LunaThe scream died in my throat before it ever left my lips.I sat bolt upright in bed, soaked in sweat, heart hammering like a war drum. My sheets clung to my skin, tangled around my legs like vines. The dream—no, the nightmare—was already fading, but the feeling clung to me. That voice, those words. The mist. The glowing eyes in the dark. The symbol.It wasn’t just a dream. I knew that now.My breath came in sharp bursts as I stared at the shadows stretching across my room, waiting for them to shift into something else. Something watching.“Luna?” Camille’s voice cut through the haze. “You okay?”She stood in the doorway, clutching a blanket around her shoulders. She must’ve heard me. Camille had stayed the night after we binge-watched bad horror movies and fell asleep halfway through the second one.“Sorry,” I whispered. “I… had a bad dream.”She didn’t hesitate. She crossed the room and sat beside me, pulling her blanket over us both like a shield. “Wanna talk about it?”I shook
LunaThe morning passed in a blur, a cycle of routine that did little to ground me. English had been tedious, a class discussion about a novel I hadn’t read. Math was worse—Camille’s whispered jokes barely kept me from nodding off. Science offered some relief, though that quickly turned to chaos when someone knocked over a beaker, sending us all running from the classroom as the teacher tried to contain whatever chemical reaction had begun hissing from the desk.For a while, school felt normal. Or at least, as normal as it could be with the weight of my mother’s absence pressing down on me.But normal never lasted.Rena Trevor lingered near the vending machines at lunch, watching me in that way she always did—intense but unreadable, like she knew something I didn’t. Camille noticed too, nudging my arm as we sat outside in the courtyard.“She’s doing it again,” she muttered.“I know.”“Seriously, what is her deal?” Camille demanded. “It’s not like you guys have some long-standing rival
LunaI sat in my bedroom, staring at the journal in my lap, my fingers absently tracing the edges of the worn leather cover. The words inside meant nothing. I had barely written a word since my mother’s death, and every time I tried, the ink bled into emptiness.The school day had passed in a haze. Camille had stayed by my side, her presence a lifeline, but even she couldn’t break through the fog of grief clinging to me. The whispers about me had continued, but I had long since learned to tune them out. What I couldn’t ignore was Rena Trevor.Something about her unsettled me. She had only been at Silverwoods High for a short time, yet she felt... familiar. It made no sense. I didn’t know her, had never met her before, but the glances she sent my way carried an odd weight, as if she knew something I didn’t.I sighed and closed the journal, setting it aside. The moment I did, a strange sensation prickled at the back of my neck. A whisper—not a voice, but a presence, something unseen bru
LunaI sat in the back of the classroom, my fingers curled around the pen, staring at the barely legible notes in my journal. The words blurred together, their meaning lost in the fog of my mind. School had resumed for me, but nothing felt the same. My mother was gone, and my father—though physically present—felt more like a shadow than the man who had once been my anchor.Camille sat beside me, a reassuring presence, but even her company couldn’t ease the weight pressing on my chest.Whispers rippled through the room. I didn’t have to strain to hear them. Silverwoods High thrived on gossip, and my sudden return after my mother’s death made me the unwilling center of attention. It wasn’t just the looks people gave me—it was the hushed voices in the hallways, the way conversations fell silent whenever I walked by.Then there was Rena Trevor.A new student. Dressed in dark, gothic attire, she was nothing like the rest of Silverwoods High’s usual crowd. She was quiet, her presence unsett
LunaThe hospital room was silent. Too silent.I sat stiffly in the chair beside the bed, staring at my mother’s still form. The machines that once beeped with stubborn life had gone quiet, leaving only the hushed breaths of the nurses as they moved around me. Someone touched my shoulder—a gentle pressure—but I barely registered it.“She’s gone.”The words had been spoken minutes ago, but they refused to settle in my mind. Gone. As if she had simply walked out of the room and would return at any moment, brushing a stray curl from my face, murmuring words of comfort. But that moment never came. It never would.A sharp inhale cut through the silence. My father. He stood at the other side of the bed, his head bowed, hands clenched into tight fists. His face was unreadable, a mask of restraint, but I could see the storm brewing in his eyes.“Dad,” I whispered, my voice foreign even to my own ears.He didn’t answer. Didn’t move. Just stared at the love of his life, frozen in a grief so hea
My dad told me it was useless to involve the police, not only that none of us could describe the hooded figures without sounding stupid; dad told me they controlled the police. I didn’t believe him but with his number of years working on the police force, he knew what worked in the force and who controlled things. We were in his cruiser, on our way to my school. He wanted to drive me to school that day. It was quite understandable because we were both shaken by what had happened in our house last night."Did you know what mom was trying to say me?""Let us talk about it after school baby girl. I have to hurry back to work now."We had just arrived at my school and after he had parked his car, he looked at me and said, "You will be fine and remember that you mom and I love you very much." He gave me a kiss on my forehead before letting me go.It was a chilling morning. The weather forecast that day had predicted a wet day and one could see the rain clouds gathering in the distance.