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The words come with absolute certainty.

"We take the fight to it."

Outside, somewhere deep in the woods beyond the Halloween lights and the festival music, something answers with a low, distant howl. It isn't a wolf. And it knows we are coming.

21

CARYS

OCTOBER 25 ~ 6 DAYS UNTIL HALLOWEEN

People think investigations end with answers. They don't. They end with decisions.

By sunrise, every flat surface in my cottage has disappeared beneath evidence. Printouts.

Handwritten notes. Property maps. Photographs. Missing persons reports. Thermal images from Rhett's equipment. Security stills corrupted by static.

Strings of colored thread stretch between pushpins on a foam board I'd borrowed from Everly's shop years ago for a community fundraiser. It feels strangely appropriate now, like the kind of conspiracy board tourists would laugh at in one of Sleepy Hollow's haunted museums.

Only this one is real.

Outside, October sunlight struggles through thick clouds. Main Street is already alive with preparations for another festival day. Volunteers hang fresh orange banners from antique lampposts while workers unload enormous carved pumpkins for this weekend's Halloween market.

Life goes on. Even when monsters are only a few miles away.

Rhett walks into the dining room carrying three mugs of coffee. He stops. His eyebrows rise.

"...You've been busy."

"I haven't slept."

"I noticed."

He sets a mug beside me. Sayer appears a moment later. His gaze sweeps across the room.

"Whoa."

"That's about right," Rhett says.

The three walls surrounding the dining table have become a timeline. Every disappearance. Every corrupted file. Every environmental anomaly. Every unexplained emergency response. Every location where the entity appeared.

At the center…

One circle. Drawn in thick black marker. The Hollow. Not just the woods. A specific depression hidden within them.

A place old survey maps simply labeled Hollow Ground before later editions quietly removed the designation altogether.

I point at it.

"This is where we're going."

Neither of them interrupts. I appreciate that.

"The attacks looked random at first."

I gesture toward the maps.

"They aren't."