’s voice resonated through the speakers. "If you are listening to this, it means Emily was forced to trigger our emergency protocol, or my heart condition finally gave out before I could tell you the whole truth in person. Please, do not panic. Do not let your mind jump to monstrous conclusions. Listen to every word I say before you condemn the people who have spent their entire lives shielding you from monsters."
