Gwen watched Heather pose in front of the bed and silently covered her face. Ash had no response to Heather's shameless logic about underwear and swimsuits, so he chose not to argue with her any further.
"Wear whatever you want. I'm not the one losing anything."
Heather gave him a victorious smile before picking up the sealed envelope from the nightstand. She waved it toward Gwen and Ash and motioned for them to come closer.
"Let's read the letter Grandma left me. Maybe it explains what happened inside the mansion."
Gwen and Ash moved to either side of her, placing Heather between them just as they had done while reading Sheriff Hooper's files. Heather carefully opened the envelope and tilted it over her palm.
A silver pendant fell out first.
Its main body formed a circle with a stylized letter S in the center. The metal looked old but had been polished until it carried a clean silver-white shine.
Ash's imagination immediately took an unreasonable turn.
Perhaps Heather's real name was Heather-El, and a reporter named Clark Kent would soon arrive to claim her as a long-lost relative.
Gwen and Heather reacted differently. Both women looked from the pendant toward a mark on the upper-left side of Heather's chest.
Heather touched it through the edge of her bralette.
"I always thought this was a birthmark."
Gwen leaned closer.
"It has the exact same shape. Did every Sawyer child receive one of these marks?"
"I don't know. My parents never explained it."
Ash tried to move closer as well.
"What mark? Let me see."
He leaned too far and raised one hand as though he intended to inspect it personally. Gwen immediately pushed his face away while Heather joined her from the other side.
Together, they forced him backward onto the bed.
"I'm conducting serious research," Ash complained. "Why do both of you assume the worst?"
His solemn expression might have convinced them if he had not immediately pulled the blanket across his lap.
Heather rolled her eyes and returned her attention to the envelope. She removed several folded pages and began reading the letter aloud.
My dearest granddaughter,
This mansion and everything inside it now belong to you. However, accepting this inheritance also means accepting certain responsibilities.
Your birth name is Edith Rose Sawyer.
Barry Farnsworth has given you every key to the estate. The largest key opens the reinforced door beneath the house. Behind that door lives your cousin, Jedidiah Sawyer.
He may be the only other surviving member of our family.
Heather stopped reading for several seconds.
Ash and Gwen remained silent beside her. Sheriff Hooper's records had already revealed that Heather was born into the Sawyer family, but learning her original name from her grandmother made the truth feel far more personal.
Heather continued.
You may already know what happened to our family. If you do not, Sheriff Hooper and Mr. Farnsworth can tell you the truth.
After the Sawyer home was destroyed and our family was murdered, Jed's mind broke under the weight of grief and rage. Something evil found him during that weakness.
A demon entered his body.
The priest who helped me called it the Bloodthirsty Demon. It possessed an uncontrollable hunger for flesh and blood, which made Jed an ideal host. However, the creature did not care about family. It would have killed me as easily as anyone else.
Jed was never like ordinary people, but he always protected those he considered family. Even after the possession began, he fought the demon for control of his body.
To keep me safe, he willingly allowed himself to be imprisoned beneath the mansion.
Heather's gaze moved toward the pendant in her hand before returning to the letter.
The priest carved sacred scripture into the stairway and placed a seal around the reinforced door. Those prayers weakened the demon and prevented it from leaving the lower level.
The priest wanted to destroy the creature while it was trapped, but I refused.
He taught me how to activate the complete purification ritual in case Jed lost control forever. I kept delaying the decision because destroying the demon might also kill what remained of my grandson.
The holy scripture must be renewed through Bible prayers. That responsibility prevented me from leaving the estate for long periods.
Edith, you are the final heir of the Sawyer family. My blood runs through you, and the pendant inside this envelope proves your place within our family.
Every Sawyer carries a family pendant.
What happens to Jed must be your decision.
The final section contained a series of Latin prayers. Several phrases matched the inscriptions Ash had seen on the hidden stairs and his father's greatsword.
Verna had included two possible choices.
If Heather believed Jed could still resist the demon, she could renew the holy seal and continue keeping him confined beneath the estate. If the Bloodthirsty Demon had completely consumed him, she could recite the full prayer and activate the scripture throughout the basement.
The ritual would destroy the demon.
Heather lowered the letter.
"The monster beneath the house was my cousin."
Her voice carried disbelief more than fear. The same creature who killed Carl and Burt Hartman had been the only remaining member of her biological family.
Ash folded his arms and considered the timeline.
