‘Emergency services. What is your location and the service you need?’
Fiona knew before hearing the operator’s voice that she was beyond saving.
There was nowhere she could hide that it wouldn’t find her. It was as though the stars themselves were its all-seeing eyes and the pale moon a searchlight. By day she had fled as far as she could. But no distance would ever be enough. It would always follow her, and the dread of this realisation eclipsed all else – the life she had known, her dreams for the future, and the belief that such horrors didn’t exist.
They were just meant to be stories.
Fiona was only being kind. The man had been so agitated, slapping his hands over his mouth, staring stupefied at the dirt between his feet. His simplicity was more pronounced than the others and she’d approached him out of pity, to offer a smile when no one else cared so much as to look at him.
You see him three times. You see him three times. You see him three times.
The words were spoken so quickly, slicing through the air like a scythe. She’d waved a hand over his eyes but the man was spellbound by delusion, repeating that same line over and over, terrorised by the sound of his own voice.
‘Who do you see three times?’ she’d asked, crouching close enough to make sense of him.
He’d grabbed Fiona’s shirt, holding her down as he breathed the horror all over her.
She’d been running ever since.
It didn’t make sense to stay in the city, not after seeing it outside her apartment. Her parents were away until the weekend, but home still seemed the safest place to go. It was there that her dad used to sit by the bedside whenever the nightmares came. He would stroke her hair with one hand and dry her cheek with the other. The monsters knew better than to mess with him, he used to say, stifling a yawn. Warm memories such as these were all she had to thaw the terror now closing around her life.
There was only one other person who could understand what was happening but he wouldn’t answer his phone. Fiona wanted to empty her lungs with a scream, to vent all that frustration in one deafening blast. She didn’t know if Tom was alive or dead. But he was studying in a different university, in another county. Maybe it hadn’t found him like it had found her.
She couldn’t afford to see it a third time. That’s what she had been told. And now, in these lonely hours, with the night pouring down on her like black soil, Fiona knew it to be true. No matter what happened, she mustn’t look outside.
She’d closed every door and sealed the curtains, leaving only a darkness so haunting it felt tight to breathe. That sense of being chased never went away. Fiona hadn’t slept. She couldn’t remember when last she had eaten. She yanked down the kitchen blind, taking a moment to scan the surrounding fields. All was still. Only the hollow thrum of her heart broke the silence.
She scrambled up the stairs to her old bedroom, locking its door behind her and pocketing the key. Through its skylight – set high in the ceiling – the firmament above was darkening. Soon the stars would return to recommence their search. But spy as they might through the glass, they would never find her in the room’s corner, where Fiona had slept as a child and watched them with a sense of wonder, not the fearful distrust that plagued her now.
If she could wait out the next few days, her parents would know what to do. Her dad would chase the monsters away. He would keep her safe like he used to. Until then, she would fear the dark wildering world outside as though night and death were one and the same. She had no other choice.
A square of moonlight shone from the skylight to the floor. Fiona was curled up on her bed, arms around legs, swaying back and forth. She couldn’t calm her breathing. She could barely swallow, her mouth was so dry. She hadn’t thought to bring any water. In the morning, she would grab everything she needed. This was her shelter and the storm would pass. That’s why she chose this room. She could see the sky. She would know when it was safe.
Her phone was sunken into the duvet beside her feet. It still held some battery, if she needed it. But who would she call? What could she tell them that wouldn’t curse their lives too? Maybe the Guards could come and take her somewhere safe until her parents returned. They could lock her up in a cell for all she cared, so long as there was someone to stand between her and the one that stalked her relentlessly.
Fiona tried to focus on anything else. She pictured the downstairs rooms in perfect darkness. The kitchen’s cold granite countertop. Unopened letters scattered across the floor from when she had run indoors. That vague but welcoming scent that hung in the hallway, where her mum burned candles throughout the year, never expecting any visitors but keeping their wicks lit all the same.
Even if she had been followed, how could it possibly find her here? There were no lights. No sounds. Nothing to lead it to her.
She reached for the phone. Maybe Tom was still okay. He had seen it that first night too. Fiona hadn’t spoken to anyone else since then. She had carried the truth like a poisoned chalice, careful not to spill a drop. She wanted to call him again, if only to hear he was okay, that she was overreacting. But what if the phone was how it found her? If speaking kept the curse alive, then silence could be the key to lifting it. There was so much she didn’t understand.
Fiona’s tired eyes returned to the floor. They weighed too much to look any higher. She stared at that silver tile of moonlight in the centre of the room. Her heart contracted; its pace quickened. Something was wrong. But through the depths of her exhaustion, the revelation was slow to rise.
And then, finally, she saw it – the dark shape framed within the light on the floor.
Terror snapped the air from her lips. The phone creaked as her fingers clamped around it. Somehow, fumbling blind, she called for help.
The dial tone sounded only once.
‘Emergency services. What is your location and the service you need?’
Fiona’s eyes lifted to the skylight, to that which blocked out the moon and the stars, and the hope of ever seeing her parents again.