A house.
A little girl.
A woman with yellow hair.
A long black snake curling beneath them.
At the bottom, in uneven child letters, Avery had written:
MOMMY SAYS IT WATCHES WHEN DADDY LIES.
Ortiz covered her mouth.
Delaney looked toward the dark tunnel at the far end of the crawlspace.
Something had passed through the dirt recently.
Something large.
At the hospital, Avery sat upright in bed before dawn, staring at the dark window.
Hannah was still on the phone with her.
A nurse had tried to convince the girl to rest, but Avery kept saying she needed to listen.
“For what?” Hannah asked.
Avery’s eyes never left the glass.
“The scratching.”
Hannah’s blood chilled.
“Avery, are you hearing scratching right now?”
The little girl nodded.
But the sound did not come through the phone.
Not at first.
Then Hannah heard it.
Faint.
Slow.
Scrape.
Pause.
Scrape.
Like nails across the outside of a wall.
Like scales dragging over brick.
Avery whispered, “She found me.”
Hannah stood so quickly her chair rolled backward.
At the same moment, every light in Avery’s hospital room flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then the little girl turned from the window and looked toward the door.
Her face changed.
The fear did not vanish.
But something older moved beneath it.
Something that did not belong to a child.
Avery lifted the phone to her mouth and whispered one final sentence before the line filled with static.
“Mommy says Daddy was never feeding the snake.”
Then the hospital fire alarm began to scream.
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