It started on a Tuesday in November, the kind of Tuesday that feels like every other day in suburban Ohio. The sky was a bruised shade of purple by 5:00 PM, the air smelled like wet leaves and woodsmoke, and Sarah was running twenty minutes late getting dinner on the table.
Her son, Noah, was eight years old. He was the kind of kid who was usually easy—the type who did his homework without being asked and spent hours building intricate Lego fortresses in the corner of the living room. He wasn’t jumpy. He wasn’t the kid who cried when he scraped his knee on the playground; he was the kid who brushed the dirt off and kept running.
That’s why, when he first asked for the light, Sarah didn’t think twice about it.
“Mom?” he called out from his bedroom.
Sarah paused in the hallway, a basket of clean laundry propped against her hip. “Yeah, bud? Everything okay?”
“Can you leave the hall light on?”
Sarah smiled, shifting the weight of the basket. “The hall light? You usually like it pitch black, Noah. You said the light hurts your eyes, remember?”
“I know,” Noah said. His voice was small, muffled slightly by his duvet. “But just for tonight? Until I fall asleep?”
“Sure, honey. No problem.”
Sarah flicked the switch. The hallway flooded with a warm, soft yellow glow. She pushed his door open a crack, peeking in. Noah was curled on his side, his back to the door, pulling the blanket up to his ear.
“Goodnight, Noah.”
“Night, Mom.”
It seemed harmless. A phase. Maybe he’d watched a scary movie trailer on YouTube during recess, or maybe the kids at school had been telling ghost stories. Sarah went to her own room, folded the laundry, and forgot about it.
By the next week, the request had evolved.
It was no longer just the hallway light.
Sarah walked into Noah’s room on a Thursday night to tuck him in, only to find the bedside lamp on the highest setting. It was an industrial-style lamp she’d bought at Target, and with a sixty-watt bulb, it cast a harsh, interrogation-room glare across his navy blue bedspread.
“Whoa,” Sarah said, shielding her eyes playfully. “It’s bright in here, bud. Let’s turn this down.”
She reached for the switch.
“No!”
The word cracked through the room like a whip. Sarah froze, her hand hovering over the lamp. Noah sat bolt upright in bed, his eyes wide, his chest heaving. It wasn’t a tantrum. It was panic. Pure, unadulterated adrenaline.
“Noah?” Sarah lowered her hand slowly. “Hey, it’s okay. I was just going to dim it.”
“Don’t turn it off,” Noah breathed, his voice trembling. “Please. Please, Mom. Don’t turn it off.”
Sarah sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping under her weight. She brushed a strand of sandy-blond hair off his forehead. He was sweating. “Okay. I won’t turn it off. I promise. But talk to me. Did something happen? Did you have a nightmare?”
Noah shook his head rapidly. He looked around the room, his eyes darting to the corners where the shadows were thinnest. “I just… I need to see.”
“See what?”
“Everything.”
Sarah sighed, kissing his forehead. “Okay. If it helps you sleep, we can leave it on. But just know that you’re safe here. The doors are locked, and I’m right down the hall.”
“I know,” Noah whispered. He lay back down, but he didn’t close his eyes. He stared at the closet door.
That was the beginning.
Over the next month, the electric bill ticked upward, a silent testament to Noah’s growing terror. It wasn’t a gradual increase; it was a spike.
Noah stopped sleeping unless the room was fully lit. And it wasn’t just the bedside lamp anymore. It was the overhead ceiling fan light—three bulbs blazing. It was the closet light, leaving the door cracked open so the glow could spill out. It was the bathroom light connected to his room, illuminating the tile floor like a runway.
Sarah tried to negotiate. She bought a soothing nightlight that projected stars onto the ceiling. Noah unplugged it and threw it in the trash. She bought a dimmer switch. Noah taped it to the maximum setting.
It began to bleed into the daytime, too.
One rainy Saturday, Sarah found Noah in the living room. It was noon, but the storm clouds made the house gloomy. Noah had turned on every lamp in the living room, the kitchen, and the dining area. He was sitting in the center of the rug, surrounded by a circle of light, reading a comic book.
“Noah,” Sarah said, putting down her coffee mug. “It’s the middle of the day.”
“It’s dark outside,” he muttered, not looking up.
“It’s just rain, sweetie. It’s cozy.”
“It’s not cozy,” he said flatly. “It’s hard to see.”
