November 8, 2024. Moonlight Curiosities Antique Shop. Gloamstead, Alabama. Sometimes the more you learn, the more you wish you hadn’t…

I licked my lips, watching the sallow bulb gently sway at the end of the long, aged black cord. The image of a frayed hangman’s noose with its newest customer came to mind. I pulled my eyes away from the morbid sight.

“Okay, so not a safe,” I murmured, stating the obvious.

“Nope,” Cassidy replied with a nervous yip. Her eyes were as wide as mine, riveted on the gaping entrance in the wall; a spot we’d walked past dozens of times. She bounced a little on the balls of her feet, tennis shoes squeaking against the polished wood floor. “Doesn’t look like a little room for one, either.”

We exchanged a tense look, then eased to the right to get a better look. Just past the entrance, at the ragged edge of the light, there was a narrow set of dusty stairs descending into darkness. Pipes, wiring, and insulation lined the walls like a serial killer’s fever dream. Cassidy flinched, and I let out a nervous laugh like a startled hyena. We’d fought a bloodleech eager to suck our brains out—somehow this felt like a whole other level of worse.

I drew a deep breath, holding my palms out in front of me. “Okay, we need to go in and take a look around.”

Cassidy nodded sharply. “Yep. Certainly.”

Neither of us moved.

Silence wrapped around us like a blanket until it felt like a tourniquet. I cleared my throat as Cassidy rubbed her face, then wiped her hands on her jeans.

“This is stupid,” she sighed. “Daniel, your uncle wouldn’t have left the shop to us if it had something lethal in it.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” I breathed. “Right. So, first thing. Those horror movies we’ve seen?”

Cassidy’s brow furrowed. “We don’t do what they did.”

“Right,” I nodded, then rubbed my hands together. “None of that, except we’re still going in. So let’s grab flashlights, at least one crowbar, charged battery packs, and then…” I waved a nervous hand at the yawning doorway “… deduce the hell out of this.”

“Got it,” she replied, hurrying off while I kept watch. It wouldn’t have been so bad if little gusts of air didn’t creep out the opening like soft, heavy breathing.

Cassidy returned with supplies before my nerves crawled out of my skin, eager to call it a day. We swapped one more look, then headed inside the wall.

Brown, dusty floor planks complained, creaking with a whispered moan as I stepped inside. The small room was more long than wide, allowing enough space to walk single file. I went first, crowbar ready in one hand, flashlight in the other. Cassidy crept close behind, her flashlight on to back up mine.

Two steps down, she touched my shoulder.

“Daniel, wait.”

She gently shook her head, ears stretching upward through her auburn hair. One moment they were human, the next they were brownish-red furred bat ears, twitching in all directions.

“Better.” She took a dusty breath. “We might not be able to see much with the flashlights, but I’ll hear if anything tries to jump us.”

“Let’s hope for nothing,” I replied with a weak smile.

We took the narrow staircase a step at a time, moving slowly so Cassidy could hear past the nerve-splitting creaks in the wood. Five steps down, a rattle of metal clicks chittered in the air. My stomach dropped as the door sealed behind us, the feeble light beside it winking out like a spent candle. Then a series of bulbs ahead of us picked up from there—all dangling from their own black cords—splashing a thin trail of light down to another landing.

“That beats trying to fumble between spiders for a light switch,” I quipped darkly. Cassidy chuckled nervously, nudging me forward. My nerves took over my voice. “I don’t get it. This is a lot. Why make… all of this? It feels like overkill just to hide something valuable.”

Cassidy sniffed, wrinkling her nose against the dust.

“My allergies are going to hate me,” she sighed. “I think it really depends on the valuables.”

“Like the pens?” I asked, arching an eyebrow back at her.

She pursed her lips. “Not quite. Remember, most humans don’t want to know people like me exist outside of bad horror movies. Pitchforks come out when they do until they run out of things to kill.” Cassidy shrugged. “I remember hearing stories about people, some even humans, hiding us in basements until we could slip away from angry mobs.” She patted me on the shoulder. “You know that as well as I do, love.”

“Yeah, I do,” I agreed darkly. “So it could be like some ‘underground railroad’.”

“Maybe. Still, this is really a lot,” she agreed.

The landing at the bottom of the stairs was identical to the one above. It was framed by insulation, water pipes, and bare wood braces against stained cinder blocks. I hadn’t counted the steps down, but it felt like we were below the foundation. There wasn’t a wall or another door ahead, just an open doorway into darkness.

Then the lights turned on.

Rows of jaundiced bulbs sputtered to life, casting yellow light across a wide room. Each bulb dangled from a black cord. They were like glowing drops of yellow-hot tar from the ceiling’s crossbeams, frozen in motion.

The room itself was a healthy square, at least as wide as a two-car garage. Cinder block walls, dusted with sooty smudges of age, were braced by brown wooden beams. In between those, lovingly restored stained teak shelves lined the walls, weighted down with dusty antiques and more. Earthy scents of fresh carrots, potatoes, and dried herbs haunted the air; memories of vegetables long gone.

“This can’t be real,” I breathed, easing through the doorway as I clicked off my flashlight. On my right, I saw a heavy metal pair of shed-like double doors, padlocked from the inside. A pair of ceiling fans lazily spun to wake the dust. “My uncle hid a storage room? A panic room?”

Cassidy stepped around me, bat-ears flicking against the feeble hum of the bulbs. Slowly, her eyes trailed across the furnishings and antiques, ending at a rolltop desk and long table that dominated the center of the room. She cut her eyes over to me, waving a hand at the furnishings.

“Daniel, look again.” She flicked off her flashlight, crossing to the middle of the room. Kneeling down, she studied the desk. Wiping her hands against her gray t-shirt first, she brushed her fingertips across the stained teak wood. “It’s an office.”

