Chapter 3: The Hunger and the Rage

Chapter 3: The Hunger and the Rage

The dark blue sedan sat in the driveway like a polished tombstone. Every time Samantha glanced out the window, its presence was a cold reminder of the silent, suffocating drive home. It was supposed to be a new start, but it felt like the final seal on her isolation. She told herself it was just a car. She told herself the chill that clung to her was just the late autumn air. She told herself the quiet, hollow-eyed girl in the living room was her daughter, recovering from a trauma.

She was a masterful liar, especially to herself.

Dinner was her next attempt to breach the wall. She made Sophia’s favorite: chicken nuggets, mashed potatoes, and bright green peas. In the “before,” dinner was a messy, joyful affair. Sophia would build mountains of potatoes and hide peas in them like buried treasure. She would dunk her nuggets with theatrical splashes and tell rambling stories about her day at preschool. The memory was so vivid it was a physical ache in Samantha’s chest.

Tonight, there were no stories. Sophia sat at the small kitchen table, her booster seat transferred from the tin coffin outside. She didn’t touch her fork. Instead, with a slow, deliberate focus that was deeply unnerving in a five-year-old, she began to arrange her food. She nudged each pea with the tip of her finger, pushing them into a perfectly straight, single-file line along the rim of the plate. She then took the chicken nuggets and created a neat, geometric square in the center. Finally, she used her fork to flatten the mashed potatoes into a smooth, flawless circle that didn't touch the other items.

Samantha watched, her own food growing cold. The plate was a work of unsettling art, a diagram of rigid, obsessive order. Not a single pea was out of place. It was the same unnatural stillness she’d seen at the dealership, now manifested as a deliberate, painstaking act. This wasn't a child playing with her food. This was something else.

“Sweetie, you have to eat,” Samantha said softly, her voice wavering. “You haven’t eaten anything all day. Not since…” Not since the cookies. The thought flickered, bringing with it the memory of that hateful, adult glare.

Sophia didn’t look up. Her small finger traced the line of peas, her touch impossibly light.

Desperation clawed at Samantha. She had to break this spell. She had to find her daughter in there. Reaching across the table, she forced a playful laugh. “Hey, no more marching soldier peas! Let’s make a potato mountain, remember? Like we used to.”

She reached for Sophia’s plate, her fork aimed at the pristine white circle of potatoes.

The reaction was instantaneous and violent.

The childish facade didn’t just crack; it exploded. Sophia’s head snapped up, and the face that met Samantha’s was not her daughter’s. It was a mask of pure, incandescent rage. The kind of rage that was ancient and cold, not the hot, fleeting anger of a child. Her eyes, those dark, empty pools, blazed with a terrifying light. A low hiss, like air escaping a punctured tire, slipped through her clenched teeth.

Her small hand shot out, not with a child’s clumsiness, but with the speed of a striking snake. She didn’t slap Samantha’s hand away; she clamped onto her wrist.

Ice. A cold so profound it felt like a brand. It wasn't the chill of a cool evening or a child's cool skin. It was a deep, penetrating, unnatural cold that seemed to leech the warmth directly from Samantha’s bones. It shot up her arm, making her gasp in shock and pain.

“Don’t,” the thing wearing Sophia’s face hissed. The voice was a low rasp, gravelly and guttural, an impossible sound to come from such a small throat.

Samantha snatched her hand back as if burned, cradling her wrist. The skin was already red and blotchy where the tiny fingers had gripped her, the flesh aching with that deathly chill. She stared, horrified, at the creature opposite her. The rage in its eyes was absolute. It was the fury of a thwarted god, not a petulant child. It was a promise of violence.

Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the storm passed. The monstrous tension in the small body slackened. The blazing fury in the eyes dimmed, receding back into that unnerving emptiness. The face smoothed out, becoming once again the placid, doll-like face of Sophia Brown. She looked down at her plate, at the perfectly ordered food, and then back at Samantha, her expression a blank slate.

Samantha’s heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage. She couldn’t breathe. She pushed her chair back, the legs scraping harshly against the linoleum, and fled the kitchen, leaving the silent child at the table with her untouched, perfect meal. The entity had made its point. It did not require food. Its hunger was for something else entirely.

Later, the house was submerged in a tense silence. Samantha moved like a ghost, her every nerve screaming. The encounter in the kitchen had stripped away another layer of her denial. Trauma didn’t do that. Trauma didn’t come with a voice from a tomb and a touch of frostbite.

But the ritual of bedtime was sacred. She couldn’t abandon it. She couldn’t leave that… thing alone. She went into Sophia’s room, her movements stiff with dread. The child was already under the covers, a small lump in the dim light of a unicorn nightlight.

Samantha perched on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under her weight. The chill was still there, a pocket of cold air surrounding the bed. She forced herself to reach out, her hand trembling as she brushed a strand of hair from the child’s forehead. The skin was cool, but not the searing cold from before.

She had to try one last time. She had to say the words. It was their nightly ritual, the anchor of their love.

“Goodnight, sweetie,” she whispered, her voice thick with unshed tears. “Mommy loves you.” She leaned in closer, her lips near the child’s ear. “I love you more than all the stars in the sky.”

The small head on the pillow turned. In the soft glow of the nightlight, the eyes that opened were dark and fathomless. For a long moment, there was only silence. Samantha’s heart stuttered, waiting.

Then, the small lips parted. The voice that emerged was the one from the car—flat, clear, and utterly devoid of warmth or childish inflection. It was the sound of a phonograph playing a warped record.

“You loved the stars,” it said, the words precise and sharp as shards of glass, “more than you loved the road.”

The air left Samantha’s lungs in a pained rush. The world tilted, the floor seeming to fall away beneath her. It was a direct quote, a twisted echo of the state trooper’s question that had haunted her nightmares for two years. Were you looking at the road, ma’am? Or were you looking at the stars? A secret, agonizing moment of guilt she had never spoken aloud to anyone.

A sob caught in her throat. She stared down at the face on the pillow, a face that was now a canvas for all her deepest fears. This creature wasn’t just mimicking her daughter; it was inside her head. It was rooting through her memories, feasting on her guilt.

And then, the whiplash.

The cold, knowing expression dissolved. The face crumpled into a perfect imitation of a sleepy, concerned little girl. The eyes blinked, and a child’s innocence flooded back into them.

“Mommy?” The voice was Sophia’s again. Her real Sophia’s. High-pitched, soft, and laced with worry. “Why are you crying? Did I say something wrong?” A small hand reached out, patting Samantha’s cheek. “Don’t be sad, Mommy.”

Samantha recoiled as if she’d been struck. She scrambled off the bed, stumbling backward until her legs hit the wall. She stared at the child in the bed, who was now looking at her with wide, tearful, loving eyes—the very picture of filial concern.

Did she imagine it? The voice? The cruel, impossible words? Was her own grief finally shattering her mind?

“Goodnight,” Samantha choked out, the word a strangled gasp.

She fled the room, pulling the door closed behind her, her hand shaking so badly she could barely find the knob. She leaned against the cool wood of the hallway wall, listening to the crushing silence of the house. She was trapped. Trapped not just with a stranger, but with a monster that could wear her daughter’s face and speak with the voice of her own damnation, only to offer her comfort a moment later. And the most terrifying part of all was the sliver of hope it gave her—the hope that she was, in fact, going insane. Because the alternative was so much worse.

Characters

Connor Brown

Connor Brown

Samantha Brown

Samantha Brown

The Entity / 'Sophia'

The Entity / 'Sophia'