Sarah felt a prickle of irritation. “Noah, electricity costs money. We can’t have the house lit up like a stadium twenty-four hours a day.”
She walked over to the floor lamp in the corner and clicked it off.
Noah flinched. It was a physical reaction, like she had slapped him. He dropped the comic book and scrambled backward, crab-walking across the carpet until he was directly under the chandelier in the dining room.
“Turn it back on,” he said. His voice wasn’t angry; it was desperate.
“Noah, stop it. This is ridiculous.”
“Turn it on!” he screamed.
Sarah stopped. She had never heard him scream like that. It wasn’t the scream of a bratty child not getting a toy. It was the scream of someone watching a car crash. It was primal.
She turned the lamp back on.
Noah slumped against the dining table leg, pulling his knees to his chest. He was shaking.
Sarah walked over and knelt beside him. The house was silent except for the drumming of the rain against the gutters and the hum of the refrigerator. “Noah,” she said softly. “You have to tell me what’s going on. Is someone scaring you at school?”
He shook his head, burying his face in his knees.
“Is it a movie? Did you see something on the iPad?”
“No.”
“Then what is it? Why do you need the lights?”
He looked up at her then. His eyes were rimmed with red, dark circles forming underneath them from weeks of poor sleep. “Because,” he whispered. “If it’s dark… I can’t check.”
“Check for what?”
He didn’t answer. He just reached out and grabbed the hem of her sweater, holding on tight, his knuckles turning white.
The breaking point—or what Sarah thought was the breaking point—came two weeks later.
A massive winter storm rolled off Lake Erie, battering the suburbs with sixty-mile-per-hour winds and sleet that sounded like gravel hitting the siding. The house groaned under the pressure. The windows rattled in their frames.
It was 9:00 PM. Bedtime.
Noah was in his room. He had constructed a barricade of pillows around his bed, and every light was on. The overhead, the lamp, the closet, the bathroom. He had even dragged a spare desk lamp from the guest room and plugged it in near the foot of his bed.
Sarah stood in the doorway, exhausted. She had a headache that was throbbing behind her eyes, pulsing in time with the wind outside.
“It’s loud out there, huh?” she said, trying to sound cheerful.
Noah was sitting cross-legged in the center of the mattress, scanning the room. His head moved in a rhythmic pattern: Window. Closet. Door. Under the bed. Window. Closet. Door.
“It’s okay,” he said, though he looked anything but okay. “The lights are on.”
“Yeah. They sure are.”
And then, nature intervened.
A crack of thunder shook the floorboards, followed instantly by the brilliant, blue-white flash of a transformer blowing down the street.
The house plunged into absolute, total darkness.
For a second, there was silence. Just the wind howling.
Then, Noah screamed.
It was a sound Sarah would never forget as long as she lived. It wasn’t a cry for help. It was a shriek of terror so pure, so raw, that it made her stomach turn over. It was the sound of an animal caught in a trap.
“Noah!” Sarah yelled, lunging forward into the black room.
She barked her shin on the bedframe, stumbling, reaching out blindly. “Noah, I’m here! It’s just the power! It’s just the power!”
“I can’t!” Noah was gasping, hyperventilating. “I can’t! I can’t see! make it stop!”
“I’m trying, honey, hang on!”
Sarah fumbled for her phone in her back pocket. Her hands were shaking. She swiped the screen, tapped the flashlight icon, and a beam of harsh LED light cut through the gloom.
She swung the light toward the bed.
Noah was crouched in the center of the mattress, his hands pressed so hard over his eyes that his fingernails were digging into his skin. He was curled into a ball, trying to make himself as small as possible.
“Noah, look! I have a light. Look!”
She shined the beam on the wall, illuminating the posters of superheroes and the bookshelf.
Noah peeked through his fingers. When he saw the light, he didn’t relax. He lunged toward it. He scrambled across the bed and threw himself at Sarah, burying his face in her shirt, right where the phone’s light was shining, bathing himself in the glow.
“Don’t let it go out,” he sobbed. “Mom, don’t let it go out.”
“I won’t. I won’t.” Sarah wrapped her arms around him, rocking him back and forth. She could feel his heart hammering against her chest like a trapped bird. “We have flashlights downstairs. We have candles. It’s going to be okay.”
“No candles,” he choked out. “Candles make shadows. No shadows.”
