Chapter 1 - The Girl Nobody Could See
That Halloween night, the town of Ravenwood held the biggest festival in its history.
At exactly eight o'clock, the entire town square exploded with orange light.
Carved pumpkins with twisted faces lined both sides of the streets. Children dressed as ghosts, witches, vampires, and monsters ran between the crowded booths. Creepy music blasted from old speakers while laughter echoed beneath strings of flickering lights.
No one noticed the little girl in the white dress standing alone beside the ancient stone well in the center of the square.
No one except Emma.
Emma Vale was seventeen years old and had been walking toward the festival's haunted house with her best friend, Lucas Reed, when she suddenly stopped.
The girl looked about eight.
Her long black hair fell over her shoulders. Her skin was unnaturally pale. In her hands, she held an old pumpkin lantern that wasn't glowing.
The strangest thing was that hundreds of people were moving through the square, yet nobody bumped into her.
It was almost as if they couldn't see her.
Emma slowly approached.
"Hey. Are you lost?"
The little girl lifted her head.
Her eyes were dark.
Too dark.
She stared directly at Emma.
"You shouldn't be here after midnight."
Emma gave a nervous laugh. "Why not?"
The girl didn't answer. Instead, she raised one small finger and pointed toward the giant clock on the church tower.
11:47 PM.
Emma frowned. It made no sense. She had checked her phone less than a minute earlier. It had been 8:16.
She turned toward Lucas.
"Lucas! Come look at this!"
Lucas was several yards away, holding two paper cups of cider. "What?"
"The girl!"
Emma turned back.
The little girl was gone.
There was no alley nearby. No door. No crowd she could have disappeared into.
The only thing left behind was the old pumpkin lantern.
Emma bent down and picked it up.
Something had been carved into the bottom.
She wiped away the dirt.
HALLOWEEN 1986 - EMILY CARTER.
Emma's mouth went dry.
She knew that name.
Everyone in Ravenwood did.
Emily Carter was an eight-year-old girl who had disappeared during the town's Halloween festival forty years earlier. Dozens of police officers had searched the town, the woods, the river, and every abandoned building within miles.
Emily was never found.
"Emma?"
Lucas was beside her now.
She showed him the carving.
His smile disappeared.
"That's not funny."
"I'm not joking."
Then the church bell rang.
BONG!
Emma flinched hard enough to drop the lantern.
The clock face above them now read 11:59 PM.
All around the square, strings of orange bulbs died at once.
Darkness swallowed the festival.
The music stopped. The carnival rides froze. The generators cut out. Even the inflatable monster beside the bakery sagged silently to the pavement.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Then a child's voice whispered from somewhere near the old well.
"One..."
Phone flashlights blinked on.
"Two..."
Lucas grabbed Emma's wrist.
"You hear that, right?"
Emma nodded.
"Three..."
Something scraped against the inside of the well.
SCRATCH.
SCRATCH.
SCRATCH.
The crowd slowly fell silent.
A woman near the cider booth whispered, "What the hell is that?"
The clock hands jumped.
Midnight.
BONG!
The iron cover over the ancient well exploded upward.
People screamed.
Every carved pumpkin around the square lit at the exact same time.
But the flames inside them were no longer orange.
They were blue.
Cold. Steady. Unnatural.
Emma stared at the pumpkins.
Their carved faces had changed.
They weren't smiling anymore.
They looked like they were crying.
Then a pale hand appeared over the edge of the well.
A child's hand.
Another followed.
A little girl slowly climbed out of the darkness.
Her white dress was soaked. Mud covered her arms. Water ran from her black hair and struck the stones in slow, heavy drops.
Emma stopped breathing.
It was the same girl.
Emily.
But now she looked exactly like a child who had been buried underwater for forty years.
Emily looked straight at Emma.
Then she screamed.
"RUN!"
Something huge moved inside the well behind her.
The ground bucked.
People broke in every direction. Tables flipped. Food stands collapsed. Children screamed for their parents. Glass decorations shattered across the pavement.
Emma grabbed Lucas.
"MOVE!"
They ran toward Main Street.
Behind them came a deep scraping noise.
Something was climbing out.
Emma looked back.
A towering figure pulled itself over the rim.
At first she thought it was a man.
Then it stood too tall.
Its shoulders scraped the strings of lights hanging over the square. Its body was wrapped in black, waterlogged cloth. Long gray fingers dragged across the stones. Where its face should have been, there was only a smooth, wet surface with a vertical crack running from forehead to chin.
The crack opened.
Dozens of children's voices whispered from inside it.
"Eleven..."
The figure turned its head toward the crowd.
"Where is twelve?"
Emma stumbled.
Lucas caught her.
"Don't stop!"
They cut between two vendor booths and nearly slammed into Sheriff Nora Vale - Emma's mother.
Nora wore her tan uniform beneath a black rain jacket, though the sky was clear. Her face looked gray in the blue pumpkin light.
"Emma!" she shouted. "Where is Noah?"
Emma's stomach dropped.
Her eight-year-old brother had been at the children's costume parade with their aunt.
"With Aunt Claire," Emma said. "Near the stage."
Nora's expression changed.
Not confusion.
Fear.
"No," she said. "Claire just called me. Noah disappeared six minutes ago."
Behind them, the bell tower made a tiny metallic sound.
Tick. Tick. Tick... tick.
Three quick beats.
One slow.
Emma looked at the pumpkin lantern still clenched in her hand.
A blue flame had appeared inside it.
Around them, the panic changed direction. People who had been running away from the square suddenly began stopping and turning toward the church as if they had heard a familiar voice. A man in a vampire cape walked backward into a display of pumpkins without noticing. A woman clutched two children and whispered the same sentence again and again: "Not this year. Not my family."
Emma heard her mother whisper one word.
"Forty."
"What?"
Nora did not answer. She was staring at the tower clock as if it had just accused her by name.
May you like
On the glass, wet letters slowly formed from the inside.
HE IS NEXT.
