The mattress is too soft for me, the linens too expensive, the whole room too quiet in that eerie way big houses get at night—like they’re listening.
I fold my arms beneath my head and stare at the ceiling while thunder walks across the sky.
The irony doesn’t escape me. I came here to hunt a killer and somehow ended up in a bedroom fit for a debutante, trying to convince myself I can still tell the difference between strategy and weakness.
Rain starts in earnest, drumming the roof and pelting the windows. It’s a hard Southern storm, the kind that comes in mean and fast.
I count breaths. Count the beats between thunder. Count reasons to keep my head clear. At some point, exhaustion drags me under anyway.
The thing about sleep is that it never asks permission.
The first crackof thunder is close enough to feel in my teeth. The second comes with a bright whiteflash behind my eyelids. Then everything goes dark. The light doesn’t just dim—it disappears entirely.
Gone.
The lamp cuts out so fast the room vanishes whole, as if the house opened its mouth and swallowed me. My eyes snap open into pitch.
No more amber glow. The softened edges of the room are non-existent, void of any dresser or bedpost or curtains.
Just…nothing.
And just like that, I’m not here anymore.
I’m small.
I’m shaking.
I’m folded in on myself in a closet that smells like cedar and dust and Daddy’s shoes.
I can’t see my hands. I can only hear my own breaths—too loud, be quiet!—and the lady talking on the other end of the phone.
And the pops.
Pop.
Pop-pop.
My mother screaming. Something—a body?—hitting the floor.
Good men don’t do this. Good mendon’t?—
I come up choking, tangled in the blanket and the hem of my sleep shirt twisted high around my armpits and throat. For one animal second, I think someone’s got hands on me.
“Nooo—!”
I claw fabric away and bolt upright, lungs burning.
Dark. Total dark. Thunder rattles the windows hard enough to make the glass sing. My heart slams so fast it hurts.
No light no light no light?—
I fumble for the nightstand, fingers slapping wood where the lamp should be. The dead bulb stares back at me in silence.
The power is out. That thought—rational, logical—should help.
It doesn’t.
My skin goes slick with sweat. I can taste panic in the back of my throat, copper and acid and old fear. My fingers find the three rubber bands on my wrist and yank one.
