The plan was simple: go to the sawmill, find the monster, end the nightmare.
But chaos doesn’t follow a flight plan.
I was tearing down Route 9, the speedometer of Julian’s truck trembling past eighty, when the police scanner clipped to the visor screamed to life. It wasn’t the static-filled mumble of a patrol check; it was a high-pitched, frantic squawk that cut through the drumming rain.
“All units, 10-33. Panic alarm triggered at Oakhaven General. Basement level. Witnesses report a suspect forcing entry into the morgue. Repeat, suspect in the morgue.”
I slammed on the brakes. The truck fishtailed on the wet asphalt, the tires screaming in protest as I fought to keep it from spinning into the ditch.
The morgue.
The journal burned in my pocket. The guests are waiting.
He wasn’t at the sawmill. Not yet. He was running errands. He was picking up the bridal party.
I spun the wheel, throwing the truck into a U-turn that sprayed gravel across the center line. The hospital was three miles back, perched on the edge of town like a fortress of white brick and misery.
“You can’t have them,” I whispered, the engine roaring as I floored it. “They’re dead, Elias. You can’t take them.”
But I knew he could. I knew he was strong enough to carry a body over his shoulder like a sack of feed. I had seen the size of him in the cellar. I had felt the crushing weight of his hand on the door.
I reached the hospital in four minutes. The parking lot was a kaleidoscope of rotating lights. Sheriff Miller’s cruiser was there, along with two state trooper vehicles. They were clustered near the main entrance, weapons drawn, shouting orders at a terrified security guard.
They were watching the front door.
Amateurs.
Elias wouldn’t use the front door. Elias was a creature of the earth. He would use the loading dock, the service tunnels, the vents.
I drove past the main entrance, killing my lights, and circled around to the rear of the complex. The delivery bay was dark, shadowed by the overhang of the upper floors. I parked the truck behind a dumpster filled with medical waste and killed the engine.
I checked the .38 in my pocket. The metal was cold, a stark contrast to the fever heat of my skin.
I slipped out of the truck and ran toward the loading dock. The bay door was closed, but the personnel door next to it was slightly ajar. The lock had been punched out. The metal around the handle was bent inward, twisted by brute force.
I slipped inside.
The air changed instantly. The smell of rain and pine vanished, replaced by the smell of floor wax, rubbing alcohol, and the underlying, copper tang of sickness.
I was in the service corridor. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting a sickly yellow pallor on the linoleum.
I moved fast, staying close to the wall. I knew the layout. I had spent a week here when I was ten, watching my mother recover from a “fall down the stairs.” The morgue was down. Always down.
I found the freight elevator. The arrow above the door was lit. B1.
He was down there.
I couldn’t take the elevator. It was a trap. I found the stairwell door and pulled it open. The concrete stairs spiraled down into silence.
I descended, the gun heavy in my hand. My boots made no sound on the concrete; I walked with the ghost-steps Elias had taught me. Heel to toe. Roll the weight. Be the shadow.
At the bottom landing, the door to the morgue corridor was propped open with a fire extinguisher.
I peered around the frame.
The hallway was empty. But the double doors at the end—the doors labeled Authorized Personnel Only—were swinging slightly, as if someone had just passed through.
And there was a sound.
It wasn’t screaming. It wasn’t the crash of violence.
It was a sound I remembered from rainy afternoons in the nursery.
Riiip. Slaaap. Riiip. Slaaap.
The sound of tape being pulled off a roll.
I moved down the hall, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. The air grew colder. The smell of formaldehyde sharpened, stinging my eyes.
I reached the double doors. I pushed one open with my shoulder, leading with the gun.
“Elias?” I whispered.
The room was freezing. The stainless steel drawers lining the far wall were open, their trays extended like tongues.
They were empty.
In the center of the room, three gurneys had been arranged in a circle.
I stepped inside, the door shushing closed behind me.
The room was empty of the living. Elias was gone. The service vent in the corner—the large, industrial grate—was hanging by a single screw, a gaping black mouth leading into the darkness. He had fled when the alarms triggered.
But he had left his work behind.
I lowered the gun, my breath hitching in my throat.
On the gurneys lay Sarah Miller, Ms. Albright, and Becca Trent.
They weren’t covered in body bags. They were exposed.
But they weren’t naked.
They were bandaged.
“Oh god,” I choked out, covering my mouth with my free hand.
It wasn’t medical bandaging. It was a child’s idea of first aid.
Sarah Miller, the Sleeping Princess, was wrapped in toilet paper. Yards and yards of it, swathed around her chest and arms like a makeshift mummy. But the paper was held in place with silver duct tape. Thick, aggressive strips strapped across her delicate skin, binding the paper tight.
