The lights in the B&B flickered, the bulbs pulsing with erratic, unholy life, sending shadows like phantoms across the walls. Sam felt Lilly trembling, her sister’s fear bleeding into her own. She took a breath, steadied her voice.
“We’ll figure this out,” she promised, though uncertainty wavered beneath her words. Sam squeezed Lilly’s shoulder, a gesture that was meant to reassure them both. “We’ll start with the obvious explanations. I’ll talk to Hank in the morning.”
“Why not now?” Lilly asked, her voice raw.
Sam hesitated, searching for confidence she didn’t feel. “It’s late,” she said. “He is asleep and I don’t want to disturb him. He needs rest.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Sam said, the refrain meant as much for herself as for Lilly.“Get some sleep,” Sam suggested, gently urging Lilly upstairs. “We’ll start fresh in the morning.”
Lilly resisted at first, her reluctance evident in the way she lingered beside Sam. But the need for rest was undeniable.
Sam followed, flicking off the light and leaving the foyer in darkness. The air felt thick, as though even the shadows were waiting for answers.
Lilly turned at the top of the stairs, the movement weary and unsure. “What if it happens again?”
Sam hesitated, feeling the pull of her own exhaustion. “Then we’ll face it together.”
In the hall, Lilly paused outside Sam’s door, a silent question in her eyes. “You can stay with me,” Sam said, reading the fear that Lilly didn’t voice. “Just in case.”
They entered Sam’s room, its shadows deep and unsettling. The bed was rumpled, the covers twisted from Sam’s usual restless sleep. They lay down together, sisters united against the creeping unknown.
Lilly curled into Sam, the physical closeness a fragile barrier against their shared anxiety. Sam held her, though her own hands shook with the enormity of what lay ahead.
“We’ll start in the morning,” Sam whispered into the dark, a mantra of hope and desperation. The lights flickered once more as she turned them off.
Sam dreamed of being devoured, dark tendrils and colder whispers unraveling her until nothing remained. When she woke, her breath was an icy mist in the frigid air, her chest heavy and raw. She rubbed her eyes, fingers still sticky with sleep and the red sting of injury on her hand. Shadows pooled in the corners of the room, their darkness a void with no end.
Eyes, there were eyes now in the void. A face emerged from the shadows, then a neck and shoulders. It was like the corner was slowly giving birth to a form. Recognition hit Sam like a lightning bolt, she was stunned and speechless. The form was Danny, as he was when he died. The head turned slightly and she could see the cut across his face, a deep cut to the bone.
Sam quickly looked around the bed, Lilly was not there. Danny smiled, wicked and sinister, nothing like the boy she knew 10 years ago. His mouth started to move, words she couldn’t here. A hand then came from the blackness, then an arm, and it slowly grew from the darkness and eventually connected to his body. He pointed right at her.
Sam had enough, she jumped out of bed, her legs finally working but not how she wanted. She stumbled and fell. She looked back and Danny was gone. The inky blackness remained. Sam quickly exited the room. The hallway stretched like a tunnel, elongating with each tentative step. She moved toward Lilly's room, her bare feet cold against the wooden floor, echoing as if she were not alone. A distant clatter—ceramic against wood—propelled her forward, a crescendo of noise and the gnawing pull of family responsibility. The air grew less sharp as she moved downstairs. The lights cast warped shadows, surreal angles made stranger by the undercurrent of dark uncertainty.
Lilly sat at the kitchen table, hands wrapped around a mug, her silhouette sharp and fragile against the muted glow of an old bulb. Sam slowed as she entered, taking in the stillness and the fear that lingered. She watched Lilly’s fingers, knuckles white, and noticed the shiver that ran through her.
“What are you doing up?” Sam asked, her voice hoarse and raw with more than sleep.
Lilly looked up, her eyes wide with something too deep to name. “Nightmare,” she said, the word a jagged whisper that caught in her throat.
Sam sat beside her, her presence a tether in the uncertainty of the room. Her instincts pulled her close, bridging the distance left by past oversights and unanswered questions.
“Me too and something worse, I think I am seeing things now,” Sam said, an admission that was both bond and confession.
Lilly set the mug down, its contents untouched. “It felt so real,” she said, her voice trembling as much as her hands. “Shadows, like they were alive, like they were trying to...” Her words dissolved into silence.
“Trying to swallow you whole?” Sam finished, the feeling of queasiness growing.
Lilly nodded, her eyes searching Sam's face for reassurance, for understanding. She seemed smaller, more vulnerable in the stark kitchen light. “Didn’t expect to wake up and find you here,” Sam said, trying to inject warmth into air. “It was freezing upstairs.”
“I woke up and—” She hesitated, the admission snagging on the thread of her pride. “I was kind of freaked out.”
Sam reached for her sister’s hand, the contact a balm against the chilled distance. “You could have woken me up.”
