Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 119746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 599(@200wpm)___ 479(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
May 3, 2022 (I think. Days blur together now)
We’ve found caves. Jensen warned us not to go in too deep, but I know what I’m looking for is farther in. Adam has been acting strange since we arrived in the mountains—watching me constantly, but also seeming drawn to the caves himself. Sometimes I catch him staring into the darkness with a hunger I recognize from my own reflection.
Something is happening to me. To both of us. I can feel myself changing. The cold that starts in my bones and spreads outward. The heightened senses. The dreams more vivid than ever.
The hunger growing stronger every day.
One day I fear it might be real.
My hands shake as I turn to the final entry, dated three years ago—the last words my sister ever wrote.
May 5, 2022
Adam bit me the other day. He did it out of anger but I could tell it wasn’t him. Maybe it’s never been him. Maybe it was always something else. Someone else. I miss the man I knew.
I can feel myself changing. I’m so cold. The hunger is everything now. Adam is changing too, but differently. He’s enjoying it in the ways that I’m not.
We found others in the deeper caves. Others like us—or what we’re becoming. They recognized something in our blood. In my blood. They showed me things, taught me things. The history that doesn’t exist in books but the history I knew all along.
I hope you find these, Aubrey. I’m sorry I never told you the truth about our family, about the McAlisters, about Josephine. I thought I was protecting you. Maybe I was just afraid you’d think I was just like Mom. But whatever haunted her is what haunted me and what haunts us all. You’ll never escape it if you don’t face it.
Head on.
Bite it.
I love you, sister. I always have. Please forgive me for what I’ve become.
And if you see what used to be me—run. Don’t hesitate. Don’t look back. Just run.
I’m so hungry.
The journal ends there, the final page tear-stained, the handwriting increasingly erratic as if written by someone barely maintaining control.
I clutch the small book to my chest, tears streaming down my face. After three years of searching, of hoping, of fearing—here is the truth. My sister didn’t die. Something worse happened.
She transformed. Became one of the hungry ones.
And Adam…Adam didn’t just transform, he embraced it. Enjoyed it. Became the leader we’d seen directing the others.
In the end, Adam won.
And Lainey lost.
She’s still not free of him.
“I’m so sorry, Aubrey,” Jensen says quietly, his hand a warm weight on my shoulder.
“She knew,” I manage through tears, my throat thick. “She knew what was happening to her. She was still Lainey enough at the end to leave this for me to find.”
“She was trying to warn you,” Jensen says. “To protect you, even then.”
Even now, I think. What if she really had sent little Nathaniel?
I wipe away tears with the back of my hand, struggling to keep myself together. “Because of my connection to Josephine,” I say, the pieces finally fitting together. “Because I’m family.”
A sound echoes from deeper in the cave system—not a drip of water, not the settling of stone, but something else.
Something alive.
Moving through the darkness toward us.
“We need to keep going,” Jensen says urgently. He takes the documents and journal and puts it in inside my coat pockets. “There’s another way out,” Jensen says, grabbing my hand. “Through the back chamber. It’s our only chance.”
We move quickly toward a narrow opening in the far wall, the flashlight beam bouncing crazily across the stone. Behind us, soft footfalls echo on the cave floor—the hungry ones entering the chamber we’ve just left.
As we slip into the smaller passage, a voice calls out—not the inhuman snarls or growls I’ve come to associate with the hungry ones, but an actual voice. Distorted, yes, but recognizable. Familiar in the most horrifying way possible.
“Aubrey.” A woman’s voice, cracked and strained as if seldom used.
Lainey.
It can’t be. Not after all this time. Not after her own words confirming her transformation. I know Nate had said she was still alive, one of them, and yet—
I hesitate, half-turning despite Jensen’s urgent pulling on my arm.
“Don’t,” he hisses. “It’s a trap. Whatever’s using her voice, it’s not Lainey anymore. She told you herself.”
He’s right. I know he’s right. But the pull of that voice—my sister’s voice—is almost stronger than my will to survive.
She’s the whole reason I’m here at all.
She’s been my whole purpose.
What happens when that’s gone?
“Aubrey, please,” Jensen pleads, his grip on my hand tightening. “She warned you. She just warned you. Don’t look back. Just run.”
Lainey’s final written words echo in my mind, breaking the spell of her voice calling from the darkness. With a shuddering breath, I turn away from the sound, following Jensen deeper into the cave system, away from what remains of my sister.