ELLIE
The window shatters before I finish checking my notes.
I’m in the pantry trying to grab one of the extra breakfast muffins. Jim’s talent for baking was surprising, and I keep asking for recipes that I know I’ll never see.
The thick sound of glass slowly cracking before a last impatient punch is put to the pane sends a spray across the kitchen table where I've spread decades of missing person files. The sound isn't clean—it's wet, deliberate, like something testing the boundaries before committing to entry.
"Well, that's ahead of schedule." I mutter to myself.
Impressive that you don’t sound like you’re legit panicking when you know you just peed a little.
I move quickly toward the back door, phone in hand. Caleb's number dials as I slip into my jacket.
No answer. The forest beyond the inn feels wrong tonight, too quiet except for the deliberate sounds of something large moving through underbrush and something else, almost as big, destroying Jim’s antique dinette set..
The emergency plan assumed we'd have warning. Time to coordinate. A controlled engagement on our terms.
The creature that emerges from the treeline makes it clear those assumptions were optimistic.
It moves like a wolf that's forgotten how joints work. Each step lands with purpose, but the rhythm stutters—three fluid strides, then a pause, as if waiting for permission from a body that no longer quite belongs to it. The eyes catch moonlight and throw it back fractured, not the clean reflection of a healthy predator but something prismatic and scattered.
"You're not supposed to be here yet," I tell it, keeping my voice steady while I resist moving back toward the door I just came through. "Off-cycle, aren't you?"
The thing tilts its head, and for a moment the movement is perfectly wolf-like. Then it continues the motion too far, neck craning at an angle that suggests the spine remembers different rules.
I've seen enough predators in documentaries to know what fluid looks like. This isn't it. This is something that learned to hunt after it forgot how to be.
My phone buzzes. Caleb's voice cuts through static.
"Where are you?"
"Backyard. Your schedule was wrong." I keep the creature in my peripheral vision while scanning for the clearest escape route. "It's here, and it's not waiting for an invitation."
"Stay on the line. I'm en route."
The creature shifts weight, testing the distance between us. Its movements remind me of something I can't quite place—deliberate but constrained, like watching someone navigate a space in handcuffs they've worn so long they've forgotten they're there.
"Caleb, what exactly did your pack do to this thing?"
Silence stretches long enough that I know the answer will be complicated.
"We tried to solve a problem," he says finally. "Contain something that was tearing us apart from the inside."
"And?"
"We bound it. To the land, to secrecy, to carrying away what we couldn't face ourselves."
The creature takes another step closer. Its breathing sounds wrong—not labored, but rhythmic in a way that suggests machinery more than biology.
"How long ago?"
"A hundred years. Maybe more."
I process this while maintaining eye contact with something that was once pack, once family, once trusted enough to sacrifice for the greater good. The missing persons files scattered across my table suddenly make sense in a way that turns my stomach.
"It's been feeding on the people you didn't report missing."
"Ellie…"