Silence crashes into the house, heavy and suffocating. It presses against my ears until it feels alive. Thinking. Like it’s deciding whether it forgot something.
Val’s breathing stutters under my hand. I don’t move. I don’t blink. I listen past the ringing in my ears for the drag of vines outside.
Seconds stretch thin. My lungs burn.
Her fingers find mine and clamp down hard, nails biting into my skin. My body hums like a wire pulled too tight, terror and grief twisting together until I can’t tell which one hurts worse.
Drew’s face flashes through my mind. His laugh. The way he always showed up. The way I couldn’t save him.
Guilt punches deep, sharp and relentless.
We stay frozen in the dark, tangled together, waiting to see if the quiet breaks.
THIRTEEN
FROM ONE TO HAUNTED MURDER FARMHOUSE
VAL
One.
Two.
Three.
We count the silence like it might betray us. I wait for something. A scrape. A drag. A breath that doesn’t belong to either of us.
Nothing.
Just the house settling with soft ticks and pops, wood adjusting like it’s trying to pretend nothing terrible happened here. Dead leaves whisper across the floorboards, dry and faint.
Shaun’s arm loosens.
We move.
The closet door groans when I ease it open, a sound that feels way too loud in the quiet. My pulse jumps into my throat.
I step out and Shaun follows close as though any space between us is dangerous. I’m thankful for it because everything looks worse up close.
My gaze is locked on the fresh blood in the center of the room. The blood isn’t just a stain. It’s layered and smeared across the floor.
My hands start shaking. My lunch is dangerously close to coming back up.
My brain panics and grabs for anything that isn’t this.
A fact slips out before I can stop it.
“Fun fact,” I whisper. My voice sounds brittle, like it might snap if I raise it any louder. “Your brain throws out random information during extreme fear to keep you from shutting down completely.”
Shaun turns and blinks at me.
“I’m not okay,” I add quickly, because that feels important to clarify. Then the real thought claws its way up my throat. “What the fuck was that? Was that...”
The word lodges there. Refuses to move.
He swallows and scans the room, eyes sharp, jaw tight. “I don’t know.”
“But it looked like Drew,” I whisper anyway. The name tastes like rust. “And Fred. And Sandie was...”
