“Hazel!”
I froze. My name, torn through the dark, high and desperate.
“Mom?” My voice broke on the word.
No answer—just the ragged echo of her crying for help. I ran toward it, bare feet slapping the floor, hands clawing through blackness. Doors appeared and vanished. I pushed one open and found nothing. Another, and only waves crashing over empty beds.
“Where are you?” I shouted. “Mom!”
The sound came again—closer, then farther. My chest hurt. The darkness pressed down until I couldn’t tell if I was running or drowning.
And then—silence.
Utter, total silence.
It was worse than the screams.
I opened my mouth to call again, but the air wouldn’t move. A hand—someone’s—closed around my wrist from behind. Hard. I gasped, terrified. The dream tilted.
The next thing I knew, I was awake.
I sat bolt upright in bed, breath coming fast. The room was washed in pale morning light, soft but unforgiving. My heart pounded against my ribs like it was trying to get out.
Ouch.
The inn creaked around me, slow and steady, as if it had heard the whole thing and wasn’t impressed. The sheets clung damp to my skin.
For a second, I didn’t move. I just sat there, staring at the pattern of cracks on the ceiling, trying to separate what was real from what was memory. My mother’s voice still echoedsomewhere deep in my bones, even though she’d been gone for years.
Not gone, I corrected myself. Taken.
I shoved the thought away before it could consume me.
Focus. Reality. Tasks.
That was how I kept the ghosts in their corners.
I swung my legs out of bed, bare feet finding the worn rug. The morning smelled of rain and something faintly metallic—old pipes maybe. The faint hum of cicadas came through the half-open window. A single gull cried out over the dunes.
Everything looked different in daylight.
Last night, the house had seemed mysterious, even a little romantic in its decay. This morning, it was just sad.
The wallpaper that might have been charming in the dark was peeling in long strips. The mirror on the dresser leaned so far forward I had to catch it before it toppled. Dust coated everything in a thin film, glittering meanly in the sun.
I opened the curtains. The glass panes were streaked with salt, blurring the view of the dunes beyond. Outside, the porch railing sagged. Paint peeled from the columns. The yard was more sand than grass, dotted with stubborn tufts of sea oats and the half-buried remains of a garden bench.
My stomach tightened. What in the world was I supposed to do with this?
I had been here once before, when I was maybe six or seven. My parents brought me down for a week in the summer, back when the inn still smelled of polish and sugar cookies instead of dust. I remembered flashes more than moments—the sound of the waves through the screen door, my grandmother’s voice humming from somewhere unseen, a pink seashell I found on the shore and left on her desk. The rest was gone, worn smooth by time like the shells on the beach.
I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to fully picture the woman my grandmother had been—stubborn, proud, independent. She must have loved this place fiercely to hold onto it. Maybe too fiercely.
She could have sold years ago, pocketed the money, lived comfortably. But instead, she’d kept running a six-room inn that no longer had guests. Maybe, she couldn’t let go. Maybe, she was lonely.
Or maybe, she was protecting something.
I shook my head. No. Don’t start with mysteries. Start with lists.
