Chapter 2: Shivering In The Dark
The silence that followed the departure of the SUV was heavier than the rain. Every passing semi-truck sent a violent wall of wind and spray that threatened to knock my thin frame right off balance. I pulled the silver emergency blanket tighter around my neck, pressing my teeth together to keep them from chattering so hard my jaw ached. My eyes burned, wide and hot with unsaved tears that mixed freely with the storm water streaming down my face.
She said to stay here. The cruel joke of it echoed in my head. If I walked home, the heavy iron gates of the estate would be locked, and the security guard would look right through me as if I were a ghost. Evelyn had planned this with terrifying precision. There was no luggage, no phone, no money in my coat pocket—just the clothes I wore under the foil blanket and the heavy book in my arms.
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I looked down at Galrriets. In the dim amber glow of a distant utility pole, the faint outline of the hand-drawn map on the inside cover caught my eye. Dad had drawn it himself, tracing the fictional mountains and rivers of the story while I watched over his shoulder. He used to tell me that whenever things got too loud or too cold in the big house, I could always retreat behind the cover. But the house hadn't been loud since he died. It had been a quiet, suffocating tomb where Evelyn practiced her social smiles in the mirror and looked at me as if I were a stain on her pristine white carpets.
A sudden rumble rolled through the ground beneath my soggy sneakers, distinct from the steady hum of distant highway traffic. It started as a low, vibrating thrum in the soles of my feet and rapidly grew into a heavy, mechanical heartbeat that made the air itself seem to shudder. I blinked hard against the stinging rain, lifting my chin to peer down the long, curving stretch of the highway where the amber fog lights cut amber tunnels through the dense mist.
