Once the lights were turned out, Katherine couldn’t sleep. She just stared up at the ceiling.

“Hey, Katherine?” Maylin spoke in a soft voice as if she was close to sleep.

Katherine turned to her. “Yeah?”

“I’m glad you’re all right.” She yawned, hugging her pillow and readjusting. “So weird, dogs attacking us.” 

Katherine nodded, knowing Maylin was probing. While she wanted to know why, if she questioned her, it would only cause more curiosity. And a curious Maylin was a dangerous Maylin. “Yeah, it is weird.” She leaned back and folded hands over her chest. “I’m just glad everyone is okay.”

Maylin yawned again. “Yeah, me too.” She cleared her throat, feeling like she was beating a dead horse, but she wanted to ask again, to make sure. And since it was just the two of them, it would be okay. She had to know. “You… sure it was dogs, right? And not something else?”

She just wouldn’t let up, would she? “Yeah, I’m sure.” Katherine stuck to her story, persisting much like her father had with what happened with their mom. A pang of regret pushed against her chest as she lied. 

While the regret crushed her, she wanted to know if Maylin had seen the same thing. So, she decided to go out on a limb. “Hey, Maylin? I—"

Maylin had passed out, was snoozing away, a small rising and falling of her chest. Katherine smiled, hoping that everything was all right, that perhaps with time they could talk about it. “Night, Maylin.”

Katherine tossed and turned for a moment, but as her eyes got heavy from the soft hum of cars coming and going in the distance, and the noises of house as it settled, she was finally able to doze off. 

Maylin was standing back in the street. Kyle was there, so was William and Katherine. But they were silent sentinels. Solid and unmoving. She walked to each of them, waving her hand in front of their faces.

“Hello, anyone in there?”

“Hmm.” She placed her hands on her hips, then turned back to the alleyway to where that creature had appeared and… nothing there. What was going on? She felt a bit of relief, though, at not seeing the creature.

Until two red eyes appeared, staring into her, making her freeze like the others. She just looked back, unable to budge. Then the red eyes that looked like they were connected to a dark, shadowy body, floated toward her, moving quickly and—

She screamed out, and sat up in bed, clasping her hand to her heart, not sure what to think of what just happened. “Just a nightmare.” She felt as if she had been sprinting and had to catch her breath, wiping her sweaty brow with her forearm.

“Hey, Katherine?”

“What?” came the voice of Katherine’s that sounded like her, but not quite right. It was off. As Katherine turned to Maylin, Maylin felt her heart jump because Katherine’s eyes were the same red as that creature’s.

Katherine sat up and moved her legs over the side of the bed, speaking in that same, weird voice. As she spoke, it got lower, more guttural, demonic. “What’s the matter?”

It smiled, a low growl emitting from its lips. “Are you scared?”

Maylin sat, frozen in shock.

“You should be,” the voice said, more monstrous now, as if it was coming from speakers that surrounded Maylin. “I’m coming for you.” It tilted its head unnaturally, the skin stretching weirdly, its bones cracking.

And it leapt out of the bed, soaring through the air in a mighty bound, screeching as it did, and—

Maylin jerked up, her eyes wide, her breaths rapid. Eyeballs glanced from side to side, not daring to sit up or move more than that. Her breaths the only thing in the silence of the dark room. She grasped the covers in tight fingers, not daring to move her arms or wipe her sweaty forehead.

She finally glanced over at Katherine in a slow and timid movement. “K-Katherine?” Katherine was on her side, the slow rise and fall of her body indicative of sleeping. She let out a tiny, shuddering breath of relief, then turned back toward the ceiling to see a shadowy shape hovering above her, like a cloud of black smoke, with gaping crimson eyes gazing upon her. She let out a scream that was silenced by a long, wispy arm that swept forward and plunged into the depths of her throat, choking and gagging her.

Maylin gasped awake again to Katherine leaning over her and shaking her.

“Hey, wake up!”

Maylin blinked her eyes open, laying rigid for a moment as her eyes looked around warily. “W-what? What happened?”

“You were having a nightmare,” Katherine said. “I’ve been trying to shake you awake for over a minute now.”

Maylin stared at Katherine, glancing around the room again, holding onto her covers, then as she saw bits of sunlight poking through the blinds, she let out a sigh. “Oh, thank God.”

She then met Katherine’s eyes, waiting for a moment, probing her.

Katherine smiled. “It’s me, don’t worry.”

Maylin gave it a moment, slowly nodding, and then hugged her, shaking as she did.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Maylin said, clinging to her like a child to a mother. “It was just a bad dream, that’s all. Thanks for waking me up.”

Katherine nodded. “Sure thing.” She wondered what kind of nightmare it was, and if it had anything to do with that Corrupted.

Maylin felt heavy, though, like something had clung to her, wouldn’t let go, was lingering. And while nightmares were quite the thing to experience, they tended to fade with time after waking. This feeling, though, did not fade. It stayed with her, hovering, and it felt like the set of red eyes from the dream were still waiting, watching, staring into her soul.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Katherine asked, sitting next to her with a look of concern.

