A few hours before the unexpected movie session in the motorhome, the atmosphere in the Matthews family house was far from welcoming.
Jim stepped through the front door with heavy strides. He carried the antenna with the wire awkwardly wrapped around his forearm, along with the car battery and the radio. He had already returned the truck to the shed.
"We seem to be on the right track," Jim said, dropping the equipment onto the table with a dull thud and wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. "I just need a higher place."
"That's good," Tabitha replied, her voice flat, devoid of any real emotion.
Jim stopped organizing the wires and looked around. "Where's Ethan?"
"He's upstairs," she answered automatically, her mind clearly elsewhere.
Jim wiped his hands on his pants, his intuition setting off a red alert. "Did something happen?"
Tabitha blinked slowly and finally looked up at him. "Do you remember the bracelet I made for you after a few dates? The one I braided using the laces from your dad's old boots."
Jim stared at her, confused by the sudden change of subject. It took his brain two seconds to retrieve the memory. "Of course I remember."
"Do you remember that you lost it at the hospital... the day Julie was born?" Her voice trembled.
"Yes." Jim's response was cautious.
"Look what I found in the diner's storage." Tabitha took her hand out of her pocket and placed the object on the table.
He approached with a frown, picked it up, and examined it closely.
"So you're saying you found a bracelet similar to the one you gave me."
Tabitha slowly shook her head. "No, Jim. This is your bracelet. These are your father's boot laces."
"No, Tabitha, they were just regular laces. Every boot has them," Jim argued, his engineer mind desperately searching for the most logical escape route. "Anyone could have braided this."
Tabitha stood up and walked over to him, took the object from his hand, and held it up at eye level. "Look here." Her trembling finger pointed at an imperfection in the middle of the braid. "I did that. I messed up the knot and was afraid I had ruined everything. But when I gave it to you, you said: accidents..."
"Accidents make things special," Jim finished in a whisper.
"That's right. And why?" she pressed.
"Because then... it becomes a unique bracelet." A violent chill ran down Jim's spine.
He stood still, trying to produce a rational explanation. A repeated pattern, a structural coincidence, something grounded in probability.
But the probability of someone else making the exact same bracelet, with the exact same laces, making the exact same symmetry mistake, and that ending up in this town... was a number he couldn't round to anything other than absolute zero.
"This is impossible."
Tabitha collapsed into the chair, burying her face in her hands as her shoulders trembled in silent sobs.
"Nothing here is possible, Jim," she choked out, her voice muffled by despair. "Nothing makes sense."
Jim pulled his wife into a tight embrace.
"We'll figure something out," he murmured against the top of her head, his eyes fixed on the radio. "We'll figure something out."
---
The afternoon air was starting to cool. Boyd was stepping out of the sheriff's office when Kenny approached.
"Any news?" the sheriff asked.
"Nothing, he still hasn't left his house."
Boyd had informed the young man about Rick's absolutely inexplicable arm recovery and ordered him to keep his eyes open during patrols.
"We'll keep watching," Boyd instructed, running a hand through his graying hair. "A lot of strange things have been happening lately. A fracture healing overnight might just be another one of this place's tricks."
"There's another problem," Kenny hesitated briefly. "People finished reinforcing the windows, but now they're asking again about the woman who broke the glass. They're getting restless. Asking if we have any leads on who it was."
Boyd closed his eyes and let out a sigh. He considered hiding the truth from Kenny a little longer. Lying was easy when it came to keeping the peace.
The cold, calculating image of Daniel crossed his mind.
The young man wasn't the type to follow established scripts. Boyd didn't trust that Daniel would stay quiet about this forever.
He clearly remembered asking the blond not to tell the Matthews family about the true nature of the town, and having that request ignored with irritating ease.
"It was Sara," the sheriff admitted flatly.
Kenny's eyes widened in shock. "Sara? Nathan's sister?"
"Lower your voice," the sheriff snapped sharply, casting a hard glance around to make sure the street was empty. "Yes. It was her."
"Are you sure about that, Sheriff? Sara?" Kenny shook his head, unable to reconcile the image in his mind. "She's helpful, everyone likes her. She doesn't seem like someone who would do something that could hurt anyone."
Boyd called Kenny inside the sheriff's office and then explained everything—what she had done and why. And that now the priest was keeping an eye on her, to make sure she wouldn't hurt anyone else and to find out if she had more useful information.
Kenny stayed silent for a long minute, only able to think about how his mother would react if she found out. She treated Sara like the daughter she never had.
"If Jade finds out, he'll want us to put her in the box immediately," Kenny said.
"That's why the fewer people who know, the better. We can't let that happen," the sheriff finished, his tone final and absolute. "Yes, she's a danger. But if she's a line of communication with whatever controls this place, I'm not throwing away our only lead to the monsters just to appease the crowd."
Kenny swallowed hard, feeling the weight of that complicity settle on his shoulders. He nodded slowly.
---
In the muffled silence of his house, Rick felt the bizarre mark on his forearm heat up again. A sharp sting that made him close his eyes and clench his jaw.
A voice invaded his mind.
It didn't come through his ears. It vibrated directly against the inside of his skull, cold and authoritative, identical to the whisper of the man from his nightmares.
The pain intensified, the skin around it turning a burned reddish tone, forcing Rick to grit his teeth.
"The sheriff is suspicious of you. Time is running out. You must act tomorrow. Priority is the boy, then deal with Daniel."
