Page 110 of Some Kind of Haunted

Running feels good, which is unusual for me, but then this whole night is a big left turn. And being outside is better. I can breathe out here. I can move.

And I have to find Jack and Logan. I don’t know how to stop this, not clearly, but I know I’m not going to manage it alone.

I hear slurping at my heels and heavy breathing, so I don’t stop. I can’t stop or pay attention to any of the innocent, unaware people milling around me. I’m safe in the light, but the light won’t last forever.

Case in point: One of the streetlights I pass makes a kind of popping sound, then goes dark.

They’re going to take my light. And they don’t care about the tourists’ souls—not yet. Because it’s not Halloween and that’s not the deal.

But I broke the deal, or Harrison did, and I’m the one he wants.

I skirt around a family group arguing about dinner plans and try to make myself go faster.

I look up at the sky, pumping my legs and my arms. I can see a few stars, but clouds are covering portions of the sky, and the darker it gets, the worse it’s going to get for me. Luckily for me, tonight most businesses are still open for their Night Before Halloween events, so their lights shine out to the sidewalks as people laugh and chatter.

If they see me, they see a crazy lady on the run and think not much of it. Maybe it’s part of the ambience, they think. They don’t see demons or Harrison. And they won’t, until it’s too late.

I can’t let that happen.

“Jack, Logan, where are you?” I whisper into the night, my breathing ragged, my panic high. I know they can’t answer me, but I’m desperate for any sign, any clue, any—

The rock. The big rock, not little heart-shaped pebbles. The rock Jack thought held the answers, and we were going to check out before Harrison lured me away to the clock tower.

It comes to me out of nowhere, an image of that rock that I dreamed about once in jail and once before on the night Amelia died. I come to a skidding halt in the light of the diner itself. I can see Braxton inside, looking overwhelmed, as usual. Which means Jack isn’t there.

I know he’s not, even as I struggle to catch my breath. He’s going to be at the rock.

As long as there’s light, the shadows chasing me can’t touch me, because it’s not the Feed just yet. I can see them churning there, waiting—black shapes forming sickening masses and oozing back into pillowy, slurping goo.

I don’t look at them directly.

Jack showed us where the rock is, down by the river, on the other side of the flood wall. He pointed it out on the map, and it was in some of the maps that were carefully drawn in all the journals Harrison showed me. I know where it is. I know I can get there.

What I don’t know is how I’m going to stay in the light if I leave old town Midas, but I can’t worry about that. In a way, I’ve been getting ready for this my whole life. I have wandered out into streets far more dangerous than Main Street, Midas. And I have lived through every sleepwalking night so far.

Maybe I don’t need to find the light. Maybe the light will find me.

I go with that and start running again, even though my throat feels like razors and I’m freezing all the way through. I’ll find a way. I always find a way.

It’s the story of the Darlings, I think as I kick my own butt into gear. My mom was a foundling raised by Amelia and she saved Jack, for me. My dad got Logan and me out of here when he needed to, or who knows where we would have ended up. And Amelia got me here when I needed to be here.

Everyone found a way to fight.

No giving in. No deals with the enemy. No selling out the people they loved for whatever power looks like when it means abandoning yourself to slurping black horrors that can’t even pick a shape.

I reach the end of Main and see that the flood wall is lit up tonight. That will get me closer to the rock. Maybe not all the way there, but closer.

In the light.

Then it dawns on me. Somewhere along the way, demon zones got lit up as protections for the town. These lights are to keep the demons at bay. To give humans a path to safety when the dark presses in.

Maybe the townspeople don’t remember why they decided these certain parts of town needed what might be considered excess illumination, but it’s been helping to keep them safe—or safer—for decades. Maybe even a century.

That tells me that the nights must have been pretty bad here before the advent of electric lights. Because a candle can only do so much. And worse, can be blown out.

I remember the journal I read by the Village Lamplighter and, all things considered, think maybe I was wrong about that guy. Maybe he was the hero he thought he was after all.

I follow the wall’s light, and despite the way my body feels, I don’t let myself slow down. I race down to the riverside, outside the center of town and on the far side of the flood wall. I ignore the fact that my lungs are burning. It feels like tears have frozen to my cheeks, and maybe blood, too, and still I run.