Chapter One: New Beginning
(Early morning) The moving company's truck just left after placing all the boxes stacked outside the front door. The floors gleamed as if they had never been walked on. It was a new start for the whole family, moving to a new city, a new house, and a new neighbourhood.
Anna sat firmly on the floor, arms folded, eyes wandering, completely lost in silence. Polished tiles, high ceilings, and large windows, everything she had dreamt of. Yet there was somehow a sense of hollowness that pressed against her chest.
Her husband Jake's voice echoed from upstairs, giving instructions to the remaining movers for the kids' rooms. Her children's laughter filled the house, but it did little to fill the void in her heart.
Her eighteen-year-old son Ethan, sat on the recently bought sofa, already lost in his tablet. Chloe, their twenty-year-old daughter, was still looking for a Wi-Fi connection and complaining about how small her room was.
And Anna? She was still trying to convince herself that this was the house that she had always dreamed of and finally felt like a home.
She ran her hand over the marble countertop in the kitchen. Cold. Perfect. Lifeless. Just like the past few years.
"Don't you love it?" Jake called, walking down the stairs with a grin on his face. The same old face a corporate employee would hold in any precious moment.
"It's beautiful," she replied, forcing a smile.
They shared a passionate kiss before Jake reached down to his buzzing phone, the same old guy in his mid-thirties, married to his work. Another call, another meeting, and another moment gone forever.
Anna turned back toward the living room window. Outside, the neighborhood was quiet. A row of identical houses. Beautifully trimmed porch. She watched a man in his early forties jogging across the street. He glanced back at her directly with a lingering, hungry look that made her flinch and step back.
It was going to be a long summer.
(Later that evening)
Anna set the dining table with much effort, preparing everyone's favorite dishes. Jake had promised Anna that he would be back for dinner at the new home.
He didn't.
"Still stuck at the meeting," his message said. "Don't wait up."
Chloe rolled her eyes. Ethan didn't even look up from his screen. Anna served them quietly, masking her disappointment with a gentle smile.
The table was fairly silent, with Chloe nagging Anna about how the neighborhood had nothing to offer, while Ethan barely spoke.
After dinner, Anna did the dishes alone, one plate at a time, saddened by the absence of her husband. After she was done, she poured herself a glass of her favorite wine and turned off the lights downstairs.
(Night)
In the bedroom, the sheets were fresh. The room smelled of new paint and furniture polish. Anna waited for some time for her husband to return, but he was nowhere to be found. She laid down on the bed while Jake's side of the bed remained untouched.
Anna stared blankly at the ceiling, her fingers drifting lazily across her bare stomach, tracing soft circles just below her ribs. The silence wrapped around her like a second skin, and her thoughts drifted, not to Jake, not to the kids, not even to the new house, but to herself.
She reached into the drawer for the small bottle of oil she hadn't used in a long time.
Late at night, silence emerged in the whole house except for her breath and the occasional creak of the floor settling beneath the weight of the new beginning.
Somewhere in the complete darkness of the hallway, a figure stood still, just barely visible, watching silently from the narrow gap of the bedroom door.
From the darkness, someone watched. Still, silent, almost unreal.
Anna never noticed.
The slow movement beneath her sheets matched the rhythm of his breath, shallow and uncertain. He didn't move. He didn't blink. He just stood there, hidden in the shadows, like the darkness itself was watching.
The door remained half-open.
And the night had only just begun.