Dead sticks cut into the soles of her feet. The air was growing colder as the night grew longer. Enormous plumes of condensation rose from her lips with every breath, and they merged into the fog around her, adding to the heavy screen. Her face felt swollen and damp from crying. But at the same time, she felt like something bad had been drawn out of her, like a toxic growth being carved out of her chest. It wasn’t healing. Not yet. But it was the first step.

She heard the ditch before she reached it. When she’d first crossed it, it had been damp, the soil spongy and ready to give up its offering under pressure. Now, though, it flowed.

Margot stretched her phone above the writhing snake of a brook. Bubbles swelled and burst as eddies formed in the violently red liquid. Drops of color squeezed out of the banks on either side, joining the flow.

The liquid still covered her hands and clothes, drying in smears and damp in other patches. She wasn’t willing to step into the flow a second time. Margot followed the divot until it narrowed, then leapt across the gap. The impact sent spasms of pain raking through her, but she gained her feet almost instantly and continued.

Behind, the river continued to flow, a soft gurgle rising as eddies collided. The imagery hung with her far longer than the sounds.

Like a gash in the ground, cutting through arteries and veins. As though blood runs under every inch of the soil.

Ahead, the house’s silhouette cut a sharp line against the night sky. Margot slowed as she neared it. All of her instructions had said to stay inside, to wait out the night under her own roof.

Why? Is that just what the previous families have done?

She glanced across the hill. Shapes moved in the distance, converging toward her. They were easier to see outside. Easier to run away from, with less risk of being cornered.

The curse is bad right now. The previous families might have only needed to deal with one body at a time, not multiples. And I don’t know the house’s layout. It’s possible that staying outdoors will be safer.

She’d have to keep moving, keep herself ahead of the slow corpses, but that was true inside the house too. Margot checked the time on her phone. Less than an hour to go to dawn. Her body shook from exhaustion, her muscles aching, her knees wanting to buckle, but…she could keep moving, she thought. It was life or death. She’d have to.

Ahead, the house’s front door remained open. Nooses hung from the porch’s beams, and their slow, painful creaks bled through the night air. They really did sound as though bodies were strung up in them. Maybe the ropes remembered their last use, even though they now hung empty.