Chapter 1 The Deer at Dawn

The rain hadn't stopped for three hours. It hammered the roof of my mother's sedan like impatient knuckles, drumming a rhythm that matched the thud behind my ribs. I pressed my forehead to the cold glass and watched the world blur past—stripped maples, sagging mailboxes, a gas station with a single flickering light.

The sign appeared without warning.

WELCOME TO ECHO RIDGE

POP. 312

I counted backward. Three hundred and twelve. That's thirteen fewer than the last time I was here.

I didn't remember being here.

I'd been five when we left. Five, with pigtails and a stuffed rabbit named Waffles who'd long since been consigned to a landfill. My mother said we'd moved because my father got a better job in the city. My mother said I'd never ask about Echo Ridge, because I'd never cared.

My mother lied.

I'd asked. Twice. Both times, she'd gone pale and changed the subject. The second time, she'd dropped a glass and cut her palm. I'd stopped asking after that, because I was eleven and I knew when to shut up.

But now we were back.

"Why?" I asked, breaking the silence for the first time in sixty miles.

My mother's knuckles were white on the steering wheel. Morwen Thorne had the hands of a concert pianist—long, elegant, perpetually tensed. She'd never played a note in her life, but she looked like she was always bracing for a key to strike.

"The house was cheap," she said. "I told you."

"You told me you'd rather chew glass than come back here."

She flinched. It was subtle—a twitch in her jaw, a tightening around her eyes—but I caught it. I'd spent seventeen years catching her tells.

"Things change, Sable."

"Right." I turned back to the window. "Things change. People lie. Water is wet."

"Don't be cruel."

"I'm not cruel. I'm observant. There's a difference."

She didn't respond. She never did when I was right.

Echo Ridge unfolded like a wound. The main street was a single stretch of cracked asphalt lined with boarded-up storefronts. A diner with a neon sign that flickered "OPEN" in a broken loop. A laundromat with a single machine. A church with a steeple that leaned slightly to the left, as if it, too, was exhausted.

The town didn't look abandoned. It looked forgotten—like a photograph left in the rain, the edges curling, the colors bleeding into grey.

My mother pulled into a gravel driveway. The house was a two-story Victorian with peeling white paint and a porch swing that swayed gently in the wind, despite the absence of wind.

"Home sweet home," I muttered.

"Don't start."

I got out of the car. The air smelled of wet earth and something else—something metallic, like old coins. I stepped onto the porch and immediately stepped on a loose board. It creaked beneath my weight.

Something about that creak hit me in the chest.

I knew that sound.

I blinked. The memory flickered—a flash of pigtails, a rabbit's floppy ear, a woman's voice singing off-key. "Larkin, Larkin, don't you cry—"

"Coming?" My mother's voice broke the spell.

I shook my head and followed her inside.

---

The house was smaller than I remembered. Or maybe I'd just been smaller. The ceilings were low, the windows narrow, the walls a faded yellow that might have been cheerful once. Now it looked like the color of old teeth.

My room was at the end of the hall. The door was painted a chipped, pale green, and it stuck when I pushed it open. Inside: a twin bed with a floral quilt, a desk with a dead lamp, and a dollhouse that I didn't remember owning.

I hated dollhouses. They reminded me of mausoleums.

I dropped my duffel on the floor and sat on the bed. The mattress sighed beneath me. The window faced the backyard, where the grass had grown wild and tangled, and beyond that—the woods.

And at the treeline, something moved.

I froze.

A shape. White. Tall. Antlers like skeletal branches.

A deer.

A white deer.

It stood perfectly still, head turned toward my window, eyes black and unblinking. I'd never seen a white deer before. I didn't think they existed in this part of the country.

I blinked.

It was gone.

I pressed my nose to the glass. Nothing. Just trees and shadows and the rain sliding down the pane.

Imagination. Stress. Long car ride.

I pulled the curtains closed and turned away.

That's when I noticed the floorboard.

It was just to the left of the bed, slightly raised, the nails loose. A square cut into the wood, almost invisible if you weren't looking.

I didn't know why I knelt. I didn't know why my heart started to pound. I just reached down, hooked my fingers under the edge, and lifted.

The diary was leather-bound, stained dark from moisture and age. The edges were frayed. The pages felt swollen, thick with humidity and secrets.

I opened it to the last entry.

The handwriting was frantic—looping, slanted, the letters pressing hard enough into the page to tear the paper.

She doesn't know she's the reason. Don't let her come back. Sable—run.

I stared at my name.

My real name, written in ink that had dried before I could even read.

I flipped back a few pages. The entries were dated thirteen years ago. The author's name was written on the inside cover.

Larkin Crowe.

A girl I'd never met. A girl who'd written my name. A girl who'd hidden her words under the floorboard of my room.

I whispered, aloud, to no one: "Who are you?"

The diary grew warm in my hands.

I dropped it with a yelp. It landed open on the quilt, pages splayed, and I watched—actually watched—as the ink shimmered, faded, and reappeared with new words.

I was your friend. I saved you. Now save yourself.

I backed away. My spine hit the wall. I pressed my hand to my mouth and forced myself to breathe.

It's fake. It's a prank. My mother set this up to—

A sound.

Creak.

The floorboard.

The same one I'd lifted.

I whirled around.

The white deer was standing in my bedroom doorway. Its hooves were silent. Its head was cocked. Its eyes—black, bottomless, ancient—fixed on me with something that looked terrifyingly like recognition.

It blinked.

I blinked.

And then it vanished—not into the hall, but into the mirror above my desk. One moment it was there, a creature of bone and light; the next, it was a reflection I could see behind me, standing in the glass, watching me from a world I couldn't touch.

I turned.

Nothing.

I turned back to the mirror.

The deer was gone.

But the diary was still warm.

And on the last page, fresh ink was bleeding through—words I hadn't written, words that shouldn't ex

ist:

Tick tock, Thorne girl. The root remembers you.

I slammed the diary shut, and for the first time in thirteen years, I heard my mother scream downstairs.