Evil Grows Deep

I didn't have a choice.

Walking through the crumbling streets of this town does something to the mind. It doesn't happen all at once. First, the silence sets in—not peace, not calm, just… silence. The kind that makes your ears ring and your thoughts run wild. Then the demons come. Not the horned kind. Not the ones from stories meant to keep children tucked into bed. No, these demons are older, sharper. They live in your own memories. They borrow your voice. They whisper with the weight of people you once loved.

And that's when the drowning begins.

It arrives in slow, cruel waves, like trying to breathe in a cave with water rising around your chest. You stretch your neck. You count the inches. But every time you look up, the ceiling is lower, the air thinner. You're trapped between two jagged truths, and both cut you the moment you stop moving.

The deeper you go into Faraday, the less of yourself you get to keep.

I had no choice but to come back.

It called to me, not like a voice, not like a scream, but like something older. A frequency in my bones. A thread tugged so tight I could feel it in my teeth. Faraday doesn't shout. It remembers. And it makes sure you do, too.

The name has always been part of me. My grandmother used to say it like a prayer, but my mother never said it at all. But I could still see how she locked her windows three times before bed, how she flinched if a crow landed on the porch, and how she burned our mail without opening it.

The Devilwoods fled once. My mother and father packed our lives in silence and told no one. We moved to a city where everything was loud and forgettable. I was six. I asked where we were going. My father said, "Somewhere the walls don't listen."

I never forgot that.

But even in the city, Faraday never left us. My father died with his mouth open, like he'd seen it again at the end. My mother wasted away as if something had been gnawing at her from the inside. I remember her whispering in her sleep, "I should have stayed. I should have warned them." She died afraid.

I hated her for that.

And now, I understand it.

So here I am. Thirty-two years old. No husband, no children. Nothing left to lose but my name—and even that doesn't feel like mine anymore.

I stepped off the bus five miles from Faraday's limits. No one would take me closer. The driver looked at me like a ghost before I'd even stepped off. As I walked away, I could feel the weight of his eyes in the rearview mirror.

The walk is long. I take it anyway. I need the space. I need to feel the hesitation digging its claws into my ribs. If I rush, I might forget what this means. If I delay, I might convince myself I can still run.

But I can't.

I had no choice.

Faraday is smaller than I remember, but its shadow is bigger. The fog rolls across the roads like spilled ink. The houses look older than time itself—wood rotting beneath layers of paint, windows fogged like cataracts. The whole town breathes in silence. The air tastes like rust and rot.

There's a bakery on the corner. I remember coming here as a child. There used to be a bell on the door and little paper bags for cookies. I loved the lemon ones that left sugar on your fingers for hours. But now the place is boarded up, scorched black around the windows.

In just one week, seven people died.

The town pretends not to notice. The storefronts are still open, and the children still play hopscotch on cracked sidewalks. But something's different. There's a kind of hollowness in the way people move, like they're sleepwalking—or worse, like they know they're awake but wish they weren't.

I was in the crowd that day. Watching the bakery burn.

And I saw him.

A private investigator. I know his name now, but I won't write it. It gives him too much power. He stood apart from the others, coat soaked, hair flattened against his skull like he'd just risen from the grave. His hands trembled. But his eyes—his eyes were quiet.

He didn't flinch when they pulled out the body. Didn't blink at the smell.

He looked… satisfied. No. Not quite. Resigned.

Like someone watching a story hit the same beat, over and over.

Like someone who thought he could change the ending and realized that, too late, he couldn't.

And then—he vanished. The fog swallowed him whole.

I haven't seen him since. But I know what he did.

More importantly, I know what he didn't do.

He had the chance to end this. To bury the past. To burn the dolls.

To burn her.

He failed.

And that failure demanded a replacement.

That's why I'm here.

I had no choice.

The manor is still standing. I don't remember its name, but I feel it deep in my spine like a splinter that never healed. Its face is cracked, its porch boards splintered, but it watches me. The windows are teeth. The door is a throat.

I step inside.

The air is thick, like breathing through wool. The kind of silence that makes your ears ache. Cobwebs cling to the ceiling like lace from a funeral dress. My flashlight quivers in my hand. I don't remember being afraid of the dark. But maybe the dark remembers me.

Portraits line the hallway. I recognize some of them.

Great-aunt Violette. Cousin Reginald. As a girl, my mother stared back at me with empty eyes.

All of them were drunk on prophecy. All of them were convinced the Threadbound Order was a gift. That we were chosen.

Chosen for what?

My feet move before I can stop them. Through the hall. Past the parlor. Toward the library.

The shelves are still as vast as I remember—towering monoliths of forgotten knowledge. Most of the books are blank. Or maybe it's just that I can't see the words anymore. Perhaps they don't want to be read. The air smells like mildew and time.

I run my hand along the spines, searching. Not for answers.

For the door.

My fingers pause on a volume that doesn't belong.

The spine cracks like it's crying out.

The shelves groan.

The wall clicks.

A passage opens.

I had no choice.

The stairs descend into blackness. I count them as I go. Twelve. Forty. Sixty-two. I lose count. There's no sound but the slow tap of my boots and the buzz of my flashlight. At the bottom, a chamber yawns open.

The old meeting place.

The walls are lined with symbols burned into stone. The chairs are still arranged in a circle, waiting for a quorum that will never come. I can almost hear them: the whispers of people who came before, convinced they were important.

And then the altar. Low. Humble. Covered in a linen cloth that's more dust than fabric now.

And her.

The doll.

She's smaller than I thought she'd be. Pale, cloth skin, one button eye missing, a faint smile stitched onto her face. But I feel her weight from across the room—like gravity, like guilt.

I don't want to touch her.

But I do.

My hand closes around her clothed body. The candles I hadn't lit flared as if in warning.

And then extinguish.

Darkness swallows the room.

I do not scream.

I do not run.

I do not cry.

I was born for this, whether I wanted it or not.

I was bred in the shadows of people who thought they were saving the world by making it bleed.

I was the last Devilwoods left.

And I had no choice.

Her eyes are open.

Her threads weave through my skin like needles through silk.

And I understand.

This isn't the end of the story.

This is the next verse.

I am not a savior.

I am not a martyr.

I am not the woman who will burn the thread that binds Faraday.

I am what the investigator could not become.

I am what the others feared they might become.

I am the next best thing.

And I had no choice.