Chapter 1: The Midnight Call

The call came at midnight: my pregnant sister-in-law was dead. They said she hanged herself. I didn’t believe it. Not until I saw her eyes open.

The news tore through the stillness of our house in Maple Heights, rattling the picture frames and echoing in every quiet corner. Grief was sharp, but the silence that followed cut even deeper.

I boarded the overnight train, bound for home.

The train rattled through Ohio’s heartland, the windows framing a blur of rusted water towers, neon-lit diners flickering in the dark, and endless rows of cornfields beneath a heavy Midwestern sky. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, and the steady rumble underfoot only made the knot in my stomach tighter. My thoughts drifted to the last time I saw my sister-in-law—her laughing as she peeled apples at the kitchen table, promising we’d catch up soon. I’d brushed her off, too busy to notice how tired she looked.

Mom never mentioned why my sister-in-law died. She just told me to come home as fast as I could.

Her voice on the phone was brittle, every syllable straining not to break. I imagined her in our kitchen, twisting a faded dish towel in her hands, eyes swollen from crying but determined not to show it. "Aubrey, you need to come home. Right away." She kept repeating it, like a prayer or a warning.

I barely made it to the funeral parlor before it happened: my sister-in-law’s eyes opened.

The air was thick with lilies and that faint antiseptic tang that clings to hospital corridors. My heart pounded so loud I thought it would drown out the world. Suddenly, her eyes snapped open—wide, glassy, fixed right on me. For a heartbeat, I couldn’t breathe. I blinked, certain I was hallucinating, and even reached out, desperate for reality to make sense. But her gaze stayed locked on mine.

She said, "Aubrey, you have to run. Before it finds you too."

Her voice was shredded, echoing off the cracked ceiling—a sound that would haunt me for the rest of my life. I couldn’t move, couldn’t even blink. Hearing my name in that broken voice, it felt like a curse settling on my shoulders.

Aubrey is my name.

Hearing it spoken by her, in that moment, made me feel like I was standing on the edge of something terrible. My knees nearly gave out. For one wild second, the world felt upside down.