Chapter 7: A Mother's Fear

Liam drove aimlessly through the night until his hands stopped shaking enough to hold the steering wheel steady. Every shadow on the roadside looked like a crouched figure, every rustling branch sounded like claws scraping against bark. The bone pit had shattered his understanding of what his family was, but worse than the horror was the certainty that he was missing crucial pieces of the puzzle.

His mother. Amy Thorne, who had vanished the night Hayley was born, leaving behind only blood-soaked sheets and a newborn that his father believed wasn't entirely human. If anyone had known what was happening to their family, what curse or contamination had taken root in their bloodline, it would have been her.

The house looked different when he finally returned—darker somehow, even with every light blazing. The windows stared out like dead eyes, and the shadows between the trees seemed deeper and more substantial. But the creatures that had pursued him through the woods were nowhere to be seen. Either they'd retreated to their feeding ground, or they were waiting somewhere in the darkness, patient as spiders in their web.

Liam parked at the road's edge and approached the house on foot, moving carefully through the overgrown yard. Every step felt like a violation of some invisible boundary, as if the very ground was hostile territory now. The front door stood open, swaying gently in the autumn breeze, but no sound came from within.

"Neil?" he called softly as he stepped onto the porch. His voice seemed to be swallowed by the house itself, absorbed into the walls like water into a sponge.

No answer. But somewhere deep inside, he could hear movement—slow, deliberate sounds that might have been someone cleaning up, or might have been something much worse. The smell of the feast still lingered in the air, mixed now with the organic wrongness that had become the house's signature scent.

Liam moved through the rooms systematically, checking corners and closets, but Neil was nowhere to be found. The kitchen was spotless, every trace of their grotesque dinner cleared away as if it had never happened. Even the dishes had been washed and put away with obsessive precision. But the garbage disposal was running constantly, grinding something that made wet, tearing sounds as it was processed.

The bedrooms upstairs were equally empty, though he found evidence of recent occupation in what had once been his parents' room. The master bedroom door, which had been locked for as long as he could remember, now stood ajar. Inside, dust motes danced in the pale light from his flashlight, and everything was covered with the grey film of abandonment.

But someone had been here recently. Footprints in the dust led to the far corner, where a section of floorboard had been pried up with what looked like bare hands. The wood was splintered and torn, as if someone with inhuman strength had simply ripped it apart to get at whatever lay beneath.

The hiding place was empty now, but the shape pressed into the dust told the story. A book, probably, something small and rectangular that had been secreted away years ago. Liam played his flashlight beam across the floor, looking for any trace of what had been hidden there.

He found it wedged behind the dresser—a leather-bound journal that had been dropped or thrown in haste. The cover was water-stained and cracked with age, but he could still make out the initials embossed in fading gold: A.T. Amy Thorne.

His mother's diary.

Liam sank onto the dusty bed and opened the journal with trembling hands. The early entries were mundane—accounts of daily life, hopes for the future, the simple joys and frustrations of a young woman in love. Amy's handwriting was neat and careful, filled with the optimism of someone who believed life held nothing but promise.

But as he flipped through the pages, the tone began to change. The entries became shorter, more anxious, filled with references to things that didn't quite make sense. Strange dreams. Unusual cravings. A growing sense that something was wrong with her pregnancy, something that the doctors couldn't explain or didn't want to acknowledge.

March 15th - The hunger is getting worse. Not just for food, but for things I can't even name. Raw meat, the smell of blood, the sound of something crying in the distance. Robert tries to be understanding, but I can see the fear in his eyes when he looks at me. I'm becoming something he doesn't recognize.

March 28th - Found myself in the woods again last night. I don't remember walking there, but I woke up with dirt under my fingernails and the taste of copper in my mouth. My nightgown was torn, stained with something dark. Robert burned it without asking questions, but we both know something is wrong. Something is changing inside me.

The entries became increasingly erratic as the pregnancy progressed, the handwriting growing shakier, more desperate. Amy wrote about visits to the library, research into local folklore and legends that she'd never shown interest in before. She mentioned names that meant nothing to Liam but seemed to terrify her—old families, bloodlines that had died out or disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

April 10th - The Hendricks family. The Blackwoods. The Cravens. All gone now, all disappeared within a generation or two of settling in this area. Mrs. Kowalski at the library won't talk about them directly, but I can see the knowledge in her eyes. She knows what happened to them. She knows what's happening to me.

