Chapter 4 The Confession (Evelyn's POV)

I was still staring at the bloody mirror when Daniel Ward kicked down my front door.

The sound of splintering wood echoed through the house like a gunshot. I spun around, my bare feet sliding on the hardwood floor, still wearing yesterday's funeral dress that now clung to me with cold sweat. Dawn light filtered through the curtains, painting everything in shades of gray and amber.

Heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs, and then Daniel appeared in my bedroom doorway, his service weapon drawn. His gray eyes swept the room, taking in my disheveled state, the overturned chair, the mirror with its fresh bloody message.

"You didn't show up for questioning," he said, holstering his gun but keeping his hand near it. "Thought I might find you dead."

"Not yet," I whispered, my voice hoarse from screaming myself awake.

His gaze locked onto the mirror, and I watched his expression shift from concern to suspicion. He approached it slowly, pulling out his phone to take pictures. The flash made the blood glisten obscenely.

"When did you write this?"

The question hit me like a slap. "I didn't write it."

"No?" He turned to face me, and his stare was calculating, cold. "So someone broke into your house, climbed to the second floor, wrote a message in blood on your mirror, and left without waking you?"

"Yes."

"Using whose blood, Evelyn?"

I looked down at my hands, checking for cuts, for any sign that I might have done this in some nightmare fugue state. My palms were clean, unmarked. "I don't know."

Daniel pulled out a small kit from his jacket pocket; evidence collection supplies. He scraped a sample of the blood into a vial, sealed it, labeled it.

"You were supposed to save me," he said aloud. "Your mother's last words to you?"

My throat closed up. "How did you..."

"I read the police report from twenty years ago. Interesting reading." He capped the vial and slipped it into his pocket. "According to the report, you found her body. But you waited three hours before calling for help."

The room seemed to spin around me. I gripped the edge of my dresser to stay upright, my knuckles white against the dark wood. "You don't understand."

"Then help me understand." Daniel moved closer, close enough that I could smell his aftershave, see the flecks of gold in his gray eyes. "Why did you wait, Evelyn? Why didn't you cut her down?"

The question I'd been running from for twenty years. The question that haunted every nightmare, every quiet moment, every time I looked in a mirror and saw my mother's eyes staring back.

"Because I was a coward," I whispered.

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only answer I have." Tears burned behind my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. Not in front of him. Not in front of anyone.

Daniel studied my face with that same clinical detachment he'd shown at the crime scene. "You're lying."

"I'm not..."

"You're lying about something. The question is what." He began pacing the small bedroom, his movements restless, predatory. "Maybe you didn't write that message. Maybe someone else did. But you know who, don't you?"

"No."

"You know why they want you to remember your mother's death."

"No."

"You know what really happened in that barn twenty years ago."

"Stop." The word came out broken, desperate.

But Daniel didn't stop. He never stopped. "Tell me about the three hours, Evelyn. Tell me what you did between finding her body and calling the police."

I closed my eyes, but that only made it worse. Behind my lids, I could see it all again; the barn, the rope, my mother's face purple and swollen, her feet dancing inches above the hay-covered floor.

"I ran," I said finally.

"Where?"

"Away. Into the woods. I ran and I hid and I pretended it wasn't real." The words came faster now, tumbling out like blood from a wound. "I was nine years old, and I found my mother hanging from a beam in our barn, and instead of cutting her down, instead of trying to save her, I ran."

Daniel stopped pacing. "Why?"

"Because I was nine." The confession felt like swallowing glass. "Because she'd been acting strange for weeks, talking to people who weren't there, writing symbols on the walls. Because the night before, she'd looked at me with these wild eyes and said, 'The Hollow wants you next, baby girl. But I won't let it have you.'"

"The Hollow?"

I laughed, but there was no humor in it. "That's what she called it. The thing that lived in the woods. The thing that whispered to her at night, that made her do... things."

"What kind of things?"

"Sick things. Cruel things." I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly freezing despite the morning warmth. "She stopped eating. Stopped sleeping. Started cutting herself with kitchen knives, said she was letting the darkness out. My father tried to get her help, but she refused. Said the doctors couldn't fix what was broken in her blood."

Daniel had gone very still. "In her blood?"

"The Cross family curse. That's what she called it. Said every generation, one of us had to pay the price. Keep the town safe from what lived in the Hollow." I met his eyes. "She said it was supposed to be her, but then she had me, and everything changed."

"How?"

"Because the curse was supposed to pass to the eldest daughter. Me." The words tasted like ashes. "But she couldn't bear the thought of me suffering the way she had. So she decided to end it. End herself, end the line, end the curse."

Daniel was quiet for a long moment, processing. When he spoke again, his voice was gentler but still edged with suspicion. "So you found her in the barn."

"Hanging from the central beam. There was a chair kicked over beneath her, and a note." I closed my eyes, remembering. "It said, 'I love you enough to set you free. Run, baby girl. Run and never come back.'"

"And you did."

"Not right away. First, I stood there staring at her for what felt like hours. I kept thinking she might still be alive, that maybe I could save her if I acted fast enough. But her face was... and her eyes were..." I shuddered. "I knew she was gone."

"But you didn't call for help."

"No. I read the note, and I panicked. Because I realized that if my mother was right, if the curse was real, then her death wouldn't end anything. It would just transfer the burden to me." I looked at Daniel, willing him to understand. "So I ran into the woods and hid by the old creek until I could think straight. Until I could figure out what to do."

"And what did you figure out?"

"That she was crazy. That there was no curse, no monster in the woods, no supernatural burden passed down through generations. That my mother had killed herself because she was mentally ill, and I was free to leave this place and never look back." My voice broke on the last word. "So I came home, called the police, played the grieving daughter. And three weeks later, I left and never came back."

Daniel studied me for a long moment, his expression unreadable. "Until now."

"Until now."

"And the day you return, people start dying."