Chapter 1
Damien's alarm shrieked at exactly 6:17 a.m., though he was certain he had set it for six. He slammed the snooze button with unnecessary force and muttered a curse that would have made a dockworker blush.
Stepping out of bed, he immediately stubbed his toe on the edge of the dresser. Pain shot up his leg, followed quickly by the realization that his phone hadn't charged at all.
"Perfect," he muttered, bending to retrieve it.
The coffee maker gurgled, sputtering more water than coffee. Toast, golden just a moment ago, had blackened to an almost metallic crisp. The shower had barely warmed him through, leaving his shirt clinging damply to his skin. Even the cat seemed unimpressed, perched on the windowsill and regarding him as though silently mocking his every misstep.
"Don't look at me like that," Damien grumbled. "At least you don't have to pay rent."
The cat blinked once and yawned, thoroughly unconcerned.
Damien grabbed his keys, checked the window, and frowned at the drizzle blanketing the city. Another shitty day in New York City.
The subway was a cacophony of horns, scowling faces, and the occasional scent of stale coffee mixed with wet coats. By the time he squeezed into a train car packed with commuters, he felt like he had already survived a minor apocalypse. He tapped his pen against his notebook, noting all the little human irritations he could exaggerate later for his column: someone's bag swinging into a stranger's knee, an infant screaming at the exact moment the brakes jerked, and a man who clearly had never been told that deodorant works.
When he finally surfaced onto the street, damp and rumpled, his stomach growled loud enough to make a passing stranger glance at him. He sighed and ducked into a narrow diner on the corner, its neon sign buzzing faintly against the drizzle.
Inside, the place smelled of burnt coffee and frying grease. A waitress with hair teased into a helmet shape handed him a menu without looking up. He slid into a cracked vinyl booth, telling himself he had ten minutes to spare.
The other customers were quiet. Too quiet. A couple in the far corner ate their eggs in silence, but their eyes kept flicking to Damien, following his every movement. An old man with liver spots on his hands stirred his coffee without drinking it, gaze fixed directly on him.
Damien shifted in his seat. "What? Do I have jam on my face?" he muttered under his breath.
When he glanced toward the far wall, his stomach clenched. In the shadowed corner, beyond the glow of the fluorescent lights, a figure sat perfectly still. Its face was obscured, its outline blurred as though the air itself didn't want to hold it in focus. He blinked, and for just a second, he swore the figure leaned forward, smiling—wide, too wide.
Damien jerked his eyes back to his coffee. His hand trembled slightly as he lifted the chipped mug.
When the waitress returned, he opened his mouth to ask if she saw it too, but the words died. The corner was empty. The couple had gone. Even the old man was gone.
The diner was silent except for the hiss of the grill.
He tossed a few crumpled bills onto the table, muttering, "Best omelet I never ate," and walked out into the rain, the back of his neck prickling.
By the time he arrived at the office, his shirt bore a coffee stain, the strap of his bag had twisted itself into an impossible knot, and his inbox overflowed with urgent messages. He hadn't even glanced at the first one before a voice barked across the bullpen:
"Cross! My office. Now."
He sighed, shoved his notebook under his arm, and navigated the maze of cubicles. Frank, his editor, stood behind his desk, half-burnt cigar smoldering in the ashtray, papers scattered like the aftermath of a storm.
Damien entered Frank's office. "Sir, I really have to get to—"
"Sit down, Cross," Frank commanded with authority as he stood behind his desk, coffee cup in hand, the other hand tucked into his pocket. "Your little editorial about contaminated shrimp can wait. I have an assignment for you. Coven's Dawn. Ever heard of it?"
Damien shook his head as he sat down.
"I wouldn't have expected you to. Some island off the coast of New York. Carnival town in the twenties—big, flashy, money flowing. Then it collapsed. Fog, abandoned businesses, people disappearing. Forgotten. Now there are whispers about it. Some folks say it's haunted."
Frank slid a manila folder toward him. Damien opened it to find yellowed clippings and grainy black-and-white photos of carnival tents, the broken and skeletal remnants of a Ferris wheel, and, oddly, gravestones. Some newer photographs were blurred, showing claw marks gouged into walls.
"What am I looking at?" Damien asked, unease creeping up his spine.
