S H A D O W ⊥ O W N: Page #2

NIGHT FOLK

• Fiction
• Horror
• Mystery
• Short story
• Fantasy

								


Ayo exchanged a look with her father. "Mrs. Donovan—"

"Ellen, please."

"Ellen. Are break-ins a problem here?"

The older woman's lips tightened. "Not exactly. I know it seems excessive, but it's one of the conditions of the lease."

"What aren't you telling us?" Thomas asked quietly.

Ellen checked her watch, then walked to the kitchen window. The sky had gone purple-black, though Ayo's phone still showed 4:03 PM. "You're going to hear things tonight. See shadows moving where they shouldn't. You might hear voices calling your names, saying they need help. No matter what you hear, no matter who it sounds like, you do not open those shutters. You do not open the doors. Not until the sun comes up."

A chill ran down Ayo's spine. "What kind of voices?"

"Sometimes they sound like children. Sometimes like people you know." Ellen's eyes were distant. "My son, Henry – he thought he heard our Jessica crying, the night after the funeral. Opened the door to look." She shook her head. "We found his clothes in the town square the next morning, laid out like he'd just dissolved inside them. That was twelve years ago."

Ayo sat heavily in one of the kitchen chairs. "This is insane. You're saying there's something out there that – what? Takes people?"
"We call them Visitors, Night folk" Ellen said. "They come with the dark. They weren't always here – just showed up one day, twenty years ago. No one knows why. But they're here now, and we've learned to live with them. Most nights they just watch, testing the doors and shutters. Some nights they're more... aggressive."

"Why doesn't everyone just leave?" Thomas demanded.

"People have tried. The roads loop back to town after sunset, no matter which direction you drive. During the day, sure, you can leave – but if you're not back by dark..." Ellen trailed off. "Look, I know how this sounds, you think I'm crazy. But I'm tellin...begging you because I don't want to find your clothes in the square tomorrow. Close the shutters. Lock the doors. Follow the rules, and you'll be fine."

Before Ayo could respond, a sound, church bells, ringing with desperate urgency.

Ellen's face went pale. "Sun's nearly down. Help me with these shutters, now!"

They rushed through the house, slamming steel panels over every window and throwing the bolts. Ayo's hands shook as she helped Ellen lock the front door, throwing all three deadbolts.

"The bells are a warning," Ellen explained, her voice tight. "Fifteen minutes till full dark. Father Michael rings them every night." She checked the locks one final time. "I should get home. Remember – no matter what you hear, no matter who it sounds like, don't open up. I'll check on you in the morning."

And then she was gone, hurrying down the sidewalk toward a blue house three doors down. Ayo watched through a gap in the shutters as lights came on all down the street, followed by the metallic sound of shutters slamming closed.

"This is crazy," she whispered. "We should leave."

Thomas squeezed her shoulder. "Sun's almost down, honey. We'll figure it out in the morning."

They finished unpacking the essentials in tense silence – sheets for the beds, toiletries, enough clothes for a few days. Ayo tried to concentrate on normal things, 
which dishes should go in which cabinets, whether the couch looked better against the north or east wall. Anything to keep from thinking about Ellen's warnings.

The sounds started just after six.

First came footsteps on the porch – slow, deliberate steps that paused at each window. Ayo and Thomas sat frozen in the living room as something tapped against the shutters.
Then a low scratching sound moved across the steel.

"Just kids playing pranks," Thomas said, but his voice shook. "Has to be."

The scratching stopped. For a moment, there was only silence.

Then "Ayo? Baby, is that you?"

She stiffened. The voice was Michael's – exactly Michael's, down to the slight Boston accent and the way he always said her name like it was something precious.

"Help me, Ayo. Please. I'm so cold out here."

"It's not him," Thomas grabbed her arm as she took an involuntary step toward the door. "Ayo, Michael's gone. You know he's gone."

"Dad?" A child's voice now, high and frightened. "Daddy, please let me in. The bad men are coming."

Thomas went rigid. The voice was Jessica's – his granddaughter, Ayo's daughter, dead three years now in the same crash that took Michael.

"They're lying," Ayo exclaimed, clinging to her father's hand. "Ellen warned us. They'lll say anything..."

A shadow passed across the gap in the shutters – too tall to be human. 
More footsteps on the porch, somehow, arhythmic and heavy.

"We see you," bellowed a chorus of voices – Michael's, Jessica's, and others she didn't recognize. "We've missed you so much. Don't you want to be with your family?"

Ayo pressed her hands over her ears, but she couldn't shut out the voices. They went on for hours – cajoling, pleading, threatening. Sometimes they cried. Sometimes they screamed. The shadows never stopped moving, testing every shutter, every door.

Around midnight, Father Michael started praying over the town's emergency speaker system. His voice loud booming through the night, reciting psalms and protective verses. The Visitors hissed at the sound, as their movements becoming more agitated.

"He can't save you," they said, no longer bothering to imitate familiar voices. "Your God has abandoned this place. We are your gods now."

Ayo and Thomas huddled together on the couch, neither sleeping, listening to the priest's prayers battle with the things that circled their house.


The first scream came from the Hawthorne house at precisely 8:47 PM.

Sarah Hawthorne, sixteen and still wearing her Cryptopolis High cheerleading uniform, pressed her face against her bedroom window's steel shutters. The metal was cold against her skin, too cold, already carrying the unnatural chill that preceded the Visitors. Through the narrow gaps, she watched Emily Chen from next door struggling with her own shutters.

"Em!" Sarah whispered urgently. "Hurry!"

Emily's fingers fumbled with the locks, her movements frantic. The darkness between the houses seemed to rise. Sarah could smell it, wet earth and something sweeter, something that reminded her of the formaldehyde from biology class.

"I can't—" Emily's voice cracked. "It's stuck!"

The shadows began to move, flowing, creeping, crawling – they wronged their way across the ground.
The temperature dropped so rapidly that frost crystallized on the inside of her window.

Emily screamed again as something touched her ankle. Sarah couldn't see it clearly – her mind refused to resolve the shape into anything coherent – but she saw Emily's leg jerk up, saw her lose her balance.

								Rate this book:5.0 / 1 vote