Page 71 of Grave Beginnings

I jolted, staring at my surroundings as if they would make sense the longer I stared. A farmhouse? I stared at it from the outside, the memory vague, as I’d only ever stayed there once. Grandma and Grandpa lived there when I was a teen. My parents dropped me off one summer while they went on some trip overseas. While I adored my grandparents, they had always come into town and stayed with us. And something about their farmhouse felt off.

The second I stepped inside, my gut flipped over with unease. Grandma smiled at me and led me to an upstairs bedroom. Each step upward was heavier than the last. What was it?

She patted me on the arm and left me to unpack. I wandered the room, looking under the bed and in the giant wardrobe, but in the bright light of day, everything appeared normal. The design was a bit floral for my taste, but there weren’t creepy dolls or anything other than a handful of handmade quilts, many of which I still had. So, you know, a net win.

“Everything okay, Jude?” Grandma asked, startling me. I spun and gulped, but nodded as I hadn’t heard her come back up the stairs.

“Something’s weird.” How could I explain something I didn’t understand.

“This was your grandpa’s room when he was little.”

“Yeah?” She nodded and held her hand out for me.

“This house is super old, then? Dinosaurs roamed the yard.”

“You little…” Grandma said with a laugh. “Wait till I tell your grandpa.”

I darted out of the room with her following close behind, trying to forget the feeling, but that night, as I lay down to sleep, I knew I wasn’t alone.

The door to the wardrobe creaked open.

I sat up and stared at it, certain I had to be seeing things. I wasn’t a baby anymore, to be afraid of the dark. I was thirteen!

I flipped on the lamp, got up, and opened both doors of the wardrobe. Empty.

Twice more that night, I got up to close the wardrobe, which kept opening on its own. The second time, eyes peered back at me, and I yelped, slammed it shut, and ran downstairs. I spent the rest of the summer vacation sleeping on the couch downstairs, claiming I wanted to be close to my grandparents and make sure they were okay.

I jerked awake to the sound of creaking and sat up in bed, studying the room. I silently cursed myself for not pulling my spare gun out of my safe, especially with Ivan in the house. The work-issued one was in my locker at work, but I’d never been a shoot first type of guy. Maybe it was Ivan headed to the bathroom?

Usually, I attributed the sounds of the apartment at night to Peanut Butter, but he was still curled up beside me on the bed. His little kitty snores were all I heard for a few minutes while I sat frozen in bed, staring into the dark of the room.

Another creak echoed through the empty apartment as I lay back down. I threw myself out of bed, reaching for the light. Something passed by the door of the bathroom. The nightlight I kept on inside to keep me from tripping over something during a middle of the night pee vanished behind the movement for a half second and I paused, fingertips on the light switch.

“Ivan?” I whispered.

Creepy, pupil-less black eyes met mine. I swallowed hard and sank to the floor in terror, knowing it wasn’t a person because people had more shape than pure darkness.

I flipped on the overhead light and expected to find myselfscreaming in terror at whatever it revealed, but nothing was there.

“Holy fuck,” I whispered, heart racing. Ivan slept curled up on the couch, little more than the top of his head peeking out from beneath the blanket. It hadn’t been him, nor had he sensed whatever it was that woke me.

Peanut Butter perched on the edge of the bed, his gaze on the doorway to the bathroom. Had he seen it, too? Wasn’t there something about cats seeing beyond?

Was it something from across the Veil? What would I even do if I found something? It would be supernatural. I couldn’t imagine anyone breaking in to rob me when there were eight floors of neighbors before me. Had something followed me home from across the Veil? Was that even possible?

I searched every nook and cranny of the apartment. Found nothing. Peanut Butter followed me from room to room. Ivan didn’t stir as I tiptoed around and even spent a few minutes peering out the peephole in my door, looking for movement in the lit hallway.

“Still scared of the dark,” I told Peanut Butter. “How lame am I? I was the worst choice by the universe for this necromancer thing, right?”

I dug my work laptop out and dragged it back to my room, opened it up, and logged in.

Black-eyed children.I typed.

The system spit back the mythology. No known legitimate cases. Did that mean there were cases they couldn’t prove? I skimmed through the notes of the search, finding a couple hundred firsthand accounts of something resembling the spooky kids, but each debunked in some way.

“Fuck,” I said. The kid had been creepy, but it was the cackle that wove itself through the core of my soul with a cold fire memory that brought a chill to my skin. When Angel had asked me to describe it, I’d been at a loss. I, who knew how valuablerecall could be to any investigation, had frozen. Even now, all I could remember was the sound and that it felt like a looming presence of shadows.

I searchedshadow demons. The page spun for a few seconds and finally popped up a list longer than I could imagine. Apparently, demons who could manipulate shadows were common.