“Okay. No candles. We have big camping lanterns. LED ones. Remember? For the tent?”
He nodded against her chest, sniffing loudly.
Sarah spent the next ten minutes maneuvering them downstairs, keeping the phone flashlight steady, never letting the beam waver. She found the camping gear in the garage. She set up three high-powered LED lanterns in the living room.
The room was bathed in a cold, artificial white light. It was bright enough to perform surgery.
Only then did Noah stop shaking.
He sat on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, staring at the lanterns. He didn’t look at Sarah. He didn’t look at the window where the storm was raging. He just stared at the light source, as if feeding on it.
Sarah sat beside him, exhausted. “Noah,” she said gently. “We need to talk to someone. Maybe Dr. Evans?”
Dr. Evans was his pediatrician.
Noah shook his head.
“This isn’t normal, honey. Being this scared… it’s hurting you. You’re not sleeping. You’re not playing.”
“I am playing,” he said defensively.
“You’re not. You’re guarding.”
The word hung in the air. Guarding. Sarah hadn’t meant to say it, but as soon as it left her lips, she knew it was true. Noah wasn’t hiding from something. He was standing watch.
“What are you guarding against?” she asked.
Noah looked at her. The lantern light reflected in his eyes, making them look glassy. “If I tell you… you’ll get scared too.”
“I’m a mom,” Sarah said, trying to summon a brave smile. “It’s my job to be scared for you so you don’t have to be. Tell me.”
Noah pulled the blanket tighter. He looked around the living room, checking the corners where the lantern light faded into gray.
“They wait,” he whispered.
“Who waits?”
“The things in the dark.”
Sarah rubbed his back. “Sweetie, monsters aren’t real. It’s your imagination playing tricks on you. Your brain sees a shadow and turns it into a monster.”
“No,” Noah said firmly. He turned to face her, his expression disturbingly adult. “That’s what the books say. But that’s not it.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s not that they come out of the dark,” Noah said, struggling to find the words. “It’s that… when it’s dark… they don’t have to hide anymore.”
Sarah frowned, confused. “I don’t understand.”
“When the lights are on,” Noah explained, his voice low and serious, “they have to pretend. They have to act like chairs. Or clothes in the closet. Or piles of toys.”
A chill ran down Sarah’s spine. It was such a specific, childish, yet horrifying logic.
“But when the lights go out,” Noah continued, “they don’t have to pretend to be stuff anymore. They can move. They can look at you.”
“And that’s why you keep the lights on?” Sarah asked. “To make them… stay as furniture?”
Noah nodded solemnly. “If I can see them, they have to stay still. It’s the rules.”
Sarah let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. It was a game. A complex, psychological game he had invented. It was a version of Toy Story gone wrong. It was creative, terrified logic, but it was logic nonetheless.
“Okay,” Sarah said. “I get it. You think that if you watch them, they can’t move.”
“It’s not just moving, Mom.”
Noah looked at the lantern again. He leaned in close to Sarah, whispering as if the sofa cushions might be listening.
“When it’s dark… they don’t have to see me.”
Sarah paused. “Wait. You want them to see you?”
“No,” Noah said, frustrated that she wasn’t getting it. “You always say, ‘I see you, Noah.’ Like when I’m on the slide. Or when I’m doing a trick.”
“Right.”
“When you see me, I’m safe. Because you’re watching.”
“Yes.”
“But when the lights are off… nobody can see me.”
“I’m still here, though.”
“But you can’t see me,” Noah insisted. “And if nobody can see me… then I’m not really there. And if I’m not really there… they can take me.”
Sarah felt a heavy weight settle in her stomach. It was a fear of abandonment twisted into a supernatural delusion. If I am not observed, I cease to exist. If I cease to exist, I am vulnerable.
“Noah,” she said, grabbing his hands. “You exist whether the lights are on or off. You are real. You are my son. Nothing can take you.”
Noah didn’t look convinced. He looked at the shadows stretching out behind the kitchen island.
“That’s what Dad thought, too,” Noah whispered.
The room went dead silent.
Sarah froze. Her husband, Mike, had left three years ago. He hadn’t died. He had just… left. Packed a bag, said he wasn’t happy, and moved to Arizona with a woman he met at a conference. They rarely spoke about him.
“What did you say?” Sarah asked, her voice sharp.
“Dad,” Noah said. “He didn’t like the dark either. Before he left.”
