Dusty curtains hanging at the window’s sides billowed and swelled as if they were a pair of dancing ghosts.
An intense feeling crawled over my skin.
Like something else was in the lighthouse. Something that wasn’t human.
“Stone?” I could hardly see the rest of the lighthouse. Only a spear of grim daylight through a frosted window sliced into the muted room. “Stone, are you here?”
At that moment, there was movement in the corner near the bedroom.
I froze, standing stock-still in the middle of the living room, a hypnotizing drip, drip,dropinto a bucket Stone must’ve had set down to catch a leak.
With my heart slamming, I nailed my gaze to the thing hiding in the shadows, waiting for it to do something. To come out and reveal itself.
The floorboards creaked as this thing shifted, and a chill spiraled up my spine. I gripped my bag tighter. My other hand turned into a fist at my side.
“Come out, this isn’t funny—” I stopped mid-sentence when a hiss coasting along the shell of my ear swallowed up my words. Then the feel of cold, clammy fingers wrapped around my wrist, squeezing.
My pulse knocked against my skin; my blood turned cold.
I tilted my head slightly, seeing a ghastly hand.
“Stone, let me go,” I hissed through clenched teeth, afraid to turn fully to look him in the eye.
Across the room, another shift, another creak came from the corner.
My gaze darted back to it just as Stone stepped out of the shadows, the grayish light cutting across his face. His imposing height demanded for him to be seen, with eye sockets carved out and bruise-purple, embellishing the hollow in his eyes. Right then, my bones wanted to break through my flesh so my soul could flee this spot.
“It’s not me,” his chilling whisper rasped, making my breathing stop. “It’s Mother.”
I turned to bolt from the room, but before a scream could rip from my throat, something crashed into the side of my head.
Something hard, something painful.
Lightning struck first.
Cyan blue flashed behind my eyelids.
Thunder came next.
My head was throbbing, and a bump swelled on my temple when I touched it. I cracked my eyes open, and my lids were heavy, unable to take in the entire room. It was cold and dark as if the lighthouse dared anything to speak. To even breathe. The moon and lightning were the only light, catching snowfall outside and filtering through the dirty glass window.
My stomach dropped. Nightfall had already begun.
It was too late to go back.
A dragging sound came softly at first, then grew closer. Flesh against floor.
I imagined half a body cut apart at the waist, legs ripped off, guts and blood pooling across the hardwood, using whatever was left of him to get to me. But as I looked at where the sound was coming from, Stone was standing in the shadows, his palm sliding down the door frame as if to hold himself back. The moon’s beam cast light across his face as he watched me.
I looked into his boundless gaze.
It was like staring into a void. An emptiness.
It was the first time I felt true terror in Stone’s presence. Even the wicked corners of my mind, where it was nothing more than black dire, couldn’t shield me from his eyes when they paralyzed me.
Run, hide, shrink into nothing, my mind commanded.
But I was stuck staring at him as he was staring back at me.
