Chapter 2: The Day the Sky Broke

Chapter 2: The Day the Sky Broke

The paper in Leo’s hand was a key, and it had just unlocked a memory he had kept sealed away in amber. Clutching the impossible poem, he squeezed his eyes shut. The present-day park, with its rust and decay, dissolved. The chill in the air was replaced by a phantom warmth, a ghost of sun on his skin. He was falling backward through five years of grief.

The world that bloomed behind his eyelids was golden.

It was October 12th, five years ago. He was twenty, and the world was new. The light of that afternoon was thick and honeyed, slanting through the willow branches and turning Emilia’s hair into a fiery halo. She was sixteen, but her eyes held a poet’s ancient soul. They were lying on a checkered blanket in the tall grass, her head pillowed on his lap as she read aloud from a dog-eared book of verse.

“Listen to this one, Leo,” she’d said, her voice a soft melody against the hum of late-season insects. “‘I carry your heart with me(I carry it in my heart).’” Her finger traced the line on the page. “Imagine loving someone that much. That they’re not just with you, they’re in you.”

He’d smiled, twirling a strand of her hair around his finger. “I don’t have to imagine it.”

Her reading stopped. She looked up at him, her bright, hopeful eyes searching his. The book lay forgotten in the grass. In that moment, the entire world seemed to hold its breath. Pearsons Park became their cathedral, the willow tree their altar.

“I love you, Emi,” he’d whispered, the words feeling both monumental and ridiculously simple.

A slow, radiant smile spread across her face, chasing away every shadow in the universe. “I know,” she’d said, her voice thick with emotion. “I love you, too, Leo. I think… I think I have for a long time.”

Later, flushed with the dizzying power of that confession, he’d taken out his pocketknife. With the clumsy focus of a boy trying to make his mark on the world, he’d carved their initials into the willow’s tough bark: L.V. + E.H. A permanent promise. Emilia had traced the fresh wounds in the wood, her touch gentle. “Forever,” she’d murmured, and he had believed her.

That was the dream. That was the perfect moment, the one he replayed in his darkest hours. But as the memory continued, unbidden, the edges began to fray. The golden light began to feel… wrong.

It started when Emilia sat up, a sudden frown creasing her brow. “Do you ever get the feeling you’re being watched?” she asked, her voice losing its lilting warmth. She scanned the treeline, the tall, whispering grass that surrounded their little island of peace.

Leo, still drunk on her and the afternoon, had laughed it off. “Only by every squirrel in a five-mile radius. They’re jealous of our sandwiches.” He gestured to the half-eaten contents of their picnic basket.

She didn’t smile back. “No, it’s… different.” She hugged her knees to her chest. “It feels… cold. Like when you’re looking at a photograph, and you get the sudden feeling that the person in the picture is looking back.”

He sat up, his protective instincts kicking in. He surveyed the park. It was empty. A few cars passed on the distant road, but their clearing by the creek was deserted. The birdsong that had been a constant chorus just moments before had faded into an unnerving silence. The air itself seemed to have grown heavy, pressing in on them.

“There’s no one here, Emi,” he’d said, trying to sound reassuring, but a prickle of unease crawled up his own spine. He was trying to convince himself as much as her.

He stood and walked to the edge of the clearing, peering into the dense field of goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace. The grass was chest-high in places, a sea of swaying stalks. It was the perfect place for someone to hide. But there was no rustle of movement, no snapped twig. There was only an absolute, profound stillness.

And then he saw it.

It wasn't a person. It was a… smudge. A patch of wrongness in the sea of gold, about fifty yards away. It was a vaguely humanoid shape, tall and impossibly thin, but it wasn't solid. It was more like a heat shimmer on a summer road, a distortion in the air that bent the light around it. Or rather, absorbed it. The sunlight seemed to die where it touched that space, creating a void in the otherwise brilliant landscape.

He blinked, rubbing his eyes, certain it was a trick of the light, an afterimage from staring at the sun. But when he looked again, it was still there. It didn’t move. It simply… was.

“What is it?” Emilia’s voice was a shaky whisper from behind him. She had seen it too.

“I don’t know,” he said, his own voice tight. “Probably just a shadow.” A lie. The sun was behind them. The shadow was in the wrong place, and it had no source.

The cold feeling intensified, no longer a vague paranoia but a tangible pressure, like the air before a lightning strike. He felt a primal fear, the kind an animal feels when it senses the silent approach of a predator. He took a half-step forward, then thought better of it. A powerful, inexplicable instinct screamed at him to grab Emilia and run.

He turned back to her. “Let’s pack up. It’s getting late anyway.”

Her face was pale, her eyes fixed on the spot in the grass. She nodded mutely, her hands shaking as she began to fold their blanket. He didn't want to look back at the smudge, but he couldn't help it. He glanced over his shoulder.

The wrongness was gone.

Relief washed over him, so potent it left him weak-kneed. It was just a trick of the light. A sunspot. He let out a shaky laugh. “See? Nothing.”

But the silence in the park remained. The oppressive weight in the air hadn't lifted. The dream had broken. They were no longer two lovers in a sun-drenched paradise. They were two small, frightened creatures in a place that suddenly felt alien and hostile. The nightmare was just beginning.

The memory shattered, and Leo was back in the cold, present-day park, gasping for breath. His heart was pounding with a five-year-old terror. He was leaning against the willow tree, the rough bark of their carved initials digging into his back. In his trembling hand, the fifth poem felt like a burning coal.

He stared out at the tall, dead grass of autumn, at the exact spot where he had seen the smudge of wrongness. For five years, he had tried to bury that part of the memory, to dismiss it as a hallucination brought on by trauma. But Emilia’s words gave it a terrifying new context. The Gardener comes with jointless hands.

They hadn’t been alone. The thing in the grass hadn’t been a shadow. It had been a scout. A watcher. And he, in his youthful arrogance, had dismissed the warning in her eyes and led them straight into the trap.