The wind howled outside, sending icy fingers through the cracks of the old Victorian house. It felt like the very walls were holding their breath, waiting for something to happen. I sat at the kitchen table, staring blankly at the phone in my hand, the cold mug forgotten beside me. Craig’s call had left me shaken, the words spinning in my mind like a broken record. Someone’s coming after them. Who? And why?
I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Craig and Vanessa—my son and the woman who’d taken his side in this absurd mess—had vanished with everything. The money, the house, the lies that had twisted themselves into our family like weeds choking the life out of us. I couldn’t trust anyone anymore. And yet, Craig’s frantic call had put everything into perspective.
Someone was after them. But who?
I glanced up toward the stairs. The silence upstairs was suffocating, and the unsettling feeling that had been growing in my gut seemed to pulse with each tick of the clock. Mason’s door was shut, but it had been for hours now. The clicking sound—so precise, so deliberate—had stopped abruptly a few minutes ago. I stood, my legs suddenly weak, and moved toward the staircase, my breath shallow and uneven.
“Mason?” I called out softly, my voice cracking in the quiet. No answer.
My heart pounded in my chest as I reached the bottom of the stairs. The house was heavy with stillness, the kind that makes you want to look over your shoulder, even when no one’s there. And that’s when I saw it—the faintest shift in the air, like a presence that wasn’t supposed to be there.
I climbed the stairs slowly, each step creaking beneath my weight. At the top, I paused outside Mason’s room, my hand hovering over the doorknob. The faint light that had spilled under his door was now gone, replaced by a thick darkness that felt wrong.
I knocked softly, but the door swung open before I could press my knuckles against it. My eyes went immediately to Mason, who sat on the floor, his back to me. His posture was rigid, focused, as if he hadn’t even heard me approach. On the floor beside him was an open laptop, the screen filled with lines of code, strange and foreign to me.
“Mason?” I asked again, stepping into the room. He didn’t turn around.
“Grandma, it’s handled,” he said, his voice steady, his words simple, but they landed like a bomb in the quiet of the room.
“Handled?” My heart skipped a beat. “What does that mean?”
He finally turned to face me, and I saw something in his eyes—something sharp, calculating, like a flicker of something far beyond his years. “It means it’s done,” he said, his lips curling into a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You don’t have to worry.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Done? What had he done? What was he really doing up here?
Before I could speak, his phone rang. He didn’t look at it, didn’t even flinch. He reached over, silenced it, and then slid it back into his pocket with a quiet motion, like it was nothing.
I opened my mouth, but just as I did, the sound of my own phone ringing downstairs caught my attention. I paused, eyes narrowing, as if I already knew who it was.
I rushed downstairs, my pulse quickening, and grabbed the phone before it could go to voicemail. The caller ID read Craig. My throat tightened as I answered, dreading what I might hear. I didn’t want to do this again. Not after everything.
And as I stood there, trying to grasp what was happening, Mason appeared behind me, his face unreadable. “Grandma,” he said softly, his voice steady as ever, “It’s done. Don’t worry.”
But I didn’t feel comforted. I didn’t feel safe. I felt like I was standing at the edge of a precipice, and someone was waiting on the other side.
The doorbell rang then—sharp, insistent—and I froze. No one came to the house anymore. No one ever rang that bell unless they were here for something they shouldn’t be.
I looked at Mason one last time, but his eyes didn’t meet mine. Instead, he gave a small nod, almost imperceptible, and turned away.
The doorbell rang again. And this time, I knew it wasn’t just someone at the door. It was something else. Something far darker.
