Chapter 2: A Town Cursed by Girls

The town where I grew up is cursed.

It’s the kind of place that doesn’t show up on maps, tucked between two ridges, with a single gas station and a diner that closes at eight. Blink and you’ll miss it. Folks here whisper about bad luck like it’s alive. There’s a heaviness to the air, a hush that settles in every time another girl’s birthday rolls around.

No girl here ever sees seventeen.

There’s a list in the church basement—names and dates, each name another promise the town couldn’t keep.

No matter how careful her family is, no matter how far she runs, every girl, on the day she turns sixteen—like a twisted version of Sleeping Beauty—will be found lying peacefully in bed, gone. I’d always pause after hearing that. The image haunted me.

It doesn’t matter if her folks send her to live with relatives two states over or keep her locked in her room with the windows nailed shut. Come the morning of her sixteenth birthday, she’s gone. Always the same—no struggle, no sign of pain. Just a quiet, empty kind of sorrow that fills the house. Nothing anyone did ever worked.

Nobody ever gets out. Not really.

The local paper doesn’t print the obituaries anymore. The high school yearbooks are full of half-finished pages. Everyone pretends it’s not happening. But you feel it—every conversation that trails off, every look that lasts a little too long.

To break the curse, the townsfolk tried everything—doctors, preachers, psychics, you name it.

They brought in specialists from Nashville, faith healers from Kentucky, even a woman who claimed she could talk to angels. None of it made a lick of difference. The pastor led candlelight vigils every spring, but the candles always burned out long before hope did.

In the end, the mayor tracked down an old preacher and learned the only way out: a life for a life. The words hit like thunder.

The preacher lived out past the county line, in a house that looked like it had weathered every storm since the Civil War. Folks said he could see right through you, like he knew every secret you’d ever kept. He told the mayor, in a voice rough as gravel, that the curse could only be broken if someone from outside took the place of a local girl. One life traded for another. No exceptions.

Bring in a woman from outside and hold a ritual, and you could trade her life for one of our own girls.

The ritual was simple, at least on the surface. A midnight gathering, a circle of salt, prayers whispered under your breath. But underneath, it was a kind of desperation you can’t put into words. Everyone would be in on it, guilty and hopeful all at once.

I have a little sister, and she turns sixteen this year.

Her name’s Emily. She still wears her hair in braids and keeps a notebook full of horse sketches under her pillow. She’s the kind of kid who leaves wildflowers on the kitchen table just to see our mom smile. I can’t imagine a world without her in it.

If nothing changes, she’ll be the next to die. I can’t let that happen.

Every morning I wake up and count the days, hoping for some miracle, dreading the sunrise that means we’re one day closer. It’s like watching a clock wind down, and there’s nothing I can do.

There’s no way I can just stand by and let that happen.

I’d promised Emily, when she was little, that I’d always protect her. I meant it. Even if it meant doing something I’d never forgive myself for.