"The seal failed because Verna wasn't there to renew it."
That explained part of what happened, but not everything. Verna had known that her health was declining, so Ash could not understand why she waited until the final weeks of her life to contact Heather.
The answer existed in the circumstances surrounding her death.
Verna had discovered Heather's location years earlier. She quietly followed her granddaughter's life from a distance and saw that Heather was healthy, studying in New York, and surrounded by people who cared about her.
As long as Verna remained strong enough to maintain the seal, she saw no reason to drag Heather back into the Sawyer family's violent history.
Then Verna became seriously ill without warning.
She renewed the scripture one final time before her condition worsened and instructed Farnsworth to contact Heather. A single reinforcement usually lasted between forty and fifty days.
The law firm sent the documents quickly, but several weeks passed before Heather received and understood them. Her journey from New York should still have left enough time to reach the estate before the seal failed.
The cannibals in West Virginia changed that.
Heather's injury forced the group to remain in a small town while she recovered and cooperated with the investigation. By the time they continued south, the protection beneath the Carson mansion had already weakened.
Verna had still prepared for that possibility.
She trusted Jed.
Even after the holy scripture lost its power, Jed remained inside the basement. The door was no longer capable of containing him, but he continued fighting the Bloodthirsty Demon and refused to leave.
Because he remained below, he never learned that Verna had died upstairs.
Darryl ruined that balance.
He discovered the hidden staircase and picked the lock while searching for valuables. The raw animal meat Verna provided had kept Jed and the demon alive, but fresh human flesh offered far more power.
Jed had never rejected human meat, and Darryl was not family.
Leatherface killed him.
The Bloodthirsty Demon consumed the strength released by the murder and gained the advantage in its struggle against Jed. For the first time in decades, it forced the body out of the basement.
The creature explored the mansion until it discovered Verna's corpse in the second-floor bedroom.
Seeing his grandmother broke through the demon's control. Jed regained command of his body long enough to carry Verna outside, dig open the grave prepared for her, and attempt to bury her beside the rest of the Sawyer family.
Ash, Gwen, and Heather returned before he completed the task.
Jed listened to their voices and realized that the young woman entering the mansion was Verna's missing heir. Once he understood Heather was family, he became afraid that the demon might attack her.
He abandoned the grave and hid beneath the house again.
The situation might have remained stable if Burt and Carl Hartman had never arrived.
Heather's voice traveled through the mansion when she announced their visit. Jed recognized Burt's name immediately.
Verna had given him the photograph taken after the Sawyer massacre. Burt stood proudly at its center beside the townspeople who murdered Jed's family and burned their home.
The moment Jed learned his greatest enemy had entered the estate, rage overwhelmed every restraint he had left.
He took the chainsaw and climbed out of the basement.
Carl encountered him first inside the bathroom.
The deputy fired an entire magazine into Jed's head. Those bullets truly killed the remaining human body.
For a brief moment, Jedidiah Sawyer died.
The Bloodthirsty Demon did not.
With the host's mind and soul no longer capable of resisting, the demon took complete control of the corpse. It forced the dead flesh to rise and attacked Carl with the strength Ash later witnessed.
That was why Leatherface appeared to return from the dead.
Heather remained silent after Ash finished explaining his theory. She looked down at the silver pendant resting in her palm.
Jed had been a killer long before the possession. Nothing in Verna's letter erased the people he murdered or the terror he caused.
Yet he had also spent decades fighting a demon to protect the only family member he had left. Even after the seal failed, he remained imprisoned by his own choice.
When he finally lost control, it was because the man responsible for slaughtering his family entered his home.
Gwen placed one hand over Heather's.
"You didn't know."
"I know."
Heather studied the letter again.
"If I had arrived earlier, maybe I could have renewed the seal."
"You were injured by cannibals," Ash said. "You didn't choose to arrive late."
Heather's fingers tightened around the pendant.
"I'm not blaming myself. I'm just trying to understand him."
Ash sat beside her.
"The demon is dead now. Whatever happened to Jed ended with it."
Heather slowly nodded.
Verna had left the decision in her hands, but events had made it before she ever read the letter. Ash's greatsword had destroyed the Bloodthirsty Demon and ended Jed's unnatural existence.
She lifted the pendant and fastened the chain around her neck.
The silver S settled against the matching mark on her skin.
For the first time in her life, Heather carried the name and symbol of the family into which she had been born.
Edith Rose Sawyer was no longer a secret.