What Gathers at Dusk

Darkness takes root. Hunger grows. The old things wake. My sister, missing for eight years, finally came home. My mother’s last text message says: IT’S NOT HER. Something is mimicking our voices from the deep woods, and the sound is getting closer. I’m a long-haul trucker. The thing I saw in the fields has followed. Now it’s tapping on the window. My best friend vanished in an old bunker when we were kids. Today, I’m going back in. These tales and others prove that when the light fails, it’s not just the dark that comes out. It's everything that was waiting within it.