Madison burst into her bedroom, every nerve ending in her body firing with electric panic. She left the door slightly ajar—just enough to monitor the hallway—and clutched her phone like it was the only rational thing left in a house that had descended into madness.
Without allowing herself time to reconsider, she slipped into the adjoining bathroom, again leaving the door cracked open.
She positioned herself to peek through the narrow opening, her eyes scanning the bedroom for any sign of pursuit. The room remained empty, and no light seeped through the gap beneath the closed door. For now, she was alone.
Her fingers trembled as she dialed, each number feeling like a countdown to salvation or doom. The phone rang three times before connecting.
"Sheriff Jasik speaking. How can I help you?" The voice was weary, carrying the weight of someone who'd heard too many problems and solved too few.
Madison continued her vigilant surveillance of the bedroom while she spoke. "My Mom's performing some kind of, of... crazy ritual." The words sounded absurd even to her own ears—like the plot of a horror movie no one would believe. "Please, send someone to—"
"Madison," Jasik interrupted, his voice hardening with recognition. "You can't keep calling like this."
"If you would send someone, I wouldn't need to." Desperation crept into her voice, turning it shrill. "You have to get me away from these crazy peop—"
"We're not paid by the good people of this county to play counselor."
As Madison peered into the bedroom again, her breath caught in her throat. Light now seeped through the gap beneath the door—someone was in the hallway.
She stepped back from the bathroom door, pressing herself against the cold tile wall. "Please, I'm terrified."
"Are you injured?" Jasik asked, his tone suggesting this was the minimum threshold for his concern.
“What if someone was bitten by a snake?” The words tumbled out before she could consider their strategic value.
"This ain't animal control." His dismissal was immediate.
"No, it was—"
"You need to understand, our time is valuable. Wasting it, that's against the law."
Madison felt a hysterical laugh building in her chest, threatening to burst forth. The absurdity of his response in the face of what she'd witnessed was almost too much to bear. "What I understand is that you won't do anything until it's too late."
"That's how the law works."
She cautiously approached the door and peered through the crack. The hallway light cast twisted shadows that seemed to move with malevolent purpose.
"Look, Madison, you seem like a nice kid, but—"
A giggle escaped her lips before she could stop it—a sound born not of amusement but of pure, distilled anxiety. She scoffed. "The law."
Through the narrow opening, she spotted Faith's silhouette outside her bedroom door, blocking the light from the hallway. The shadow seemed to hang in the air like a physical manifestation of her fears.
Madison dropped the phone from her ear as she recoiled from the sight, retreating further into the bathroom. Her heart hammered against her ribcage with such force she was certain Faith must hear it, even through the door. She snapped the phone back to her ear.
"—eventually, I'll have to report these prank calls. You understand—"
"But, I..." Madison fought to control her breathing, each inhalation a conscious effort. After a moment that stretched into eternity, her mind raced to the bedroom door, and she gathered enough courage to look again.
The light beneath the bedroom door was unobstructed now. Faith had moved on—or was she inside the bedroom, waiting? She cautiously lifted the phone to her ear.
"—that it is illegal and carries a really severe prison sentence."
Madison's voice was barely above a whisper when she replied. "This isn't a prank."
"Prison, Madison!" Jasik's voice had taken on the patronizing tone of an adult speaking to a misbehaving child. "So for the last time, unless you have been assaulted, try talking to your mother instead of contacting us. Parental conflicts are a part of life. Good night, Madison."
"No, please, I..." The words died in her throat as she realized the call had ended. "Hello?"
She stared at the phone's screen—the call duration frozen at 1:47—before letting her arm drop limply to her side. The bathroom suddenly felt smaller, its walls pressing in with claustrophobic intensity. The air hung thick with humidity and hopelessness.
In that moment, Madison understood something fundamental about terror: it wasn't just the presence of danger that unraveled the mind, but the absence of escape. She was trapped in a house where reality itself seemed to bend and warp like a reflection in a carnival mirror. Where snakes bit and faith killed and no one would come when called.
Later—though she couldn't have said how much later—Madison huddled beneath the comforter on her bed. The blanket was pulled up to her chin like a child afraid of monsters, except the monsters in this house didn't hide under beds or in closets. They wore familiar faces and spoke of God's love while venom coursed through veins.
She trembled in silence, the tremors running through her body in rhythmic waves. Against her better judgment, she kept one ear uncovered, listening for footsteps in the hallway or the distant sound of chanting. The night stretched before her like an abyss, and dawn seemed an impossible fiction. Each creak of the old house sent a fresh spike of adrenaline through her system until her body hummed with it, a living tuning fork vibrating at the frequency of fear.
Madison knew sleep wouldn't come, not tonight. Not when closing her eyes meant seeing the snake again, its unblinking gaze fixed on Hope's terrified face before it struck. Not when dreams might carry her back to the bonfire and the circle of worshippers whose faith manifested as something primitive and hungry. Not when waking might mean finding Faith standing over her bed with that same snake twined around her arm.
No, tonight Madison would keep watch alongside her fear. They would be companions in the long vigil until morning, when sunlight might make the horrors of the night seem less real, less possible. But even as she clung to this thin hope, a voice in the back of her mind whispered an unwelcome truth: in this house, darkness didn't end with dawn. It merely changed its shape.
Chapter 13