The eyes shone, narrow points of light in a void of darkness, then blinked out. The path to the door was clear again. Margot’s breath choked in her lungs as she moved forward, tripping over unseen debris on the shed’s floor. As she stepped outside, she heard the rusty, whining metal noise break into a shriek: “Ez-ra.”

Louisa had died weeping for her slain husband. She must have entered the shed knowing she wouldn’t be coming out again. Ephraim had been close behind her, pursuing her, still carrying the axe that dripped red with her husband’s blood.

Margot clutched the shovel against her chest, one thumb pressed across the bottle of holy water’s open top, phone clutched in her cast hand’s clumsy fingers, as she ran from the shed. She only slowed when the wailing metal had fallen out of her hearing range, then doubled over, breathing heavily.

Think it through. Ephraim was working with his sons. They would have helped him move the bodies out of the house. But he wouldn’t have wanted to carry them too far. There must be an entrance to the tunnels somewhere close by.

Her phone’s light couldn’t reach far. She covered it, blotting the light out, as she let her eyes adjust to the moonlight.

A thicker bank of trees grew around the house’s back. As Margot scanned them, she glimpsed something that didn’t mesh with the trunks. It was too far away to be certain, but she thought it might be a post. A marker. She set out toward it.

Even at that point, she felt doubt. The curse would reach its pinnacle that night. If she could just survive—hide well enough, outmaneuver the dead ones, just as she had the night before—she would be granted relative peace afterward. It wouldn’t grow that bad again for at least fifty years, by which time she might already be gone from natural causes.

But that was exactly what every other generation of Hull had done. Accepted the curse as the price to pay for wealth. Endured it. Passed the home and the business down to the next in line.

She couldn’t—wouldn’t—live like that.

She wasn’t sure she would even have the option to.

Death had nipped at her heels the past two nights. She felt its touch across her body: in the sprained ankle, in the gash across her shoulder, in her broken arm. She’d pushed her luck and her strength as far as they could go and had run out of both. This wasn’t just a chance to right past wrongs—it was her final chance to escape the fate that had been scripted for her.

Kant believed a person had the power to change their legacy. Put good into the world to outweigh evil. She hoped he was right.