Except…
not silence.
Pressure.
Like someone exhaled against the door.
Like something leaned close enough to smell fear.
Then.Nothing.
No footsteps leaving.
Just… absence.
I sit back on the bed, heart thundering.
Maybe it’s my imagination.
Maybe the dream stuck too deep.
Or maybe something is standing right on the other side of the wall.
Watching.
Reminds me of something.In a rush, I write about Martin.I should tell someone about the dream.About the sound outside the door.About the footprints that didn’t exist.
But who?
Royal?
He’d think I was manipulating him again.
Or worse, he’d believe me.
Legend?
He’d toss me to the woods and let whatever whispered my name finish what it started.
So I write.
Girls missing.Cemetery clues.Demon = more than rumor.Reverend connected.Danger = growing.
I draw what I dreamed.
The Reverend always preached fire and obedience.Cleansing.Sacrifice.He said God demanded purity, and he alone decided what it meant.
Now girls are disappearing.Blood shows up under gravestones.Royal found chains in the Pearly Gates basement.Sometimes I even question if they were ever real.And now something whispering my damn name.
I flip back through the pages I just marked, my sketches, my memories, the pieces of truth I’m piecing together, coming out of me in granite.
The Demon Leaper.Some say he steals souls.Others say he hunts sinners.A few say he’s tied to a preacher who made a deal with something dark.
The dreams don’t feel like dreams.They feel like memories wearing someone else's skin.The creature crouches on the church steeple, wings curled around its body like a bat waiting to strike.Its eyes burn in the dark.Its claws scrape the shingles.When it leaps, the air shudders around me.
But the longer I stare, the less monstrous it becomes.
I lie back slowly.