"Folklore garbage," Frank said, though his jaw twitched. "Rumors of curses. Drinking water went bad, kids got sick, animals died. People claim they hear carnival music at night even though the place has been abandoned for decades. Now there's talk it's alive again. Ferries running. Businesses open. Rumor is people who go there don't come back.."
Frank leaned forward. For a heartbeat, Damien thought the man's eyes weren't eyes at all—narrow, reptilian slits reflecting the overhead light. Damien flinched, stunned at the sight. Then Frank blinked. Normal again. Just bloodshot, human eyes.
"And you want me to go?"
"A human-interest story," Frank said sharply. "Debunk it, entertain, I don't care—just make it readable. Halloween's coming—get readers hooked. You're good at that, kid. The ferry is booked. Get going."
Damien's brain pinged with sarcastic commentary: Oh, sure. Perfect way to spend my weekend.
His gaze lingered on a photo of the fog-choked shoreline. He couldn't explain it, but something about the image felt…alive. Something was waiting.
"Fine," he said, though he added under his breath: What could possibly go wrong?
Back at his apartment, Damien packed a week's worth of clothes and essentials, leather jacket included. He had planned dinner and a movie with his girlfriend, and he made a mental note to call her. He didn't realize how quickly his life would change once he stepped foot on Coven's Dawn.
He picked up his phone, thumb hovering over her contact. A sinking feeling in his stomach warned him this would not go well. He dialed. The line rang twice before a sharp, familiar voice answered.
"Hello?"
"Hey… I… uh…" Damien's words faltered. "I can't make dinner tonight. Something came up at work…really important."
There was a long pause. Then, "Damien, are you serious right now?" Her voice was sharp, cutting through the morning drizzle like a knife.
"I—look, it's not you, it's—"
"No, it's definitely you," she snapped. "How could you do this to me…again?! What am I going to tell my parents? They were expecting dinner with us tonight!"
"I know, I know. I'm sorry. I—"
"You're always sorry! You never—" She cut herself off with a harsh laugh. "You know what, Damien? Forget it. I can't do this anymore. If you can't even prioritize me for a dinner, how can I expect you to handle anything else? We're done."
Damien's stomach lurched. He opened his mouth, trying to think of something clever, something to make her stay, but all he could manage was:
"We can talk about this when I get back. We can—"
"No, Damien! I'm done," she said, voice cold. "I can't deal with someone who chooses work—or whatever it is—over me again. Goodbye, Damien."
The line went dead. Damien stared at his phone as if it had personally betrayed him.
Well, he muttered, tossing it onto the bed, eyes flicking to the ring box on the dresser. That went well.
He exhaled, running a hand through his hair. His cat meowed, eyeing him like it knew exactly what had happened.
"Yeah, laugh it up," Damien said, more to himself than to the feline. "At least you're loyal…sort of."
A sudden unease prickled at the back of his neck as he zipped his bag. The mirror caught movement in the corner of his eye—a flash of something, an eye that vanished before he could focus. Heart hammering, he stumbled into the wall, knocking down a picture frame. His cat hissed, tail puffed like a bottlebrush.
"Yeah," Damien muttered. "You and me both."
"Come on, mack! I ain't got all day!" shouted the cabbie outside, shocking Damien from his spiraling thoughts.
He hurried down, having asked Mrs. Wimple to feed his cat while he was gone. He came outside and saw the familiar yellow cab waiting.
The cab smelled faintly of damp vinyl and cigarette ash. Damien's mind provided commentary: Like a morgue that took up smoking. Perfect. He slid into the back seat, muttering the address. The driver grunted, pulled into traffic, and the city's noise swallowed them both.
For a while, it was ordinary—horns blaring, headlights glinting off wet asphalt, wipers dragging across the windshield. Damien rubbed at his temples, the remnants of a headache throbbing behind his eyes.
Then the driver spoke.
"You're bound for Coven's Dawn, ain't you?"
Damien's pen stilled halfway across his notebook, his eyes slowly raising. "What?"
The driver's voice was deeper now, gravelly, like stones grinding underwater. Damien looked up, and his stomach dropped.
The reflection in the rearview wasn't the man he'd seen when he climbed in. The driver's hair had thinned into patchy strands, his skin pale and puckered, like waterlogged parchment. The ID card on the dash no longer read Marty Alvarez. It was yellowed, curling at the corners, the black-and-white photograph blurred—but the name beneath it was still legible: Christopher Bryce.
