68

Sierra’s POV

The car ride back from the lake house was quiet. Not a calm quiet. A shaky, scared quiet. Louis drove with both hands gripping the wheel. His knuckles were white. I stared out the window at the dark trees rushing by.

My whole body was humming. Like a plucked guitar string. I could still feel the *thwack* of the flashlight hitting Lyle’s head in my hand. I’d never hit anyone before.

“Does your head hurt?” Louis asked. His voice was rough.

“No. Does your neck?”

“A little.”

We didn’t talk anymore after that. What was there to say? We found the ghost. He was real. And he was crazier than we thought.

We got to Vivienne’s house when the sky was starting to get light. Grey, like dirty milk. We got Katie, who was sleepy and confused. We thanked Vivienne. She just looked at our dirty clothes and Louis’s bruised neck and nodded. She knew.

We drove home. Our real home. It didn’t feel real anymore.

We put Katie to bed. It was morning, but she was tired from the weird night. She fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.

Louis and I went to the kitchen. We were covered in cellar dirt. We looked like we’d been in a fight. Because we had.

I started making coffee. My hands were shaking. Coffee grounds spilled on the counter.

“Here,” Louis said softly. He took the bag from me. His hands were shaking too. We were a mess.

He made the coffee. We sat at the island. We drank it without talking. The sun came up properly, filling the kitchen with yellow light. It felt wrong. The world should be dark and rainy after a night like that.

“He’s not going to stop,” I said. The words sounded too loud. “He thinks we’re his. Like toys.”

“I know,” Louis said. He put his cup down. “But now we know who he is. We have a name. Lyle. That’s a start. We can find him. For real this time.”

“And then what?” I asked. I looked at him. “We call the police? ‘Hello, a man from my summer camp when I was ten is trying to steal my life?’ They’ll think we’re crazy.”

“We have the cellar,” Louis said. “The pictures. The letter. That’s proof.”

“Proof of what? That he’s obsessed. They can’t arrest him for having a creepy room. He didn’t do anything illegal there.” I was thinking out loud, and it was all scary. “The texts? From burn phones. The bug? He’s too smart. The school pickup attempt? He didn’t actually take her. It’s all just… creeping. Until it’s not.”

Louis stood up fast. His chair scraped the floor. “So what are you saying? We do nothing?”

“No!” I stood up too. We were facing each other over the island. “I’m saying we can’t just find him and say ‘stop it.’ He needs more than that. He needs… help. Or he needs to be stopped for real.”

We stared at each other. We both knew what “stopped for real” meant. It meant the Louis from before. The one who made problems disappear. The thought should have scared me. But part of me… part of me wanted the problem gone too. That part scared me more.

“I won’t let him near you again,” Louis said. His eyes were dark. “I won’t let him look at you, or Katie, ever again.”

“How?” My voice broke. “He’s a shadow. He got into our basement! He was in the garden taking pictures of our bedroom! How do you stop a shadow?”

Louis came around the island. He stood right in front of me. He put his hands on my face. They were warm from the coffee cup. “We become the thing that shadows are afraid of,” he said. “Light. We shine so bright he can’t look. We are so loud he can’t think. We stop hiding, Sierra. We stop being scared in our own house.”

“How?” I asked again, but it was a whisper this time.

“We live. Loudly. We have people over. We go to the park. We take Katie for ice cream. With security, yes. But we do it. We show him he didn’t win. He didn’t scare us into a hole. We’re still here. And we’re not his.”

It was the opposite of everything we’d been doing. It was brave. And it was terrifying.

I leaned into his hands. I was so tired. “I’m scared,” I admitted.

“Me too,” he said. He kissed my forehead. “But we’re scared together. That’s better than being scared alone.”

We cleaned up. We took showers, washing the cellar dirt away. I stood under the hot water for a long time, but I didn’t feel clean.

When I came out, Louis was in the bedroom. He was just standing there, looking at the bed. The same bed from the photo Lyle took.

“We should get new curtains,” he said.

“Yeah.”

We got dressed. Normal clothes. Jeans. A sweater. It felt like putting on a costume.

The day went on. We tried to act normal for Katie. We played a board game. We laughed, but the laughs sounded tinny and fake.

That night, after dinner, Katie wanted a campout in the living room. So we did. We built a big blanket fort. We ate popcorn. We watched a silly movie about a talking dog.

For two hours, it almost felt normal. Katie fell asleep between us on a pile of pillows, her mouth open.

Louis and I were awake, leaning against the couch, watching the credits roll.

“This was a good idea,” I said softly.

“The fort?”

“Yeah. And the living loud thing. It feels… better.”

“It does,” he agreed. He put his arm around me. I rested my head on his shoulder.

We sat in the quiet, dark living room, lit only by the TV screen. Our daughter was safe between us. The house was quiet.

“I meant what I said,” Louis whispered. “I’m not letting him take this. Any of it.”

“I know,” I said. I believed him.

I turned my face toward his. In the blue light, I could see the tired lines around his eyes. The bruise on his neck. This man who fought a ghost in a dark cellar for me. For us.

I kissed him. It was a soft kiss. A thank you kiss. A we’re-still-here kiss.

It started slow. But then it changed. It wasn’t desperate like last time. It was sure. His hands came up to cradle my face. My fingers traced the bruise on his neck, so gently.

We were careful not to wake Katie. We moved like a secret. A quiet, loving secret in our blanket fort.

It was different from anything before. It wasn’t about fear or anger. It was about choosing each other, right here, right now, in the middle of the war. It was about making something beautiful in the ugly mess.

After, we lay tangled together under the blankets, Katie’s soft breathing beside us. Louis traced shapes on my back.

“I love you,” he said. The words were so quiet I almost didn’t hear them.

I lifted my head to look at him. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking straight ahead, like he was scared of my reaction.

“I know I don’t say it,” he whispered. “I know… after everything… you might not believe it. But it’s true. It’s always been true. Even when I was stupid. Even when I ruined it.”

My eyes filled with hot tears. I didn’t let them fall. I just kissed him again. “I love you too,” I said against his lips. “Even when you’re stupid.”

He smiled a little. A real smile.

We fell asleep like that, a messy, happy, scared pile of people who loved each other.

We didn’t hear the phone buzz in the other room. We didn’t see the new text that came through at 3 a.m.

It was a picture. A picture of our blanket fort, taken through the living room window. And the message:

**You look so happy. It’s my favorite way to see you. Don’t worry. I’ll be inside soon. Then I can be happy too.**