“Like that would have helped,” Lilly replied, a wry attempt at humor that faltered beneath her fear. The lights above them began to flicker, a rhythmic pulse that matched the growing unease. Lilly drew back, her breath hitching as she glanced upward.
“What the hell is happening?” she asked, her voice rising in tandem with her fear.
“Maybe a power surge,” Sam said, though the words carried little conviction.
Lilly shivered, more from fear than the cold. Her skepticism, usually buoyant and teasing, seemed brittle. The sisters remained at the table, the uneasy light an ominous metronome. The whispers of their nightmares crowded in, coiling and suffocating, until Sam slammed her chair back, the scrape piercing the charged air. Deep down she didn't want to be in the B&B right now, wanting instead to explore and maybe find a power line down or something to explain what was happening.
“We should look into it,” Sam said, standing with more resolve than she felt. “See if anything’s going on in town.”
Lilly stared at her, wide-eyed. “You mean leave?” she asked, the flickering light reflecting her disbelief.
“Not like there’s much sleep happening here anyway,” Sam said, trying for humor but landing somewhere closer to truth. She needed to understand what was happening, to parse the confusion into something manageable.
“What about the book?” Lilly asked, more test than curiosity.
“It’s not going anywhere,” Sam replied, the assurance meant for herself as much as for Lilly. Lilly hesitated, the echoes of the nightmare pressing against her reluctance. She saw the certainty in Sam’s face, the promise that they would face this together, and nodded.
The town was a patchwork of fog and absence, silent and seething beneath the thin veil of night. Sam and Lilly walked through its unyielding stillness, twin figures against the disquiet. The wind cut at their exposed skin, leaving trails of uncertainty and disbelief. The streetlights above them wavered, a mocking semaphore that offered no solace. Their footsteps quickened in the open space, then skidded to a stop at the looming shadow of a familiar shape. It was Tyrone, the badge on his chest gleaming in the unreal light.
The sisters approached, noting the unusual tension in Tyrone’s stance. Sam watched the confident lawman, seeing something else—an alertness that bordered on unease. It unsettled her. “Couldn’t sleep?” Tyrone called, his voice lacking its usual warmth.
“Something like that,” Sam replied, not slowing her pace. She kept Lilly close, protective. “Weird stuff happening at the B&B.”
“Same all over town,” Tyrone said. The words carried more than just information; they held a weight that pulled Sam and Lilly closer, into the uncertain orbit of his authority. The streetlights blinked their eerie rhythm overhead. Each pulse turned Tyrone’s features from shadow to light, an alternating mask of resolve and the worry he couldn’t hide.
“You have any idea what it is?” Lilly asked, her tone probing and hopeful.
Tyrone shrugged, his jaw tight. “Strange sounds. Power going out. Lights doing that,” he said, nodding at the flickering bulbs. “Not your usual small-town drama.”
Sam listened, her mind caught between rationality and the lingering, formless fear. “It’s like we’re haunted,” she said, half-joking but testing the boundaries of her disbelief.
Tyrone didn’t smile. “Feels that way,” he said. “Whatever it is, it’s freaking people out. Half the town’s losing sleep over it.”
The moonlit silence pressed in around them, heavier with Tyrone’s confirmation. Sam struggled to align what she knew with what she was seeing, feeling, hearing. “Maybe some prank?” Sam suggested, grasping for a plausible explanation.
“Biggest prank this town’s ever seen,” Tyrone said, his skepticism reflecting Sam’s own. “Never seen it this bad, not since I was a kid.”
Lilly frowned, her mind working. “What do you mean?”
Tyrone hesitated, choosing his words. "Like some kind of... curse." He met Sam's eyes, the disbelief she saw in his mirroring her own. Sam wanted to push back, to find the thread of logic that would unravel the mess.
"Not sure what to make of it," Tyrone said, his voice low. "You ever see anything like this in the city?"
"Not exactly," Sam replied. They stood in the strange cold of a summer night, the empty streets pressing in from all sides.
"Why are you really out this late?" Tyrone asked, his eyes scanning the town's deserted outline.
Sam hesitated, reluctant to confess the depth of their experience. She nodded at the flickering lights, the pale moon. "Same reason you are," she said after a moment.
"You should head back," Tyrone advised, his concern evident. "More of the same isn't going to help."
The lights above them flared and dimmed, casting Tyrone’s face in stark contrast to the darkened streets. “Getting calls every few minutes,” Tyrone continued, his voice a little more weary, a little more strained. “Most of it is nothing. But some of it...”
“What?” Sam asked, the urgency of her question betraying her growing fear.
“People acting strange,” he said, his reluctance adding weight to the words. “Out in the streets, not knowing how they got there.”
The wind wrapped around them like a second skin, the enormity of Tyrone’s admission hard to process. Sam wanted to reject it, to scoff at the notion.
