Page 6

Six

I didn’t sleep.

Even after the panic attack ended. Even after the warmth disappeared, leaving me gasping, trembling, clinging to the edge of something I didn’t want to understand.

I couldn’t close my eyes.

Not with them watching.

The dolls hadn’t moved. I checked. Again and again. From my spot on the couch, curled beneath a blanket that did nothing to warm me, I forced my eyes to stay open. Forced myself to track their presence like a hunter watching something dangerous in the dark.

But they didn’t move. I could see them sitting on the same shelf in my bedroom.

I wasn’t sure if that was better or worse.

At some point, my limbs went numb, the weight of exhaustion pressing in. I pulled the blanket tighter around me, fingers curled so tightly into the fabric they ached. My breathing came in uneven gasps. The silence in the room grew heavier, stretching until the walls felt too close, the air too thin.

Then—

A whisper.

Soft. Faint. Like wind slipping through the cracks of an old house.

I sucked in a sharp breath. My body locked into place, every muscle coiling tight.

It came again. This time, not from inside my mind.

From the dark corner of the room.

My pulse slammed against my ribs. I turned my head—slow, deliberate—forcing myself to look.

Nothing.

But the air felt different.

Thicker. Charged.

Like something had just been there and vanished before I could catch it.

A trick. It had to be.

I clenched my jaw, forcing my gaze back to the dolls.

They still hadn’t moved.

But Moon’s porcelain lips?—

They looked parted.

Like he was about to say something.

I stopped breathing.

The air turned to ice.

And then, the lights flickered.

The overhead bulb buzzed violently, the shadows in the corners stretching, bending, twisting. My breath hitched as the light dimmed completely, plunging the room into absolute darkness for the span of a heartbeat.

Then—blinding white.

The lamp across the room flared back on, and for a split second, a shape—tall, impossibly thin—stood in the space where the darkness had been the thickest. A figure that shouldn’t be there. Couldn’t be there.

My stomach lurched.

Then it was gone.

I shot up from the couch, the blanket pooling around my legs, my heart hammering a brutal rhythm in my chest. The silence that followed was thick, suffocating. The air had weight, pressing into my skin, into my bones.

I turned my gaze back toward the shelf.

Sun and Moon sat in their places, porcelain faces frozen in eerie stillness. But I knew something had changed. The air was charged, buzzing, waiting.

A feeling slithered down my spine, cold and knowing.

I wasn’t alone.

A whisper, softer than before, curled through the room.

That’s it, sweetheart.

I flinched, my breath stuttering. The voice was inside my head.

Warmth brushed against my skin, slow and insidious, like the heat of the sun pressing into exposed flesh.

I took a step forward.

My limbs felt lighter. My mind quieter. Maybe… maybe if I just listened.

The air smelled of something sweet. Amber. Honey. Sun-warmed skin.

Safe. Wanted. Cherished.

The blanket slipped from my shoulders, pooling at my feet as I stepped into the charged air, into the presence waiting for me in the dark.

A whisper of breath against my ear. “Good girl. You’re learning.”

I sighed. Relaxed.

The tension melted from my muscles, my body swaying slightly as warmth curled deeper, pooling low in my stomach. The exhaustion, the fear, the unease—it didn’t matter anymore.

I was floating. Drifting.

Lulled by golden light, cradled by something unseen but familiar.

Another step. Another breath.

“Doesn’t it feel better when you let me take over?”

The words wrapped around me like silk, smooth and undeniable.

The floor creaked beneath me, a sound that shouldn’t have mattered, but in the thick silence, it felt wrong. Like it was the only real thing left in the room.

Then—movement.

Not from the shelf.

From behind me.

A shadow stretched against the wall, impossibly tall, bending as if it had only just realized I could see it.

Cold rushed in, sudden and sharp, lancing through the golden haze.

The whisper came again, curling into my bones. “You're safe with me.”

A trickle of ice at the back of my neck.

A presence colder than shadow, slicing through the warmth like a blade.

I shivered, my body tensing?—

“Shhh,” the golden voice purred, soothing, coaxing. “Don’t listen to him. Stay where it’s warm. Be good for me.”

I blinked. Once, twice—and suddenly everything felt wrong. Like I’d walked out of someone else’s dream and into my body mid-sentence. The warmth was gone. The stillness, too. Only the echo remained.

I was sitting up, phone in my hand, my thumb hovering over the screen.

The contact name: Blocked.

My stomach twisted. I stared at the phone, trying to make sense of the moment, the lapse in time. I hadn’t even realized I’d picked it up.

Hadn’t realized I was blocking him.

A faint hum of warmth still curled in my fingertips, like phantom strings had pulled them, guided them.

I dropped the phone onto the couch and curled forward, pressing my palms against my face. This isn’t happening.

My breath came in slow, measured pulls, the weight of exhaustion pressing in. I needed something grounding. Something normal. Something mine.

With trembling hands, I pulled the blanket around me again and reached for the box on the coffee table. Inside, my grandmother’s old deck of tarot cards waited, the edges frayed from years of use. The one thing I always turned to when the world felt too unstable.

I shuffled them, fingers moving on instinct. The rhythmic slide of the cards, the feel of the worn edges, the sound of them whispering together—it was real.

Unlike everything else.

I pulled a card.

The Moon.

I exhaled, my fingers tightening around the edges of the card, my pulse a slow, steady thud in my ears.

And behind me, a whisper in the dark.

“Good girl.”