"I used to live there, you know," the cabbie said with a longing fondness. "I had a girl…" His head whipped back as if to relish in the memory of a deed most grim. "I can still hear her bones crack…"
Damien blinked hard. When he looked again, the world outside the windows had shifted. The city lights were gone, replaced by fog pressing thick against the glass. Shapes flickered in the mist—ruined carnival tents, a Ferris wheel creaking in silence, gravestones sliding past as though the cab itself rode through some nightmare parade.
His pulse hammered in his throat. He clawed at the door handle. Locked.
The driver's reflection grinned wide enough to tear his face in two. His teeth were too sharp, too many. "You can try to run," he said, his voice carrying an echo, hollow and cavernous, "but you're already hers."
Damien's breath came shallow, panicked. "Whose?" he whispered.
Then a sudden buzzing sliced through the cab, sharp and insistent. Damien's pocket vibrated—his phone. Heart hammering, he pulled it out. The screen flickered violently, icons twisting and reshaping themselves, messages unreadable yet urgent, the ringtone warping around him, echoing as though it came from every corner of the cab at once.
He tapped frantically to silence it. Numbers shifted, call logs rearranged themselves, some familiar, some impossible. He shakily brought it to his ear, a faint whisper seemed to emanate from the phone itself: "You're already hers…"
The world outside the windows seemed to tilt. Damien's pulse quickened. The driver's voice, deep and gravelly, cut through the hum of rain: "No reception where you're going."
The cab lurched violently. The fog thickened until Damien couldn't see his own reflection in the window. Only the driver's voice remained, close now, as if whispering from right beside him.
A deep, purplish groove circled the driver's throat, climbing upward toward his jaw in a cruel diagonal. The skin looked shriveled and puckered, like dried leather, and in places it had split into tiny fissures that wept a dark, tar-like sheen.
Damien blinked, gripping the seat in front of him. For an instant he thought he saw the wound move, tightening with each breath the cabbie took. A faint sound whispered through the cab, so soft he almost convinced himself it was the suspension—creak… creak…—like a rope swinging under strain.
When the driver's eyes flicked to him in the mirror, Damien's throat went dry. The grin was bad enough. But that groove—black, sunken, and impossibly deep—was worse. A mark that said this man had no right to be alive.
"Coven's Dawn welcomes you, Damien Cross."
The words slithered into him like a curse, leaving his skin cold and damp.
The cab screeched to a halt so suddenly that Damien nearly hit the divider. The door lock clicked open by itself.
"End of the line," the driver rasped.
Damien blinked. The city was gone. There were no traffic lights, no neon signs, no hum of late-night life. Just the skeletal outline of a dock stretching into a gray void. The air reeked of salt and rust, damp enough to sink into his bones.
Damien snapped his head around—the door was open. He was at the ferry dock. Rain pattered steadily on the asphalt.
He scrambled out, slamming the cab door behind him. When he turned to look, the taillights were already swallowed by fog, retreating into nothingness. It was as if the cab had never existed at all.
The dock stretched ahead, wooden planks warped and swollen from years of neglect, slick with algae and rain. At the very edge, a ferry rocked against its ropes, the faded name Coven's Dawn barely visible through peeling paint.
The fog rolled heavy across the water, swallowing sound. No voices, no gulls, no engines—only the soft lap of waves against pylons. Yet as Damien stepped closer, he thought he heard something else beneath it—a faint melody, high and thin, like calliope music drifting across the water.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood straight.
He scanned the dock—no ferryman, no crew. Just the ferry itself, waiting.
Damien swallowed hard. His editor's folder felt suddenly heavy under his arm, as though the weight of it had dragged him here.
He muttered to himself, "It's just a job. That's all. Just a story."
But when his eyes caught on a weather-beaten sign nailed to a piling—letters barely legible under the moss—his breath caught.
WELCOME TO COVEN'S DAWN
The paint had long since flaked away, but the words remained. And as Damien stared, for just an instant, he swore he saw the letters bleeding fresh crimson, dripping down the wood into the sea.
Then it was gone, leaving only the fog and the waiting ferry.
For a long moment, Damien just stood there, shaking, trying to convince himself it had been a stress-induced daydream. But in his palm, clenched tight and damp, was a single yellowed carnival ticket.
The ink, smudged but still visible, read:
Admit One.