The screech chased her out of that dreaded cavern. Cora awoke screaming. The osun’s face hovered inches from hers, and all she could do was punch at the air, her knuckles grazing her bedpost. She hyperventilated, sweat drenched through her clothing. She retreated to the back of her bed where the osun’s arms couldn’t reach her.

The nightmare gradually vanished from her sight, but not her mind--it repeated yesterday’s events in sickening clarity, and added more extreme proportions to the mutant’s body so it resembled a spider crawling towards her at incomprehensible speeds.

Those milky eyes seemed to follow her as she lit her lamp and pressed a hand over her chest to feel her heartbeat. It thundered repeatedly, quickening when the door creaked open, the silhouette of a person appearing against the wood paneling of her room.

Her mother looked weary, as she often did whenever she returned late from work, but the low light still managed to highlight the bags underneath her eyes. Yet they shone ferociously, as they did when she’d stopped mourning and instead committed herself to providing the best for Cora.

Her mother rushed over to her, wrapping an arm around Cora’s body and hugging her close. “It’s okay, it’s okay…” Cora struggled to breathe and hold in her tears at the same time. Her mother’s fingers ran through Cora’s hair. “I’m here now.”

Nothing could stop an osun except Mira and Rhodes. Maybe a few others. But that was it. Nobody else could. She still felt protected in her mother’s embrace, despite Cora’s mind flashing to the traces of the nightmare lingering behind.

“I can see it,” Cora whispered, shutting her eyes and focusing on the warmth of her being hugged. “The osun. That mutation. It’s staring at me and I can’t get it to stop.”

She felt her mother’s arms tighten. “It can’t hurt you here. You’re safe now. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

The milky eyes blinked, and Cora found herself looking into her mother’s eyes. She had wanted Cora to quit when she’d heard about what almost happened to her daughter, but Cora argued against it. So much time and work spent getting to this point, and she couldn’t let it go to waste.

Not when her father had been a farmer. Not when she was so close to grasping the deed to her childhood home. Not when she’d be independent and get to make her own decisions. She wouldn’t let go. Never.

But she let go of the osun’s details. They melted into the darkness, waiting until the next night to return and haunt her. “It’s gone now.” With a sudden surge of inner strength, Cora hugged her mother back, burying herself in her mother’s shoulder. “Thank you for being here.”

“I’m just glad you’re okay now,” her mother said. “Today’s a school day. Do you want to go?”

Cora was so close to graduating that she didn’t care if she missed a day. The bruise on her neck was noticeably darker than the surrounding skin, and thankfully the osun hadn’t broken through her skin on her shoulder, but it was equally as bruised. Her muscles ached from the long run yesterday, and… she wanted school to be over with. She wanted to take the Rake and pass before the doubts started surfacing again and perhaps even stop her from taking the exam.

And of course, she didn’t want anybody asking questions about what happened to her.

“No, I’m fine. I’ll rest today.”

She’d have an entire day to herself. That was spectacularly rare. She remembered Anna saying she’d wanted to meet up at the park, but Anna had to go to school. That didn’t matter. Cora could walk around the town or tend to her garden or sleep until school ended.

Sleep was the last thing she wanted, so she opened the blinds and peered through them. Bands of orange streaked across the horizon, although the sun hadn’t risen yet. Good. Cora didn’t want to attempt to sleep again.

“Do you need me to bring you anything? Water? Fruit?”

“I’m fine, thank you. Seriously, thank you.”

They parted, her mother standing back at the doorway, frowning. “Remember, if you need me-”

“I know, I’ll call you or come to you. I feel better now.”

Her mother nodded and left, leaving Cora to herself. She made her bed, fully opened the blinds, pulled back the curtains, changed into casual clothes, and walked into the kitchen, where she began cooking some eggs. Aunt Lorelei never liked it if Cora used too many eggs, but she didn’t care. All that protein had to go somewhere, and Aunt Lorelei didn’t need it as much as Cora.

She cooked a couple more eggs for her mother, scrambled them, and then served them on two plates. She ate silently, knowing Aunt Lorelei left before sunrise to work at a carpenter’s shop, and knowing her mother would’ve climbed back into bed to catch up on some sleep before leaving later to go weave new garments for the town.