April 15th - The thing inside me is getting stronger. I can feel it moving, but not like a normal baby. It's... feeding. Feeding on me from the inside, taking what it needs to grow into something that was never meant to exist. The doctors say everything is normal, but they won't look me in the eye when they say it. They know. Everyone knows, but no one will speak the truth.

The final entries were barely legible, written in a hand that shook with fear and something that might have been physical weakness.

April 20th - The old stories are true. The thing that lives in these woods, the hunger that's been stalking this land for centuries—it doesn't just kill. It reproduces. It finds women, takes them, uses them as vessels to create more of itself. I thought I was carrying Robert's child, but that was before I understood what was really growing inside me.

April 22nd - It's almost time. I can feel the thing positioning itself, preparing for birth. But it won't be a birth—it will be an emergence, a hatching. The hunger that's been building inside me isn't mine. It belongs to the creature that will tear its way out of me when it's ready to feed.

April 23rd - I've hidden this journal where Robert will find it, if he survives what's coming. The rituals Mrs. Kowalski finally told me about—they might work, might contain what I'm about to bring into the world. But they require sacrifice. Constant vigilance. And if they ever fail...

The final entry was written in what looked like blood, the letters barely legible against the yellowed paper.

It's starting. The contractions aren't labor pains—they're the thing clawing its way out. I can hear it in my mind now, whispering in a language that predates human speech. It's hungry. So very hungry. And when it's born, when it takes its first breath of air, the hunger will never end. God forgive me. God forgive us all.

The journal fell from Liam's nerveless fingers as the full horror of his family's curse finally became clear. Hayley wasn't his sister. She was something else entirely, something that had killed their mother to bring itself into the world. The sweet, innocent girl he'd grown up loving and protecting was a predator wearing human skin, a creature of appetite and need that had been contained only by his father's desperate rituals.

And now those protections were failing.

The sound of the front door slamming shut echoed through the house, followed by heavy footsteps on the stairs. Neil was back, and something in the quality of his movement suggested that his patience for games had finally run out.

"Liam?" The voice that called his name was recognizably his brother's, but there were harmonics in it now that made his teeth ache. "I know you're up there. We need to talk."

The footsteps were getting closer, accompanied by a wet, sliding sound that suggested Neil wasn't entirely walking anymore. Liam grabbed the diary and looked desperately around the room for another way out. The window overlooked the backyard, but it was a long drop to the ground below.

"I found the bone pit," Liam called back, trying to keep his voice steady. "I know what you've been feeding."

The footsteps stopped just outside the bedroom door.

"Do you?" Neil's voice was closer now, and definitely wrong. The words seemed to come from multiple throats speaking in unison. "Do you really understand what we are, what we've always been? What she needs to survive?"

"She's not our sister."

A sound that might have been laughter echoed through the doorway. "No. She's not. But she's family all the same. Blood of our blood, hunger of our hunger. And she's coming home soon."

The doorknob began to turn with mechanical precision, but before it could open fully, Liam's phone rang. The shrill sound cut through the house like a scream, and Neil's approach stopped immediately.

The caller ID showed a number he didn't recognize, but the area code was local. Liam answered with shaking hands.

"Hello?"

The voice on the other end was barely a whisper, female and terrified. "Is this Liam Thorne?"

"Yes."

"This is Monica's mother. Sarah. Your sister is staying with us."

Liam's blood turned to ice water in his veins. Outside the bedroom door, he could hear Neil breathing—slow, patient, predatory.

"What's wrong?"

"There's been a storm," Sarah whispered. "Power's out, roads are flooded. We're trapped here, and..." Her voice broke, became a sob. "Something's wrong with Hayley. She's... she's not right."

Through the phone, Liam could hear sounds in the background—crashes, screams, something being torn apart with systematic violence.

"What do you mean?"

"She was in the guest room, sleeping, and then the storm hit and she started... changing. Growing. Her voice got deeper, and her teeth..." Another sob. "Oh God, her teeth."

A scream echoed through the phone line—high, terrified, cut short by a wet, tearing sound. Sarah's breathing became rapid, panicked.

"She's loose in the house now. Moving through the walls, I think. Making sounds like... like she's hunting us."

More sounds of destruction, closer now. And underneath it all, a voice that might have been Hayley's but was wrong in every way that mattered.

"Please," Sarah whispered. "You have to help us. You have to—"

A sound like breaking glass, followed by the most inhuman roar Liam had ever heard. Then screaming, multiple voices raised in terror and agony, and the wet sounds of feeding.

The line went dead.