The train ride to the village of Oakhaven had felt like a slow descent into a past Johnny had tried to forget. As the modern skyscrapers of the city faded into the skeletal silhouettes of ancient oaks and rolling hills, Johnny felt a familiar weight settling in his chest. It was the holidays—a time for family, supposedly—but for him, it was a return to a place where the shadows always seemed a little too long.
Titi—a nickname he had outgrown years ago but which his grandparents still clung to—stepped off the dusty platform, his suitcase feeling heavier than when he had packed it. His grandparents' house sat at the edge of the village, a sprawling structure of stone and weathered timber that looked like it was being slowly swallowed by the earth.The house itself felt like a living entity, one that didn't particularly like guests. His grandfather, a man whose skin was as wrinkled as a dried plum, greeted him with a silent nod that spoke volumes. There were no warm embraces here, only the cold reality of tradition and the smell of mothballs.
"The attic is off-limits, Titi," the old man had rasped on the third night, his eyes reflecting the flickering candlelight. "There are things up there that haven't seen the sun in a hundred years. Let them sleep."
But the boredom of Oakhaven was a physical weight. During the day, Johnny wandered the grey fields, watching the crows circle above like harbingers of some nameless doom. At night, he lay awake in a bed that felt like a coffin, listening to the house groan under the weight of its own history. By the second week, the forbidden door at the end of the hallway started to look less like a warning and more like an invitation.
The first week was a haze of forced smiles and heavy meals. His grandmother's cooking was as rich as ever, and his grandfather's stories of the "old gods" were as cryptic as they were repetitive. But by the second week, the silence of the countryside began to scream. The peace he had anticipated had turned into a suffocating boredom. Every floorboard he stepped on felt like a tongue clicking in disapproval.
Driven by a restless energy he couldn't name, Johnny found himself standing before the narrow door leading to the attic. His grandfather had always warned him: "Some rooms are meant to hold memories, Titi. This one is meant to hold secrets. Stay out."
But Johnny was no longer a child. Or so he thought.
The air in the attic was thick, tasting of stagnant time and pulverized stone. Dust motes danced in the single shaft of amber light that pierced through a cracked roof tile, illuminating a graveyard of forgotten things. Broken rocking horses, mirrors turned black with age, and trunks filled with moth-eaten clothes.
In the furthest, darkest corner, shrouded in cobwebs that looked like funeral veils, sat the chest.
It wasn't like the other trunks. It was crafted from a wood so dark it seemed to absorb the little light available—obsidian-hued and cold. Iron bands, rusted to the color of dried blood, wrapped around it like the ribs of a starving beast. Johnny felt a strange pulse in the air, a rhythmic thrumming that matched his own heartbeat.
"Who knows what's inside?" he whispered. His voice was swallowed instantly by the insulation of dust.
"Grou... grou..."
Johnny froze. The sound was wet, a gargling rattle that vibrated through the floorboards and up into the soles of his feet. It sounded like someone trying to scream while drowning in thick syrup. His blood turned to ice. He took a frantic step back, his heel catching on a loose board.
"Who's there?" His voice was a pathetic tremor.
"Please... have mercy... help me..." The voice didn't sound human. It was a dry, rasping sound, like dead leaves skittering across a tombstone. It was weak, pleading, and yet it carried an underlying resonance that made Johnny's skin crawl with an instinctive, primal fear.
"Who are you? How did you get in there?" Johnny approached, his hand trembling as it hovered over the iron latch. The heat radiating from the box was unnatural, a dry, desert-like warmth that smelled of old copper and ozone.
"Trapped... for centuries... the seal is weak... please, child...."
Curiosity, that treacherous spark, flared up in Johnny's mind, overriding the frantic warnings of his survival instinct. What if someone had been kidnapped? What if his grandfather was a monster? He gripped the heavy lid. The iron was so cold it burned.
With a grunt of effort, he wrenched it upward. The chest didn't just open; it exhaled. A gust of stale, frozen air hit Johnny's face, carrying the scent of ancient tombs and unwashed gold.
Inside, doubled over in a space that defied the laws of anatomy, sat a man. He looked like a sketch of a human drawn in charcoal and then partially erased. Skin like yellowed parchment was stretched painfully thin over a skeletal frame. His eyes were closed, his lips cracked and grey.
"I'll... I'll get you out," Johnny stammered, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He reached out, his fingers brushing the man's forearm.
The contact was like touching a live wire. A jolt of pure, agonizing electricity surged through Johnny's arm, searing his nerves. The man's body jerked, and a strangled cry of pure torment tore from his throat—a sound so loud it felt like it would shatter the attic windows.
Johnny scrambled back, falling onto his backside, his breath coming in ragged gasps. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to hurt you! I—"
The man didn't move. He lay there, his chest heaving with shallow, rattling breaths. But as he exhaled, something slipped from between his grey lips.
It wasn't a tongue. It wasn't blood.
A crisp, 10,000 franc note fluttered out of the man's mouth, landing on the grimy floor. Then another. And another. They came out like autumn leaves, silent and mocking. Johnny stared at the money, his mind refusing to process the impossibility of it.
Then, the man's eyes snapped open.
They weren't white or brown. They were two glowing orbs of molten, liquid gold, burning with a hunger that had waited an eternity to be fed.
"The contract..." the man hissed, a faint smile touching his withered lips. "The first payment is made, Johnny Mammon."
The attic seemed to tilt. The shadows elongated, wrapping around Johnny like hungry fingers. He wasn't just a student on holiday anymore. He was the guardian of a god, and the debt was already beginning to accrue.