Once Cora devoured her plate, she draped a napkin over her mother's breakfast and went into the backyard, grimacing at the crushed stalks of the plants that the soccer ball crashed into two days earlier. She had the right to be angry, but she hadn’t had the right to punish the kids without warning them not to do it again. The guilt gnawed away at her, coupled by the fact she’d promised to get the kid a new ball, yet she didn’t know how, when money was tight and making soccer balls was not a priority for any citizen of Lazarus.

She added that to the list of things to do today. First things first: garden maintenance. She hummed Owens’ song as she worked, coming up with her own lyrics, singing them silently in her head because she sounded awkward whenever she sang out loud. She dug out the basil, as there was no way it’d grow back when nearly all of its stems were broken, and stuffed them in a bag to pick the leaves, wash them, and store them for later use.

One of her thyme plants was starting to grow too big for its pot, so she removed it and planted the thyme where the basil had been before. The thyme plant was much smaller than the basil, leaving a sizable gap between each side of the plant and its neighbors, but that’s what she expected, anyways.

The pea plant had a hole through the middle. There was nothing she could do about that, so she finished checking up on the other plants and watered them, smiling when she was finished. The aroma of fresh earth never failed to put her in a good mood, no matter where she was or how tired.

There were no children outside, whether due to the threatening storm clouds in the distance or because rumors had spread that the local crazy girl destroyed other people’s fun. Her good mood was slightly dampened, but she shrugged it off, knowing that she’d make up for what she did anyways.

Second thing to do: clean up her room. With her busy schedule and tiredness after every school day, she hadn’t had the energy to tidy up her room. A look at her room made her shrivel up, but she wouldn’t be deterred. Cleaning up took up several hours, but by the time she finished, sweat dripping down her forehead, her room was the definition of perfection. Every book she owned was ordered alphabetically; every corner dusted and cleared of cobwebs; she washed her linens and set them out to dry, praying that they’d finish drying before the storm dropped upon Lazarus.

She wished her mother goodbye once she woke up and ate the plate Cora had prepared for her. As her mother exited the doorway, Cora glanced outside the window, frowning at the intermittent bursts of light within the distant clouds, white mountains above actual stone mountains which were likely getting drenched as she watched in dry comfort.

At this rate, she wouldn’t be able to hang out with Anna at the park. Checking her clock, she realized school was an hour away from ending, and Cora had exhausted her list save for the soccer ball, which she didn’t feel like scouring Lazarus for today. She itched to help Owens out with whatever work he needed to get done, but today was supposed to be her day to relax.

Her day to appreciate the fact she was still alive after the encounter with the osun.

She didn’t fear it as much in broad daylight, but a shiver ran through her anyways. Rhodes had said he hadn’t included it in the almanac because their territories belonged to the mountains. If what he said was true--she trusted his word, though--then that meant there was a higher risk of more of those creatures fleeing the unknown disturbance, being driven towards Lazarus.

And he’d mentioned other creatures far worse than the osun. What could possibly be worse than that dreadful creature? The earlier satisfaction she’d felt evaporated in an instant. She didn’t want to think about this. But what else was there to do?

As she paced, she was startled by several knocks on the door. She peered through the eyehole, frowning when she saw it was the other kid’s friend. The one that had watched his friend climb the fence in a futile attempt to save the ball.

There were bags underneath the kid’s eyes, bigger than she’d thought possible. She opened the door so that a sliver of herself was visible to him. “Yes?”

The kid swayed on his feet for a second. Had the other kid called him Roy? She struggled to extract the conversation when images of the osun constantly broke her concentration.

“Alan said you’d get us a new ball. Where is it?” Roy said. He yawned again.

She knitted her eyebrows together. “I don’t have it yet. I was going to go out today and buy one, but I didn’t know where I could find you or your friend-”

“Liar! You popped our ball and never got us another.”

“Listen, I was going to. Just because I haven’t done it yet doesn’t mean I wasn’t going to.”

Roy quieted. He struggled to keep his eyes open, blinking constantly, hands rubbing her eyes more times than she could keep track of. His hair was disheveled, limbs shaking, clothes rumpled. As if he’d had a night of tossing and turning. Just like his friend, Alan.