“Noah, Dad left because… because of grown-up things. It had nothing to do with the dark.”
Noah looked at her with a pitying expression, as if she were the child and he was the adult. “He didn’t leave, Mom.”
Sarah’s blood ran cold. “Of course he did. He lives in Phoenix. He sends you cards on your birthday.”
“Those aren’t from him,” Noah said matter-of-factly. “Grandma writes them. I saw her handwriting on the last one.”
Sarah opened her mouth to argue, but stopped. Her mother did help coordinate things sometimes, but…
“Dad didn’t go to Arizona,” Noah said softly. He pointed a trembling finger toward the dark hallway that led to the basement door. “He went in there. The lights were out. I saw him.”
“Noah, stop it. You’re scaring me.”
“He went into the dark,” Noah repeated. “And he didn’t come back. The thing that walked out… that looked like Dad… that wasn’t him.”
Sarah stood up. The lanterns cast long, dancing shadows against the walls. The wind howled outside, sounding like voices screaming in the distance.
“That is enough,” Sarah said, her voice shaking. “We are not telling ghost stories. Your father is alive. He is in Arizona. We are going to sleep here in the living room with the lanterns on, and in the morning, when the sun is up, we are calling Dr. Evans.”
Noah didn’t argue. He just curled up on the couch, pulling the blanket over his head, leaving only one eye exposed.
Watching.
Always watching.
Sarah sat in the armchair across from him. She watched her son drift into a fitful, light sleep. She watched the battery indicator on the LED lantern flicker from green to yellow.
She looked at the hallway.
The basement door was shut.
Mike hadn’t gone into the basement the night he left. She remembered it clearly. He had walked out the front door, put his suitcase in the trunk of his Honda, and driven away. She had watched his taillights fade down the street.
…Hadn’t she?
A sudden, irrational doubt pricked at her mind.
She remembered crying in the kitchen. She remembered the sound of the door.
But had she actually seen him get in the car? Or had the porch light been out that night?
Sarah shook her head. Stop it. You’re letting an eight-year-old’s phobia get into your head.
She closed her eyes, listening to the storm.
Click.
Her eyes snapped open.
The sound came from the kitchen. It was the distinct, heavy click of a deadbolt turning.
But the front door was locked. She had checked it twice.
Sarah sat up, her heart hammering. “Noah?” she whispered.
Noah was asleep, his breathing shallow.
Sarah stared into the semi-darkness of the kitchen. The lantern light didn’t reach all the way to the back door.
Creeeeaaaak.
The sound of a floorboard. A specific floorboard. The one right in front of the pantry. The one Mike used to step on every night when he snuck a midnight snack.
“Who’s there?” Sarah called out. Her voice was thin, pathetic against the noise of the storm.
Silence.
Then, from the darkness of the kitchen, a voice spoke. It wasn’t a whisper. It was a mimicry. It sounded like a recording played at the wrong speed.
“When it’s dark… they don’t have to see me.”
It was Noah’s voice. But Noah was asleep on the couch five feet away from her.
Sarah grabbed the spare flashlight. She stood up, raising the beam like a weapon.
“Get out of my house!” she screamed.
She swept the light across the kitchen.
Nothing.
Just the granite countertops. The coffee maker. The shadows of the cabinets.
Sarah stood there, panting, sweeping the light back and forth. Had she imagined it? Was the stress causing auditory hallucinations?
She lowered the light, her hand trembling.
Then she saw it.
On the floor, near the pantry.
The pantry door was open. And sticking out from the darkness of the pantry floor was a hand.
It wasn’t a human hand. It looked like a shadow that had solidified into three dimensions—long, tapered fingers made of something that absorbed the light rather than reflecting it.
And it was holding a lightbulb.
The lightbulb from the pantry overhead fixture.
It had unscrewed it.
Sarah backed away, her foot bumping into the coffee table.
The hand slowly withdrew into the pantry, dragging the darkness with it.
And then, the first LED lantern in the living room flickered and died.
Noah sat up instantly. He didn’t scream this time. He just looked at Sarah, his eyes wide and knowing.
“Mom,” he whispered. “They’re here.”
The scream died in Sarah’s throat. It lodged there, a hard lump of terror that refused to be swallowed or expelled.
