The darkness wasn’t empty. It had weight. It pressed against my eyes, heavy and suffocating, instantly erasing the warm, fire-lit world we had inhabited seconds before.
“Stay still,” Julian’s voice was a low rumble in the dark, close to my ear. I could feel the heat of him, the tension radiating off his body like a fever.
I didn’t move. My hand was still resting on his chest, right over his heart. It was hammering against my palm, a frantic, staccato rhythm that matched my own. Thump-thump-thump.
“The generator,” he whispered. “It should have kicked on.”
“Maybe the storm knocked the line down,” I said, though the words tasted like ash in my mouth.
We both knew the truth. The power didn’t just fail. It was taken.
Julian pulled away from me, the loss of contact leaving me cold. I heard the metallic slide of his gun leaving its holster.
“Get the flashlight,” he commanded. “From the kitchen drawer. Keep low.”
I dropped to a crouch, feeling my way across the floorboards. The cabin, moments ago a fortress, now felt like a cage made of shadows. I banged my knee against the coffee table but swallowed the cry, crawling until my fingers brushed the cold wood of the cabinets.
I found the heavy Maglite and clicked it on. The beam cut through the dust motes, a stark white tunnel in the gloom.
Julian was by the window, peering out through the slats of the blinds. The storm outside was a chaotic swirl of gray and black, the wind howling like a wounded animal.
“See anything?” I asked, my voice trembling.
“Nothing,” he said. “Just rain.”
Then came the sound.
THUD.
It was heavy. Wet. Like a sack of meat dropped onto the porch steps.
We both froze. The wind didn’t make thuds. Branches didn’t make thuds. Only things with mass made thuds.
Julian moved away from the window, positioning himself by the front door. He raised the gun, holding it two-handed, his elbows locked.
“Stay behind me,” he hissed.
He reached for the deadbolt. Click. Then the handle.
He threw the door open.
The wind rushed in, bringing the smell of ozone and wet earth. Rain sprayed across the threshold, soaking the welcome mat.
I aimed the flashlight over Julian’s shoulder, sweeping the beam across the porch.
The rocking chairs were empty, rocking frantically in the gale. The firewood stack was undisturbed.
But right in the center of the porch, directly in front of the door, sat a box.
It was a large cardboard moving box, soggy and dark with moisture. The tape on the top had been slashed open.
“Clear left,” Julian shouted over the wind. “Clear right.”
He stepped out, sweeping the perimeter with his weapon. I followed, the flashlight beam shaking in my grip.
The porch was empty. But there were tracks.
Muddy boot prints. Large. Heavy tread. They led out of the darkness of the woods, up the steps, to the box, and then back down again.
“He was just here,” I whispered. “He dropped it and ran.”
Julian kicked the box. It didn’t move. It was heavy.
“Bomb?” I asked.
“Elias doesn’t use bombs,” Julian said grimly. “He likes to touch things.”
He holstered his gun and reached down, gripping the soggy flaps of the cardboard. He ripped them back.
I gasped, the sound torn from my throat.
Inside the box, nestled in a bed of wet tissue paper, was a dress.
It wasn’t just a dress. It was an explosion of white lace and satin, a vintage gown with long sleeves and a high neck. Pearls were sewn into the bodice, catching the flashlight beam like tiny, dead eyes.
“My mother’s,” I choked out.
It was the dress Catherine Vance had worn when she married Richard. The dress that had hung in the back of her closet in a plastic bag for twenty years, a ghost of the day her life ended.
But it wasn’t white anymore.
The skirt was stained. Deep, dark red splatters bloomed across the lace like grotesque flowers. The hem was soaked in it.
Fresh blood.
“Oh god,” I stepped back, my hand flying to my mouth. “Whose blood is that?”
Julian reached in. He didn’t touch the blood. He touched a piece of paper pinned to the bodice.
He pulled it out and held it up to the light.
It was a page torn from a hymnal. Onward Christian Soldiers.
But written over the lyrics in thick black marker were three words:
SOMETHING BORROWED. SOMETHING BLEEDING.
“He went to the house,” I said, the realization hitting me harder than the cold. “He went back to the Glass House to get this.”
“He knows we’re here,” Julian said. His voice was flat, deadly calm. “He followed us. Or he guessed.”
“He didn’t guess,” I said, pointing the light at the railing.
There, carved into the wood of the porch railing, fresh and raw, were initials.