Were the both of them restless because of a simple ball? She found it difficult to believe, yet both of the kids had pestered her about it. It wasn’t a stretch to think they were losing sleep over losing their prized ball.

“I’m sorry,” he said, staring blank-eyed at a spot behind her. “It’s just--I can’t stop thinking about that. When you popped the ball. I can’t sleep because of it. Someone in the wood’s telling me and Alan that we have to get a new ball or it won’t let us sleep. I’m so tired. Please. Get us a new ball.”

The woods? The only woods were the ones that wrapped around the mountains themselves, a good twenty miles away. Lazarus had trimmed it back as the town grew, and the trips out to the borders was dangerous work. “Tell me about why you can’t sleep.”

He started shivering. “It’s the sound. I can’t sleep. Every time I go to bed, I always hear that sound. Like somebody screaming but it’s smoother. Does that make sense? I don’t know. It comes from the woods every night. Sometimes I hear it during the day, too. And then the voices start. Please.” His small hands gripped her shirt. She was stuck between shoving the kid away and slamming the door shut and letting him feel comforted by her presence. “It won’t stop. It won’t stop until you get us a new ball. That’ll fix it.”

“Do you and Alan live together?”

“He’s my neighbor. He lives three houses down from me. My mom thinks something’s wrong with my brain, but that’s because she doesn’t hear what I hear. Or what Alan hears. His mom doesn’t understand. Nobody does except him and me.”

Now this was interesting. Far beyond it. Cora hadn’t doubted for a second that Roy’s brain must’ve gotten scrambled in some sporting accident he had, but she distinctly remembered how tired Alan was, who had also mentioned a monster in the woods. Their version not of a jerk, but of the source of whatever sound they’re hearing.

And they thought she would fix it by buying them a new ball. It was better than being tortured another hour until she got to meet up with Anna, anyways. “I believe you. I’ll get you a new ball so the voices will go away. You have to show me where to get one, and I’ll buy a ball there. How does that sound?”

Roy released Cora’s shirt and rubbed his eyes again. “It sounds awesome.”

“Let me fetch my money first.”

She ruffled through her room’s drawers until her fingers closed around a thin wad of printed money. It physically hurt her as she pocketed the money. There were only so many printers left, and all of them fell under the Council’s control, so they decided how much money circulated around. It just so happened that Cora didn’t have a lot of it.

She locked the door behind her and flashed a thumbs-up to Roy. He flashed a thumbs-up back and led her down the gravel trail, passed the two wrecks that were actually houses, leading them to a tiny street that fed into the border of the main part of the town. She waved at several familiar faces running the stores or milling around the sidewalks, searching for something new to do, and moved along the edge of town, with Roy alternating his pace.

She kept up with him, annoyed whenever he slowed down, but finally he stopped at a quaint, dilapidated building that stood off separately from a carpenter shop similar to the one Aunt Lorelei worked at. The quaint building had a wooden sign nailed onto the front, handwriting scrawled across the wooden fibers with a thick marker.

Old Sports.

A bell jingled as they entered the tiny clearing in front of the register. Goods lined the racks to their left and right. Sporting equipment decorated the far left, the equipment in various conditions, and to their right recent sports memorabilia cluttered the tiny space. Even a few sports jerseys from before the Great War were framed on the wall. A squinty-eyed old man sat behind the register, polishing his spectacles with a cleaning cloth. He didn’t make any move to acknowledge them until Cora coughed.

“Excuse me?”

The old man placed his spectacles on. They magnified his eyes to a comical degree. “Oh hello, Roy!” Roy gave a half-hearted wave in return. “Yes, miss?”

“Do you happen to have a soccer ball for sale?”

“Why, of course. A wide variety, as fine as you can get here anyways. Follow me.” Surprisingly, Roy stayed quiet as the old man left his desk and led them down to the sporting equipment. A mother not much older than Cora and her little girl were inspecting shirts, but as Cora passed the pair, she noticed something odd.

Bags underneath the little girl’s eyes, yet none beneath her mother’s. She swore she heard the little girl yawn right after, though she didn’t turn to see. Another tired child. So what did it matter? It must’ve been a collective hallucination or a coincidence. An improbable one, but a coincidence nonetheless.