The faceless officer stood by the passenger window, his hand resting casually on the door frame. His uniform was crisp, the badge gleaming under the streetlamp’s yellow haze. Officer Miller, the name tag read. But above the collar, there was nothing. No eyes to judge, no mouth to speak, just a terrifying expanse of flesh that looked like uncooked dough.
Noah saw it too. He didn’t scream either. He just locked the doors again.
Click.
The sound was deafening in the silence of the car.
The officer tapped on the glass. Knock, knock, knock.
It was a polite, rhythmic sound. The kind a friendly cop makes when you’ve been pulled over for a broken taillight.
“Mom,” Noah whispered, his voice vibrating with a frequency that hurt Sarah’s teeth. “Don’t look at him.”
“He’s right there, Noah. I can’t not look at him.”
“If you stop looking, maybe he’ll go away. Like the others.”
“That’s not how this works!” Sarah hissed. “They don’t go away when we don’t look—they get real when we don’t look! That’s what you said!”
“I was wrong,” Noah said, tears streaming down his face. “I don’t know the rules anymore, Mom. The rules changed.”
The officer tapped again. Harder this time. The glass vibrated.
Then, a voice came from outside. It didn’t come from the faceless head. It seemed to emanate from the radio on the officer’s shoulder.
“License and registration, ma’am.”
It was a static-filled, metallic voice.
“Go away!” Sarah yelled at the glass. “You’re not real!”
“Please step out of the vehicle,” the radio voice crackled.
The officer’s hand moved to his holster. He unsnapped the strap. He drew his gun.
It wasn’t a normal gun. It was a mass of shadows shaped like a pistol, dripping with that same black ink that had flooded the house.
“Noah, drive!” Sarah screamed.
“The engine is dead!” Noah cried, stomping on the start button. The dashboard flickered and died. The battery was gone. Drained.
The officer raised the shadow-gun. He pointed it at the window.
Sarah threw herself over Noah, shielding his body with hers. “Close your eyes!”
SMASH.
The side window exploded inward. Not from a bullet, but from the barrel of the gun striking the glass.
The cold night air rushed in.
The officer reached in. His hand—wearing a black leather glove—grabbed Sarah by the shoulder. The grip was impossibly strong, like a hydraulic press.
“You have the right to remain silent,” the radio voice buzzed. “Anything you say will be… erased.”
Sarah clawed at the glove. “Get off me!”
She kicked out with her good leg, her foot connecting with the officer’s chest. It felt solid. Too solid. Like kicking a brick wall.
“Noah, the other door! Run!”
Noah scrambled over the center console, tumbling into the back seat. He popped the sliding door open.
“Mom, come on!”
Sarah tried to follow, but the grip on her shoulder tightened. She felt her collarbone shifting, grinding.
“I can’t!” she screamed. “He has me!”
Noah stood on the pavement outside the sliding door. He was bathed in the yellow streetlamp light. He looked at his mother, then at the faceless monster pulling her out of the window.
For a second, Sarah saw the calculation in his eight-year-old eyes. The terror warring with love.
“Run, Noah!” she pleaded. “Run to the light!”
Noah didn’t run.
He reached into his pocket. He pulled out the tiny, battery-operated reading light—the one he had used in the bedroom. The one that had seemed so useless before.
He clicked it on. A feeble white beam.
He looked at the officer.
“Hey!” Noah shouted. “Look at me!”
The officer paused. The faceless head turned slowly toward the boy.
“I said look at me!” Noah yelled.
He pointed the tiny light directly at the officer’s badge.
The beam hit the metal. It reflected.
And then, something strange happened.
The light didn’t just illuminate the officer. It burned him.
Where the tiny beam touched the uniform, the fabric smoked. The gray flesh of the officer’s neck began to blister and bubble, turning into black sludge.
The radio voice shrieked—a high-pitched feedback noise that shattered the remaining windows of the minivan.
The officer let go of Sarah, flailing at the light beam as if it were a swarm of bees.
“It works!” Noah yelled. “Concentrated light! Like a laser!”
Sarah didn’t waste a second. She threw herself into the back seat and tumbled out onto the pavement next to Noah. She grabbed his hand.
“Run,” she gasped, limping heavily on her broken ankle.
They hobbled away from the car, staying strictly within the circle of the streetlamp’s glow.
The officer was thrashing by the car, dissolving into a puddle of shadow and uniform.
“Where do we go?” Noah asked. “The darkness… it’s everywhere else.”