He walked toward the bedroom, his steps dragging. He crouched near the edge of the bed, shoved a trembling hand under the old, stained mattress, and lifted it without effort.
In the space between the mattress and the wooden frame, there was a bundle. He pulled the package out and unwrapped it. A .38 caliber revolver rested there.
The metal was cold against Rick's sweaty palms. The cylinder spun with a precise, dry metallic click as he checked the chambers. Loaded. Six bullets. He always kept it that way.
There was a rule about guns in the town. Boyd announced it to any newcomer within their first few days: no personal firearms in circulation, everything centralized under his control.
But human paranoia was stronger than any leader's rules. Many people kept secrets beneath their floorboards.
Rick slowly wrapped the revolver again and placed it back in its spot. His face was an empty mask.
"Tomorrow," he murmured.
---
The motorhome's flat-screen displayed the final credits of Shrek, accompanied by the upbeat rhythm of the ending song.
"Thanks for the movie, Daniel!" Ethan jumped off the couch. The boy's smile was genuine. "Can I watch it again another day? Maybe the second one?"
Before Tabitha could scold him, Daniel spoke. "Of course, buddy. The TV isn't going anywhere."
Seeing her son's excitement, Tabitha looked at Daniel with gratitude. After the crisis with the radio and the bracelet earlier that afternoon, they needed that dose of normalcy to keep from completely losing it.
"We should go, we've already taken too much of your time," Jim intervened, his rigid posture returning. He looked at Tabitha, a silent exchange passing between them. "Go ahead. I'll stay a bit longer. I want to talk to Daniel."
"Let's go, Julie," Tabitha said seriously, placing a hand on Ethan's shoulder.
Julie let out a long, audible sigh, fully aware that the moment the motorhome door closed, her interrogation would begin. She shot Daniel a pitiful look, her shoulders slightly slumped.
He raised his soda can in a silent toast, offering a helpless smile that didn't quite hide the glint of amusement in his eyes.
She rolled her eyes, ran a hand through her dark hair, and followed her mother toward the exit. Ethan waved enthusiastically at Daniel and rushed out ahead of them, humming an off-key tune from the movie.
The metal door shut with a click.
The motorhome fell silent.
"Want some coffee, Jim?" Daniel asked, with an irritating calm.
"What's going on between you and my daughter?" Jim went straight to the point, ignoring the offer.
"We talked. Ate. And I introduced her to the cinematic biography of 50 Cent," he replied, expression neutral. "If you're asking about the vibe when you arrived... we're interested in each other. Simple."
Jim watched him for a moment.
"She's eighteen."
"I'm twenty," Daniel shot back immediately. "That's not an age gap that needs explaining."
"It's not the numbers that concern me." Jim ran his fingers through his hair, a restless gesture that revealed his accumulated exhaustion. "It's the context. This place... this town makes people latch on quickly because..."
He hesitated, searching for the right words that wouldn't sound desperate. "Because when you don't know if you'll be alive tomorrow morning, any feeling seems more intense and important than it really is."
"So you're saying what she feels isn't real because we're trapped here?" Daniel raised an eyebrow.
"I'm saying I don't know." Jim held his gaze without flinching. "Do you?"
"I can guarantee you that geography doesn't interfere with my good taste," Daniel replied firmly, dropping the smile. "Being here or on a beach in Florida doesn't change what I'm attracted to. I don't act out of desperation, Jim. I act out of choice."
Jim remained silent for a few seconds, absorbing the impact of that statement.
"She's been through a lot. More than you probably know."
"I know about Thomas," Daniel said casually, but with a respectful tone.
Jim stared at him, surprised. A flicker of something that wasn't anger crossed his eyes.
"She told you."
"This morning," Daniel confirmed, without elaborating further, respecting the privacy of his conversation with Julie.
Jim took a deep breath through his nose, his chest rising and falling slowly. He nodded once.
He hadn't expected his daughter to open up so quickly about the family's deepest wound.
"I'll be keeping an eye on you, Daniel," Jim warned in a low voice, walking toward the exit and placing a hand on the handle. "If you hurt my daughter... the monsters out there will be the least of your problems."
Considering the situation, with that cliché line, Jim was basically signing a reluctant approval document.
Daniel gave a relieved smile and let out a breath he hadn't even realized he was holding. "Don't worry, Jim. Message received."
Jim nodded curtly, opened the heavy door, and stepped down the metal stairs.
[That ended in an incredibly civilized way. What a disappointment. I was really hoping to see a physical fight between the stressed patriarch and the arrogant young man.]
"You just want the worst for me, don't you?" Daniel rolled his eyes, stretching as he heard the joints in his shoulders crack.
[Blatant slander. I merely wish to help test your dodging skills. Pain is an excellent teacher.]
"I'll pretend I believe in your noble educational goals," Daniel muttered. He walked over to the motorhome's control panel and connected the cameras to the TV again.
A notification icon blinked red in the corner of the screen. Three motion alerts in the last hour.
He opened the recordings. All three videos showed the same figure walking through different areas around the Colony House: a tall man, wearing glasses, with somewhat messy dark hair. One of his suspects.
In each recording, the man was crouched down, carefully selecting flowers, trimming the stems with excessive care, and grouping them together. He seemed to be assembling a bouquet.
Daniel paused the last video and zoomed in on the figure's face.
"Got you..."
The smile that formed wasn't friendly at all.
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