“Yeah.” Maylin lied. She wanted to tell Katherine more, wondered if something about what she had seen had set this off. Wanted to confide in Katherine, gush everything, all the details, how she really felt. At the same time, she thought better of it, and just stuck with her lie. And she hoped, even though the feeling was lingering, that it would eventually fade.

She thought on the incident from yesterday as she looked upon Katherine, feeling something different about her as well. If it was a monster she had seen, had it run off or had someone defeated it? Could it have been—no, that was a silly thought to think Katherine could have defeated something so menacing. And perhaps it was just dogs, so she’d just leave it at that.

But the nightmare she had. What was with that? It was as vivid as the creature she was sure she had seen. She was so confused. She wanted to confront Katherine, ask her about it, confide in her, but still… she held her tongue.

“Well, I’m gonna get dressed,” Katherine said.

Maylin nodded. And left things at that, because she certainly wasn’t going to confess all those thoughts as they would be seen as crazy, or just completely dismissed.

Maylin watched her go, thinking about another time where she had had a weird experience. When she had visited her great grandmother before her passing. They claimed she was at the end of her life, so the family had all gone to see her in Setamashidao, an island country in Asia where her grandmother had immigrated from and where great granny still lived. She remembered all of them talking to her, and while she had never seen the woman as her parents were particular about so many things, she felt a connection with her. The doctors claimed she had lost her voice, yet the doctors thought it would be good for her family to visit and talk to her, so they had come.

The weirdest thing happened when Maylin had woken up one night, seeing a flash of an image, something strange, but couldn’t quite pinpoint it. The image of her great grandmother came to her, clear and true, and so she found herself walking to her grandmother’s room, not sure if it was a waking dream of some sort, sleepwalking, or just reality. She remembered entering the room and standing for a moment.

Then her great grandmother beckoned her over, and so she moved to the side of the bed, and her wrist was snatched in a powerful grip that was hot to the touch, and the way her great grandmother looked at her in that moment, even though her skin was wrinkly and her face aged and worn, it was as if she was a young girl again, her eyes alive with light, glowing, and she spoke a deep and resonant voice that echoed through Maylin’s soul.

She told Maylin she was glad to have finally met her, and that she felt a connection to her and that she was the one, whatever that meant.

She was coherent, telling her about all sorts of things. Her childhood growing up, how raising her rambunctious daughter that wanted to do her own thing was a task in and of itself, and how Maylin looked just like her. And it was weird because her great grandmother was talking to her, yet at the same time all the information just flooded into her mind, fast and slow at the same time. And then she told Maylin that she was one the to inherit the power.

The power? Maylin had wondered in that surreal moment. What in the world was her great granny talking about, and how was she even talking, as the doctor’s said she had not spoken in years because dementia had slowly deteriorated what was once her. They claimed she had reached her end and couldn’t speak things like this, so this had to be a dream, right?

And so she had told her parents what had conspired, and they told her she was foolish. When they had returned to the room, great granny was in her usual catatonic stated, looking like she was sleeping or near her end, the life in her eyes and body and hair and face and skin all withered. So it must have been a dream then… And since she had upset her parents as telling them had not only backfired but lead to punishment, she wouldn’t mention anything about what she had told her in that dream, as it was a dream, right?

She had one other dream, where she was in what she believed to be the house her great grandmother resided in. She walked down the hallway and out onto the deck where great granny was rocking in a chair. She recalled a soft summer breeze blowing about many wind chimes and long grass as her great grandmother rocked away in the chair, humming some melody that Maylin had never heard before.

As Mayin had approached, the rocking slowed but never stopped, and her great granny had spoken again, saying in a pleasant and warm voice as if she had been freed from some burden. “Oh, you’re here, Maylin. I have something for you.”

And then Maylin had looked down at her arm because she felt a weird tingling sensation that was hot to the touch, almost burning as the bright and glowing bangle took shape on her wrist—the same place her great granny had taking a hold of her in the other dream. Odd, all of it odd.

“I’m glad I was able to talk to you one last time,” her great granny had said in that bittersweet voice of passing.

Then Maylin had woken up in bed, looking down at the sight that had to be unreal. The blue bangle was on her arm, the heat subsiding, like a stovetop cooling down after it had been shut off. It felt as if it was searing her, squeezing down, and when she reached to move it, she jerked back because it was so hot, and she thought it would sear her skin, but it eventually cooled down, the glow remaining along with a pulsating resonance that seemed to be in unison with her heart. And yet there was no burn mark, no wound, nothing. Just the bangle and the feeling of heat that resonating against it and around it.

“The power is yours now. Do with it as you will.” The words of great granny spoke in her head with a fading power, and a tone as if relieved of a heavy burden. And then the bangle stopped glowing, and she was able to touch it and remove it. What was weird, and something she hadn’t told anyone, is that whenever she forgot to wear it, and she placed it somewhere, it would suddenly be on her wrist again.

That last dream, and the bangle appearing on her wrist, had happened the day before the passing of her great grandmother. After her great granny had passed, there was a weightiness to the bangle, as if it was part of her, and then it faded, and she wondered what it was all about, what it all meant.

And not long after that, she had begun to experience weird things. Whispers, feelings as if she was being watched and followed, moments that made her question if she was alone or not, and dreams like she had with her great granny, and a feeling of some dark presence watching her, stalking her.