Grimstone

Virginia City seemed like a lark—a diversion on the way to Reno where Wraith, a doom metal band with a devoted but niche following, would play a gig in some dingy venue. Yet, as their rust-bitten van rolled into the town, that time had forgotten, and streets welcomed with an unsettling stillness that hummed just beneath the surface as if the land was holding its breath.

Kyle, lead singer of the band, leaned forward, squinting through his sunglasses. “Let’s stretch our legs. This place screams album cover.”

Behind him, Gus, his brother and band bassist, muttered something about needing to call their father. A lifetime of bitterness came into his voice like grit under his nails.

Their father, legendary geologist turned infamous recluse, Alan Grimstone hadn’t spoken to them in months. Yet Gus’ connection to him felt stronger here like the rocks whispered familial guilt.

They weren’t in town long before they met Dr. Lenore Hughes, the local veterinarian, who was patching up a dog outside her practice. She had the look of someone accustomed to fixing what others had broken.

Lenore knew who they were instantly—Virginia City was small, and word traveled fast. She offered them a knowing smile and a warning.

“Don’t let the town get under your skin,” she said. “Some places don’t like outsiders poking around.”

Sheriff Clay Benton was another story. Clay had been in the parking lot of one of the several bars in town, arguing with a man about a parking ticket when the band arrived.

His bloodshot eyes suggested he wasn’t exactly on the clock—or maybe he was, and that was the problem. Clay’s badge hung heavy on his shirt, but the undeniable weight seemed to press down from somewhere unseen.

Wraith didn’t plan to stay long. They certainly didn’t plan to discover the cellar.

The cellar was in the basement of a dilapidated boarding house where Kyle, Gus, and the others decided to crash for the night and where Gus heard the faint noise—metal scraping against stone—and found the trapdoor beneath a moth-eaten rug.

“You hear that?” Gus said, his voice tight.

“I hear you imagining things,” Kyle replied, though his tone betrayed his unease.

But the brothers pried it open, revealing a set of stairs carved into the earth. Their descent was lit only by the beam of a flashlight that sputtered with every step.

At the bottom, they found the room–its walls etched with strange symbols, impossibly precise, and older than anything they could imagine. In the center, a crude altar stood atop a mound of rocks slick with something dark and thick.

Kyle bent closer, his breath fogging in the chill of the space. The air seemed to hum.

“What is this?” Gus whispered.

“For you,” a voice replied.

It wasn’t Kyle’s or Gus’.

The voice belonged to a figure stepping from the shadows: a man old as the earth, wearing their father’s face.

The sheriff arrived an hour later, dragged from the haze of another pill high by Lenore’s frantic call. The veterinarian had heard screaming from the boarding house, and when she found the band’s van abandoned, she knew something was wrong.

What Clay found in the cellar turned his stomach—a scene he couldn’t fully comprehend but knew he’d have to bury.

Kyle’s body lay sprawled across the altar, his chest carved open with surgical precision. Gus was kneeling beside him, sobbing, his arms stained to the elbows in blood.

“Something’s coming,” Gus muttered, rocking back and forth. “It’s not done with us. It’s in our blood.”

Lenore had to pull Clay back up the stairs before his trembling hands reached for his revolver. The air down there—something in the air—seemed to slither into the mind and choke rational thought.

They sealed the cellar, but it didn’t stop what was already in motion.

By morning, Virginia City had turned on itself. The townsfolk claimed to hear whispers in the wind, voices from deep within the earth. Some disappeared entirely, others wandering the streets, bleeding from their eyes.

Wraith was gone, but their presence had cracked something loose—an ancient curse tied to the veins of silver that had once built the town.

Lenore, Clay, and Gus were the only ones left with any hope of stopping it. They pieced the story together: a pact made generations ago, a family’s bloodline cursed to bind something older than memory.

The thing beneath Sun Mountain was awake and hungered for its promise.

As the three descended into the mines to end the nightmare, they realized too late that they were walking into its jaws. The Grimstone had been waiting, not just for the brothers, but for anyone foolish enough to try and sever its ties.

The last thing Gus saw before the darkness swallowed them all was his father’s face, smiling, his teeth glinting like ore in the near-lightless void.