Sarah looked around. He was right. The streetlamp they were standing under was an island in an ocean of black. The next streetlamp down the road was dark. The houses were dark.
But in the distance… far down the main boulevard… she saw a flicker.
A red neon sign.
It was faint, blinking through the gloom.
O-P-E-N.
It was the 24-hour diner. ‘Jerry’s Stop & Eat.’
“There,” Sarah pointed. “The diner. It has a generator. I know Jerry. He has a massive diesel generator for the freezers.”
“It’s too far,” Noah said. “We have to cross the dark parts.”
“We have your light,” Sarah said. “And look.”
She pointed to the ground near the dissolving police officer. His flashlight had fallen off his belt. It was rolling on the asphalt.
And it was on.
A thick, heavy beam of pure white light cut across the road.
“Grab it,” Sarah commanded.
Noah darted forward, snatched the heavy police flashlight, and darted back.
“Okay,” Sarah said, gritting her teeth against the pain in her ankle. “Here’s the plan. We move from light pool to light pool. We use the flashlight to cut a path. We don’t stop. We don’t look at the faces of anyone we meet. Got it?”
“Got it.”
They stepped out of the safety of the streetlamp.
Immediately, the temperature dropped twenty degrees. The air felt thick, viscous.
“Light up the path,” Sarah said.
Noah swung the police flashlight. The beam carved a tunnel through the darkness.
And in that tunnel, they saw them.
The street wasn’t empty.
It was crowded.
Dozens… no, hundreds of figures were standing in the road. They were frozen in place, like statues in a museum. Some were shaped like people—neighbors, mailmen, kids on bikes. Others were misshapen, abstract forms of limbs and torsos.
They were all facing the diner.
“Don’t touch them,” Sarah whispered. “Just walk around them.”
They weaved through the crowd of silent horrors.
One figure—a woman in a jogging suit—reached out as they passed. Her hand brushed Sarah’s arm.
Sarah flinched. The touch burned like dry ice.
“Help… me…” the woman whispered. She had a mouth, but it was sewn shut with black thread.
“Keep moving,” Sarah choked out, pulling Noah faster.
They were halfway to the diner when the flashlight flickered.
Sarah’s heart stopped. “Noah, don’t tell me…”
“It’s not the batteries!” Noah said, shaking the heavy metal tube. “It’s the bulb! It’s getting hot!”
The darkness pressed in. The tunnel of light narrowed.
The statues around them began to turn their heads.
Crack. Crack. Crack. The sound of stiff necks snapping into new positions.
They were all looking at Sarah and Noah now.
“Run!” Sarah screamed, ignoring her ankle.
They sprinted the last fifty yards. The flashlight beam died completely just as they crashed into the glass door of the diner.
Sarah pounded on the glass. “Let us in! Jerry! Let us in!”
Inside, the diner was a beacon of warmth. The overhead fluorescents were humming. The jukebox was playing ‘Don’t Stop Believin’.
A man in a white apron looked up from behind the counter. It was Jerry.
He had a face.
A real, human face. Wrinkled, tired, unshaven.
He saw them. His eyes went wide.
He ran to the door and unlocked it.
Sarah and Noah tumbled inside, collapsing on the checkered tile floor.
Jerry slammed the door and threw the deadbolt. Then he pulled down a heavy steel security gate over the glass.
“You made it,” Jerry breathed. He looked at them, then at the darkness pressing against the glass. “I didn’t think anyone else was left.”
Sarah looked around the diner.
It was full.
But not with customers eating pancakes.
There were maybe twenty people huddled in the booths. Families. Truckers. A couple of teenagers.
They all looked shell-shocked. Some were crying. Some were staring at the lights, praying they wouldn’t go out.
“What is happening?” Sarah asked, pulling herself up to a sitting position. “Jerry, what is this?”
Jerry wiped his hands on his apron. He looked old. Older than he had last week.
“The sun didn’t come up,” he said quietly.
Sarah frowned. “What time is it?”
“Check the clock.”
Sarah looked at the neon clock on the wall.
11:00 AM.
“It’s morning?” Sarah asked, her voice trembling.
“It should be,” Jerry said. “But look outside.”
There was no sun. No gray dawn. Just the same oppressive, living blackness.
“The sun went out,” a voice said from the corner booth.