The thought that perhaps, just perhaps, this wasn’t a coincidence, ate away at her while she searched through the soccer balls the old man displayed for them. Roy perked up a little when his eyes landed on a ball bearing intersecting blue and yellow marks. If Cora remembered correctly, that was the exact design the other ball had before she’d punctured it.

“How much does this one cost?” she asked, pointing at the soccer ball.

The old man squinted. “Six dollars should cover it.”

“How about five instead?” Her tone must’ve sounded desperate to some degree, because the old man deliberated for a moment, hand on his chin, before nodding.

“That’s alright. I also have a couple air pumps up for sale if you want to buy one.”

“I have one at home,” Roy chipped in, eyes widening in wonder--was that hope she saw in there?--as he held the ball in both hands.

“Here you go,” Cora said, wincing internally when she handed over the five dollars to the old man. He slipped it into his breast pocket and adjusted his spectacles so she had a better view of his piercing blue eyes.

“Thank you. May I speak with you for a moment? In private.”

That peaked her interest. Cora turned towards Roy. “I’ll meet you in a little bit,” she said, motioning for him to leave. He did, clutching the ball to his chest, bumping into racks as he made his way to the sports memorabilia. She turned back towards the old man. “Okay… what is it?”

“Something’s going on in the town,” he whispered, as if he were afraid somebody else would eavesdrop. “The kids--I thought it was all just a coincidence until I saw Roy. He’s a very good customer of mine, has been since he was seven, and that boy’s always been chipper and hyperactive. Nothing can bring down his energy.”

She tilted her head. “He said he hasn’t been getting any sleep recently. Something about hearing a monster or whatever.”

“Exactly. I visited my granddaughter yesterday and she mentioned the same thing. What are the odds that both of them would have the same experience?”

Cora’s heart began to beat faster. “The girl back there at the front of the store-”

“Yes, Amanda can’t sleep, either. Her mother told me. I’ve also known their family for a while, and I know Amanda. She’s never been like this.”

And then there was Alan, whom Cora remembered being exhausted then. How was he doing now?

“Do you know if the Council’s running an investigation on this?”

The old man laughed. “Far from it. I heard from my neighbor that the doctors think it’s a bug that’s going around. Some type of sickness that’ll go away after a while. I don’t believe it myself because my granddaughter’s symptoms started three days ago. Everybody else I’ve spoken to has said the same thing. Unless something came in from inland or the ocean that we couldn’t predict, but I doubt it.”

“That’s the only thing that makes sense. At least to me,” Cora said, masking the panic simmering beneath her composed expression. First the osun, and now some sickness that’s affecting the young. The future generation of Lazarus.

Owens had to know something about this. He was popular, and well-versed in what went around Lazarus. How come she’d never heard of this earlier?

She twirled her hair around one finger. “I hope this will pass soon.”

“So do I.”

She left the store in a hurry. Roy was juggling the ball on one foot, face twisted into concentration. He dropped the ball when she cast a shadow over him.

“Do you need me to take you home? I need to go somewhere else,” Cora said.

“No, I can walk there by myself. I’m sorry about kicking the ball into your plants. I swear it won’t happen again.”

“Thank you for apologizing. If you do it again, I promise I won’t pop your ball.”

“I won’t, I swear. Now the monster in the woods has to go away. Thank you!”

Roy ran along the edge of the main town and disappeared into an alleyway. Cora huffed, laying out Lazarus in her mind, placing the route she needed to take to Owens’s farm. Once she was ready, she broke out into a light jog, careful to mind the sore spots where she’d hit herself when she fell yesterday.

The last of the buildings fell behind her as she broke through tall grass into a dirt path. Owens’s farm was the third one on the path. She hurried her pace, blood thundering in her ears, her throat constricting as the osun imprinted itself over her vision. She passed the first farm, and soon the second, and by the time she reached Owens’s farm, she could barely breathe.

She let out a shaky breath and doubled over, waiting until the pressure receded. Before she could knock, Owens opened the door, wearing yet another coverall, although this one was stained with dirt.

“Cora?”

She stood. “I’m sorry for showing up unannounced.”

“It’s fine, I don’t mind. Are you okay?”

