Charley picked up his phone. It was fully charged now. 6:02 AM. He scrolled to a contact he’d never thought he’d use again.
Charley jolted awake not from a dream, but from the absence of sound. The Vegas suburbs were never this quiet. No sprinklers. No distant freeway hum. Even the refrigerator’s groan had died. He reached for his phone: 3:33 AM. Dead battery.
“No,” he said.
“Charles Brewster,” she said. Her voice was the scrape of a coffin lid. “You killed my fledgling. My son .”
“Jerry was an artist of appetite,” she continued, rising. She wore no shoes. Her feet left wet prints on the marble. “I am an artist of consequence . You will not die tonight, Charles. You will watch. For one year, you will watch everyone you save fall, one by one. And on the last night, you will thank me for it.” fright night -2011-
Charley slid out of bed and grabbed the baseball bat—the one with the nail through the barrel, Peter Vincent’s idea. The one he’d laughed at. He didn’t laugh now.
Beside him, Amy’s side of the bed was cold. She’d moved back to her parents’ house last week. “You’re not you anymore, Charley,” she’d said. “You’re just waiting for another monster.” Charley picked up his phone
When the sun rose over North Gate Terrace, there was no scorch mark. No collapsed wall. Just his living room, undisturbed, and a single drop of black oil on his coffee table.