J + E.
Julian and Elias.
And right below it: THE BAD PRINCE HIDES IN THE TOWER.
“He’s taunting you,” I said. “He’s mocking us.”
Julian stared at the carving. His face was unreadable in the shadows, a mask of stone. But his hand, resting on the butt of his gun, was trembling.
“Get inside,” he ordered. “Now.”
He grabbed the box—he wasn’t leaving it for the neighbors to find—and shoved me back through the doorway. He slammed the door, throwing the deadbolt and dragging a heavy oak chair under the handle.
We were back in the dark cabin, but the illusion of safety was gone. The air felt thin, violated.
Julian dropped the box in the middle of the living room floor. The dress spilled out, a puddle of lace and blood.
“We have to leave,” I said. “Julian, we can’t stay here. He knows the layout. He probably knows how to get in.”
“We can’t leave,” Julian said, pacing the room like a caged tiger. “The bridge is the only way out of the valley, and if he’s watching us, he’ll ambush us on the road. We’d be sitting ducks in the truck.”
“So we just wait for him to come in?”
“We fortify,” Julian said. “We hold the ground until daylight. Then we move.”
He looked at the dress. He looked at the blood.
“Is it…” he started, then stopped. “Is it human?”
I knelt by the dress, shining the light close to the stains. The blood was tacky, drying fast in the warm air of the cabin. It smelled metallic.
“It’s real,” I whispered. “But… there’s a lot of it. If this came from a person, they’d be dead.”
“Maybe they are,” Julian said. “He took the bodies from the morgue, Elara. Maybe he… used them.”
I shook my head. “No. He tried to fix the bodies. He respects them in his own sick way. He wouldn’t ruin a wedding dress with corpse blood. This is… this is sacrificial.”
I looked closer at the hem. Caught in the lace was a small tuft of fur. Coarse. Gray.
“A rabbit,” I said, relief washing over me so profound it made me dizzy. “Or a squirrel. It’s animal blood.”
Julian let out a breath he seemed to have been holding for ten minutes. “Okay. Okay. So he’s scaring us. He’s playing games.”
“He’s not playing,” I said, standing up. “He’s rehearsing. Something borrowed. He’s gathering the supplies.”
“For the wedding.”
“Yes.”
I looked at Julian. The flashlight cast deep shadows under his eyes, making him look like a skull.
“He wants me to wear this,” I said softly. “He wants me to put on my mother’s dress and marry him in the Sawmill.”
“Over my dead body,” Julian growled.
“That’s the plan, Julian. That’s literally the plan.”
A crash came from the back of the cabin. Glass shattering.
We both spun around.
It came from the kitchen.
“Stay here,” Julian barked. He raised his gun and moved toward the hallway.
I didn’t stay. I grabbed a fire poker from the hearth and followed him, staying two steps back.
The kitchen was pitch black. A draft of cold, wet air was blowing through the room.
Julian swept the room with his own flashlight.
The window above the sink was broken. A jagged hole in the glass, rain blowing in, soaking the curtains.
On the floor, amidst the shards, was a rock.
And wrapped around the rock was a piece of paper.
Julian kept his gun trained on the window while I moved forward to pick it up.
I unwrapped the paper. It was a page from a calendar. Today’s date.
Circled in red marker.
And scrawled across the dates for the next week:
HONEYMOON.
“He’s not waiting for the Sawmill,” I whispered.
I looked at the broken window. Beyond it, the woods were a wall of black teeth.
“He’s tired of waiting,” I said.
Julian grabbed my arm, pulling me away from the window.
“Back to the main room,” he said. “Away from the glass.”
We retreated to the living room. We were trapped. The storm outside, the monster inside the perimeter.
I looked at the wedding dress on the floor. It looked like a corpse.
“He’s going to come in,” I said. “Tonight.”
Julian looked at the door, then at the windows. He looked at me.
“Then we make him regret it,” he said.
He dragged the sofa in front of the door. He overturned the heavy oak table to create a barricade.
“Elara,” he said, handing me his spare clip. “If he gets in… if he gets past me…”
“I know,” I said. “Point and pull.”
He nodded.
We sat behind the overturned table, shoulder to shoulder in the dark, listening to the wind and waiting for the sound of breaking glass.
The cabin wasn’t a sanctuary anymore. It was a pillbox. And the war had just arrived at our doorstep.