“Who?” Lilly asked, her voice breaking the fragile silence.
Tyrone shifted, his breath sounding like a hiss. “Mrs. Krenshaw, the Bates twins... three cases just tonight.”
Lilly looked at Sam, fear and hope mingling in her expression. “Do you think...?”
“I don’t know,” Sam replied, the confession ripping through her resolve.
Tyrone paused, his attention drawn to something at the periphery of his vision. Sam followed his gaze, the streetlights flickering with a new urgency, an almost mocking intensity. “They’re still out there,” Tyrone said, a note of wonder and fear in his voice. “Same look on every one of them. I couldn’t wake them or get them back into their houses.”
Sam shivered, unsure if the cause was the cold wind or the surreal certainty of what they were hearing. Tyrone turned back to them, his face a mask of hard lines and softened edges. “We found Mrs. Abernathy in her front yard. Eyes wide open, like she was...” His voice trailed off, the unspoken words like heavy stones.
“Sleepwalking,” Lilly finished, the word no more comforting in her mouth than it was in Tyrone’s.
“What did she say?” Sam asked, desperate for an answer that would tether her back to the world she understood.
“Nothing,” Tyrone replied, his voice hollow. “She was on her knees in supplication. Not even aware of me being there.”
Tyrone turned to look at them, waiting for something—an explanation, a resolution, a sign of certainty that Sam could not give. Then came the shadows—an uncoiling of darkness that spiraled around them, devouring breath and reason. The three figures stopped, stilled by the wrongness of it all. The tendrils formed a silhouette that disappeared around the gazebo. Sam felt Lilly’s terror and Tyrone’s caution merge into something monstrous. Sam moved, defiant. Her voice trembled but did not break. “We have to see,” she said.
The words were brave, yet hollow. Tyrone kept his hand on his gun, the comfort of its presence as fleeting as the shape that haunted them. He exchanged a look with Sam, doubt and fear battling for ground.
“Are you serious?” Lilly asked, her voice stretched thin.
“Come on,” Sam urged, not waiting for agreement. “What if it’s connected?”
Sam moved toward the gazebo, each step an exercise in tenuous resolve. Lilly and Tyrone followed, their reluctance as palpable as the wind that battered against them.
Inside the gazebo, they huddled together. Sam’s eyes fell to the floor, to the strange mark etched into the old wood. She dropped to her knees, the mystery claiming her with familiar power—her response written in her bones, blind devotion overriding every bit of doubt.
“What is it?” Lilly asked, her breath hitching with every word.
Sam ran her fingers over the lines, her thoughts in a whirlwind. "It's a kind of symbol," she murmured, though it was something beyond that. She recognized it, having seen it throb with an unnatural vitality. It was on the tome's cover, glowing. It appeared in her dreams. The wood surrounding it retained an unusual warmth, a strange contrast to the the feel of the night.
Tyrone watched, skepticism curling his lip. “Someone decided to burn their initials into the gazebo,” he said, but his voice lacked conviction.
The edges of the symbol blurred in Sam’s vision, transformed by her disbelief. Or was it her belief? Her thoughts tangled, her thoughts shifting with each pulse of memory. Lilly looked from the floor to Sam’s face, searching for answers.
“It’s the same, isn’t it?” she asked, seeing more than Sam wanted her to see.
“Maybe,it might be connected” Sam admitted, the confession thick in her throat.
“Connected, my ass,” Tyrone said, pacing the confines of the small structure. “Connected to what, huh? Probably a bunch of high school kids looking to scare old ladies.” He stopped, shook his head. “Or us.”
Sam ignored him, the focus of her thoughts narrowing to a single, impossible point. The threads that tied it all together wove tighter and tighter around her.
“Let’s go,” Lilly urged, her anxiety breaking through. “I don’t like it here.”
Sam nodded, the flicker of recognition in her eyes undeniable. She pushed herself up from the floor, the significance of the symbol burning in her mind. Before they could leave, a wail tore through the square, raw and terrible. It filled the space with its unearthly pitch, chilling marrow and marrow's core. They froze, the sound hitting them like a primal, all-consuming terror. Lilly’s grip on Sam’s arm tightened, vise-like and desperate.
“What was that?” she cried, panic in every syllable.
Tyrone stood rigid, his usual control stripped away. “Nothing good,” he said, the words harsh and clipped.
“We should leave,” Sam said, her resolve eroding beneath the pressure of fear. She hesitated, torn between her need to know and her instinct to flee.
“Damn right,” Tyrone said. He took charge, the habit of leadership driving him forward. “Let’s move.”
“I’ll drive you back,” he said glancing around, looking for movement or danger.
Sam nodded, unable to find the words for the resolve she wanted to show. She gripped Lilly’s hand, the contact both comfort and apology.