It was an old man wearing a trucker hat. He was nursing a cup of black coffee.
“It didn’t go out,” the old man said. “It’s just… blocked.”
“Blocked by what?” Noah asked.
The old man pointed a trembling finger upward. “By them. They finally grew enough to cover the sky.”
Sarah pulled Noah into a booth. Her ankle was throbbing with a dull, rhythmic agony. “We need to fix my leg,” she said to Jerry. “Do you have a first aid kit?”
“Yeah. In the back. I’ll get it.”
While Jerry was gone, Sarah looked at the other survivors.
“Does anyone have a phone that works?” she asked.
A teenage girl shook her head. “No signal. Internet is down. GPS is down. Everything is dead.”
“What about the radio?”
“Static,” the trucker said. “Except…”
“Except what?”
“Except for the Numbers Station,” the trucker said. “On the AM band. 660.”
“What are they saying?”
“They aren’t saying numbers anymore,” the trucker said grimly. “They’re reading names.”
Sarah felt a chill. “Names?”
“Lists of people. Thousands of them. Just… names.”
“Are we on the list?” Noah asked.
The trucker looked at the boy. “If you can hear it… you aren’t on the list yet.”
Jerry returned with a white box. He helped Sarah splint her ankle with a couple of wooden spoons and duct tape. It wasn’t pretty, but it stabilized the bone.
“So we’re trapped,” Sarah said. “We can’t leave. The generator won’t last forever.”
“I have fuel for three days,” Jerry said. “After that…” He shrugged.
“Three days,” Sarah repeated.
“We have to fight them,” Noah said suddenly.
The whole diner turned to look at the eight-year-old boy.
“Fight them?” Jerry let out a dry, humorless laugh. “Kid, did you see those things? Bullets go through them. Walls don’t stop them.”
“Light stops them,” Noah said. “I burned one. With a flashlight.”
“You got lucky,” the trucker grunted. “I shined my high beams on a pack of ’em. They just ate the light.”
“Because you were using regular light,” Noah insisted. “It has to be… focused. You have to mean it.”
“Mean it?” Sarah asked. “What do you mean?”
“The dark works because we’re scared,” Noah said. He stood up on the booth seat, addressing the room. “I figured it out. When I was in my room. The more scared I got, the darker it got. When Mom got scared in the car, the officer got stronger.”
He pointed to the reading light in his hand.
“But when I got mad… when I wanted to protect Mom more than I wanted to hide… the light burned him.”
The room was silent.
“It’s not just photons,” Noah said, using a word he must have learned from a science show. “It’s… will. They feed on fear. If we starve them, they get weak. If we fight them with light and no fear… we can hurt them.”
“That’s a nice theory, kid,” the teenage girl said. “But I’m terrified. I can’t just turn that off.”
“You don’t have to turn it off,” Noah said. “You just have to be more angry than you are scared.”
BOOM.
The entire diner shook.
The steel security gate over the front door buckled inward.
A dent appeared in the metal. The shape of a giant fist.
BOOM.
Another hit. The metal shrieked.
“They found us,” Jerry whispered. “They know we’re all here. It’s a buffet.”
The lights in the diner flickered. The hum of the generator out back sputtered.
“They’re attacking the generator,” the trucker yelled. He pulled a shotgun from under the table. “I’m going out back.”
“No!” Sarah yelled. “That’s suicide!”
“Better than sitting here waiting to be eaten,” the trucker growled. He kicked open the back door and ran into the alley.
BLAM. BLAM.
Two shots. Then a scream. Then silence.
The back door swung shut.
The generator died.
The overhead lights went out.
The jukebox died.
The diner was plunged into darkness.
Screams erupted from the booths. People were scrambling, knocking over tables, trying to find corners to hide in.
“Quiet!” Sarah yelled. “Everyone quiet!”
She grabbed Noah. “Do you have the light?”
“It’s dying,” Noah whispered. The little reading light was fading to a dull yellow ember.
“Okay,” Sarah said. “Okay.”
She could hear them entering.
The front gate was being peeled open like a sardine can. The sound of metal tearing was excruciating.
Cold air flooded the diner. And with it, the smell of ozone and wet earth.
“I see you,” a voice boomed. It wasn’t one voice. It was a chorus. A thousand voices speaking in unison.
“I see you, Jerry. I see you, Sarah. I see you, Noah.”
Shadows began to move among the tables.