Ms. Albright lay next to her. Her hand—the one that had been glued to the teacup—was encased in a ball of duct tape the size of a melon. It looked like a boxing glove. Or a cast made by a madman.
And Becca.
I walked to the third gurney, my legs trembling.
Becca’s head, where the blunt force trauma had shattered her skull, was covered in a hat made of tin foil. And taped over her eyes, over the bruising from the blindfold, were two large, round cotton pads.
“Dr. Dan,” I whispered.
The memory hit me with the force of a physical blow.
Flash.
I am seven. I have dropped Annabel. Her arm popped out of its socket. I am crying, hysterical.
Elias is there. He is wearing a paper hat he made from a newspaper.
“Don’t cry, Princess,” he says. “Dr. Dan is here.”
He takes the doll. He doesn’t know how to fix the joint. So he tapes it. He uses an entire roll of masking tape he stole from Richard’s desk. He wraps the arm until it is a stiff, unbending stick.
“Fixed,” he declares. “She’s all better. But she has to rest.”
Flash.
I looked at the bodies. He had tried to fix them.
He had broken into the morgue, pulled them from the cold storage, and tried to repair the damage he had caused.
Why?
Because the dead don’t play.
He needed guests for the wedding. He needed them to sit in the pews. He needed them to smile.
But they were dead.
I walked around the circle of gurneys. On the floor, amidst the scattered rolls of tape and puddles of melting ice, lay a toy stethoscope. It was plastic, bright fisher-price red.
He had listened to their hearts.
And he had heard nothing.
I looked up at the wall above the sinks.
Written on the white tiles in black permanent marker—the same marker he used in the journal—was a message. The letters were jagged, descending in size as if he had been screaming the words as he wrote them.
WHY DON’T THEY WAKE UP?
WHY DON’T THEY WAKE UP?
WHY DON’T THEY WAKE UP?
He had written it three times.
I stared at the words, the horror settling deep in my marrow.
He didn’t understand death.
In the games, the dolls always woke up. In the stories, the princess always opened her eyes when the spell was broken. He had killed them to save them, to preserve them, but now… now they were broken toys. And he couldn’t fix them.
“He’s devolving,” I whispered.
The cunning predator who laid traps in the woods was cracking. The boy who survived twenty years in a hole was colliding with the reality of biological death.
And a confused monster is a dangerous monster.
He hadn’t taken the bodies. He had abandoned them. They were useless to him now.
“He needs new guests,” I realized.
If the dead wouldn’t wake up, he would need the living.
A heavy thud echoed from the vent in the corner.
I spun around, raising the gun.
The grate rattled.
He was still here. Or he was coming back.
“Police!” A voice shouted from the hallway.
Boots thundered down the corridor.
I looked at the vent. I looked at the door.
Sheriff Miller burst into the room, his weapon drawn. He took in the scene—the taped bodies, the graffiti, me standing there with a revolver.
“Drop it!” he screamed. “Vance! Drop the weapon!”
I didn’t drop it. I held it up, palm open, showing him I wasn’t a threat.
“He was here,” I said, my voice calm, detached. “He tried to fix them.”
Miller looked at the bodies. His face went slack with revulsion. “What the hell is this?”
“It’s a tantrum,” I said. “He broke his toys.”
“Cuff her!” Miller barked at the deputy behind him.
“No,” I said. “Miller, look at the vent. He went that way. If you send men into the tunnels now, you might catch him.”
Miller looked at the vent. He looked at the message on the wall.
“You did this,” he spat. “You sick bitch.”
“Read the wall!” I shouted, losing my calm. “Does that look like my handwriting? Does this look like something I would do?”
“I don’t know what you’re capable of anymore.”
He stepped forward, reaching for me.
I stepped back.
“Don’t touch me,” I warned.
“You’re under arrest, Elara. For escaping custody. For vehicle theft. And for three counts of desecration of a corpse.”
“I didn’t do this!”
“Tell it to the judge.”
He lunged.
I dodged. It was instinct. I sidestepped, slamming my hip into a metal tray table. Instruments clattered to the floor.
I didn’t shoot him. I couldn’t shoot a cop. Julian would never forgive me.
Instead, I ran for the door he had left open.
“Stop her!”
I sprinted past the deputy, shoving him into the wall. He stumbled, his radio clattering to the floor.
I hit the stairwell. I ran up.
Behind me, Miller was shouting.
I burst out onto the loading dock and into the rain.
I scrambled into the truck, turning the key.
As I peeled out of the lot, leaving the sirens behind, my mind was crystal clear.
Elias had abandoned the dead. He was done with dolls.
He needed something that wouldn’t break. Something that would play the game back.
He was going to the Sawmill. And he wasn’t going there to decorate.
He was going there to wait for the Bride.