It felt like everybody was asking her that question. She straightened her posture. “I’m doing alright. Did they tell you about what happened yesterday?”

He bowed his head. “Yes. Orwen told me. I’m so sorry about what happened out there. If I’d known a creature like that existed, I’d have never sent you out there to survey the outskirts. I wasn’t able to sleep after I heard what had happened.” He didn’t look tired, at least not like the children, but she took his word. “How are you feeling right now? Did you come here to talk? I can-”

“I did come here to talk, but not about that. I told you, I’m doing alright. I promise I am. Rhodes told me I could go up to the lighthouse and talk with him about the osun. He told me I can’t feel anything because the osun numbed my emotions about what happened. It’s a strange thing, but I’m doing fine because of it.”

Not completely, she wanted to tell him. She was sure that the nightmare was the beginning of many restless nights to come. The less people knew, the better. She didn’t want anything stopping her from passing the Rake. This was her shot at becoming a farmer, and she wouldn’t let what happened yesterday ruin her chances.

“I’m glad to hear it, I really am,” he said, although he didn’t sound convinced. “I’m also glad to hear Rhodes gave you his name. If you didn’t come here to talk about what happened, then what did you come here for?”

“Do you know what’s going on with the children?”

“Children?” He blinked, surprised.

“They haven’t been able to sleep. A lot of them haven’t. I hadn’t noticed because I was busy doing my own things, but today I found out about it.”

Owens scratched his chin. “I heard about this from Rhodes a couple days ago. Nobody’s told me anything official about it, but Orwen told me that the doctors think it’s an outbreak of some kind of new disease that targets children specifically. It’s a terrible thing to think about. Why are you bringing this up to me? You should ask Rhodes instead.”

“I thought I’d talk to you first.”

Owens leaned against the doorway. “I appreciate that, but I’m not the right person to answer your questions. What I can do is listen, though.”

Cora balled her hands into fists. “I don’t think it’s a disease.”

“Interesting.”

“I spoke to a kid earlier who said he hears screams at night, but they’re not screams. Smoother, he told me, and they only come at night, and a couple times in the day, and that his friend had the same things going on.”

“Mass hallucination maybe? Or a coincidence,” Owens said. “Either way, I don’t see why it’s bothering you too much. Rhodes said the children aren’t showing any symptoms of sickness. It’s simply a matter of being unable to sleep.”

“Because what that kid described wasn’t screaming. It sounded like…” Now she remembered why she was woken up so abruptly. It hadn’t been the osun’s horrifying face. It was that high-pitched shrill squeal. “Like the needle of your record player digging into a record while it spins. But more jagged.”

“How do you know?”

She sighed. “Because I did have a nightmare about the osun, but that wasn’t the reason why I woke up early.” All the tiredness she should’ve felt earlier caved in all at once, draining her limbs of energy, filling her head with muddled thoughts. “I woke up because of that noise. It was horrible. I forgot about it until now. There’s something going on in the town. Whatever this is, I know it’s not some disease.”

Owens left the door and stepped onto his front yard, which was really the entire field. He threaded his hands behind his head, letting out a deep breath, his eyes soaking in the golden fields that would be cultivated soon.

“If not a disease, what then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Whatever it is, I believe you that it’s not normal. Speak to Rhodes. I would on your behalf but I have to tend to the animals today. Please let me know if you learn anything interesting.”

Cora uncurled her hands. “I will.”

After several more minutes of deciding what Cora’s assignments would be in the next couple weeks, seeing that the Rake was fast approaching, she bid Owens goodbye and set off walking back towards the town.

The lighthouse was barely visible from her position. The air had steadily grown murkier as the humidity increased. Yet even as the clouds blocked the sun, casting the land in a gloomy light, she saw something she’d never seen during her entire life.

The lighthouse was powered on. During daylight. When night hadn’t come yet. A powerful beacon of light cut through the haze and roved over the main part of town. The light drifted opposite of her, beyond the borders of the main town, penetrating the area where she’d seen the osun yesterday. Where the abandoned farms were.

There was never any activity from the lighthouse during the day. First the osun, then the shrill screech that kept her and other kids awake, and now this…

She sprinted back towards Lazarus.