Jerry lit a match.
It flared for a second, illuminating a horde of faceless figures standing in the center of the room.
Then the match went out.
“It’s over,” Jerry whispered.
“No,” Noah said.
He pulled away from Sarah.
“Noah, come back!”
“I have to do it, Mom.”
Noah climbed onto the table in the center of the room. He stood in the darkness, invisible to Sarah, but she could feel him there.
“Hey!” Noah screamed at the darkness. “You want to see me? Here I am!”
“Noah!” Sarah cried.
“I’m not afraid of you!” Noah shouted. “You’re just shadows! You’re nothing without the light to cast you! You’re just… absence!”
He closed his eyes. Sarah could feel the intensity of his focus.
“I. Am. Not. Afraid.”
And then, Noah began to glow.
It wasn’t a flashlight. It wasn’t a flare.
It was him.
His skin began to radiate a soft, golden luminescence. It started at his chest—his heart—and spread outward. His arms, his face, his hair.
He became a human lightbulb.
The shadows nearest to him shrieked. They recoiled, shielding their non-existent eyes.
“It’s working!” Sarah yelled. “He’s doing it!”
Noah opened his eyes. They were glowing pure white.
He raised his hands.
A pulse of light exploded from his body.
It washed over the diner. It wasn’t just bright; it was heavy. It felt like a physical wave of warmth and hope.
The faceless figures didn’t just burn. They evaporated. They turned into gray mist and vanished.
The light blasted out through the windows, shattering the remaining glass. It poured into the street.
Sarah shielded her eyes. It was like looking at a supernova.
“Noah!” she screamed.
The light kept growing. It expanded beyond the diner, beyond the street. It shot up into the sky like a beacon, piercing the cloud cover.
For a moment, the entire town was illuminated by the brilliance of an eight-year-old boy who refused to be afraid.
And then, with a sound like a thunderclap, the light vanished.
Darkness returned.
But it wasn’t the heavy, living darkness.
It was just… night.
Quiet, normal night.
The stars were back. The moon was visible through the broken ceiling tiles.
Sarah scrambled in the dark. “Noah? Noah!”
She found him on the table. He was curled up, unconscious.
She felt for a pulse.
It was there. Strong and steady.
“He’s alive,” she sobbed. “He’s alive.”
Jerry clicked a flashlight on. A normal, battery-powered flashlight.
The beam cut through the dusty air.
The diner was wrecked. Tables overturned, glass everywhere.
But the monsters were gone.
The people in the booths slowly stood up, looking around in disbelief.
“They’re gone,” the teenage girl whispered.
“For now,” Sarah said. She picked up Noah, cradling him in her arms.
He felt different. Lighter. Or maybe… clearer.
He stirred. His eyes fluttered open.
They weren’t glowing anymore. They were just blue.
“Mom?” he rasped.
“I’m here, baby. I’m here.”
“Did we win?”
“Yeah,” Sarah said, looking out at the moonlight on the street. “Yeah, we won.”
“I’m tired,” Noah whispered. “Can I sleep now?”
Sarah looked at the broken diner, the scared survivors, and the moon hanging in the sky.
“Yeah,” she said. “You can sleep.”
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Can we keep the lights off?” he asked. “It’s too bright.”
Sarah laughed, a choked, tearful sound.
“Yeah, bud. We can keep the lights off.”
EPILOGUE
The sun came up three hours later.
It was a normal sunrise. Pink and orange and beautifully, banally bright.
The power grid came back on two days later. The authorities called it a “massive geomagnetic solar event” that caused mass hallucinations and power failures. They blamed the disappearances on panic and riots.
They found Mike’s car abandoned on the side of the highway in Arizona. He was never found.
Sarah and Noah moved to a new house. A smaller one. With fewer windows.
Noah is ten now. He’s a normal kid. He plays soccer. He likes video games.
But he’s different.
He doesn’t need flashlights anymore. In fact, he prefers the dark.
Sometimes, Sarah finds him sitting in the backyard at midnight, just staring into the shadows of the trees.
“What are you doing?” she asks him.
“Just watching,” he says.
“Watching what?”
” them,” Noah says calmly. “Making sure they stay furniture.”
And then he smiles. And for a split second, Sarah swears she can see a faint, golden glow behind his eyes.
The darkness is still there. It always will be.
But now, the darkness is afraid of him.
THE END