“Down here?”

“This desk is in such amazing shape,” she murmured, then glanced back at me. “It looks like an office.” Cassidy studied the room again, mouth a tight line. “What if…” she hesitated, then lightly shook her head. “Nope. Got nothing, other than not a storage room. Everything’s too precise. Look at the table and desk; they’re arranged, not stuck here because it was convenient.”

I walked over to join her. After setting my flashlight and crowbar on the stained wooden table, I explored the shelves. My first stop was a glowing shape inside a one-foot-tall dusty bell jar—a ghostly rose. It slowly rotated toward me as I approached; glimmering powder flaking off the petals.

“All right, an office.”

Cassidy gently grabbed the handles of the rolltop desk lid. It opened easily, sliding up and away. Inside, there were three notebooks; one open. Ballpoint pens were scattered across an old, green felt ink-blotter. A stubby, round glass container sat in the desk’s corner, filled with a greenish-gray mist brewing like a storm cloud. She pulled back an old wooden banker’s chair, sat, and read. I followed the shelves.

“Don’t handle if ink is moving…” Cassidy read aloud. She waved a hand at my confused and worried expression. “Just a note I found. I’ll figure it out.”

“Ah.” Given everything so far, that felt like the safest thing to say. I turned back to the shelves.

There were 19th-century vellum-covered books in English, Latin, and languages I didn’t recognize. Finger-length quartz and blood-drop shaped amulets rested between the short stacks like dainty bookends. There were all manner of oddities, each with a handwritten tag, but a thankful absence of skulls—human or otherwise. Partway through my browsing, I stopped dead in my tracks.

“It’s another pen,” I murmured in the quiet.

“What? Where?” Cassidy asked, glancing quickly in my direction.

“Here.” I reached for it on the shelf.

The Waterman fountain pen lay on an old gray-brown wooden stand resting atop a square of blue velvet; all of it locked away in a dusty transparent case. A lacy doily with rust needlepoint was draped over it like a miniature burial shroud. The case’s lock was small but stout—a keyed steel padlock that radiated ‘do not touch’. A thin ghosting of dust coated it all. I carried it to the desk.

Overall, the pen resembled its twin upstairs with a chrome cap and smooth sheen on the polished tortoiseshell barrel. The biggest difference was the delicate veins along its surface.

“The vine decorations,” Cassidy said, squinting at the pen. “They’re blue? No, turquoise.”

I put my hands on my hips. “Maybe. But the pattern’s sure the same. Also, that case? It doesn’t feel like glass. It’s denser. Maybe Pyrex? Not sure what the doily’s for.” I frowned, mouth pulled tight, glancing around the room.

“What is it?” she asked, watching my expression.

“It should’ve been harder to get in here. Uncle Elias went to a lot of trouble to lock away this pen,” I said, waving a hand around. “Beloved, I’ve a bad feeling about handing any of them over to Dorian.”

Cassidy touched the open journal with a finger, as if it might bite. “Daniel, I’m not sure that’s all we need to worry about. You should see this.”

I read the wrinkled page over her shoulder. The notebook was another of my uncle’s journals; much more recent than the ones at the store-all. An icy chill skittered along my spine—this was dated a few days before my uncle vanished.

“Nighthunters?” I glanced at Cassidy, then read the page again. “Your dad mentioned them once. Isn’t that one of those fringe ‘monster hunters’ groups? They’re killers!”

She slowly nodded, staring at the page with a haunted expression.

“The same.” One of her bat ears twitched from nerves. She covered her mouth with a hand, then sighed, flipping between pages. “Remember, love, most people just think Nighthunters stage it all for videos. From this, it reads like your uncle was looking into a bunch that showed up around here. They caused more trouble over in Craigbrook than here in Gloamstead, but still…”

I picked up another notebook from the desk, leafing through the pages.

“Dryads… the dryad’s ‘Court Viridis’… Dopplekin… Cassie, there’s a lot here.” I turned to the front of the notebook to what looked like a title written in my uncle’s neat handwriting.

“Bestiary of the Uncanny…?”

My words stalled out like a dying car. Closing the book, I gently set it on the desk, then rubbed my eyes. “My uncle was a Nighthunter? I… thought I knew him.”

Cassidy skimmed a few more pages in her notebook, frowning.

“No… I don’t think so,” she replied. “Look,” she tapped a page, “he wrote about Nighthunters like… well… skinshapers and anyone else. It reads like a field study, but more so. There are times, locations, and what they did. Daniel… I think he was studying them. Tracking them. At least that was the last few entries before he vanished.”

I met her concerned eyes without a word. The silence screamed volumes.

“That’s… important. But maybe not a ‘right now’ important,” I said with a rattled sigh. “Anything about the pens in there? I’ll look through the other notebook.”

A few minutes of reading paid off.

“Here,” Cassidy said, indicating a page dripping with notes. “Uncle Elias believed the pens—maybe all four—were cursed or connected to something ancient. Maybe cursed by the Dryad Court over some stupid grudge.”

“Well, that would make sense. You’ve told me more than once, dryads get really petty over stupid things,” I scoffed.

“They do.” She smoothed the page, eyes devouring the text. “Looks like he thought the pens might even contain raw Darklight.”

“The swamp lights?” I asked.

She glanced up at me, eyebrows bunched.

“Hm. They’re that and more, but yes. Mostly he was sure the pens are dangerous, especially in the wrong hands. They never run out of ink, but leak when they sense a suitable victim to compel.”

“Compel to do… what?” I felt unease prickle over my skin.

She turned the page and shrugged. “No idea. Uncle Elias wrote that he believed the pens will not give up a victim lightly. They’ll make them do all manner of horrible things just to keep the pens safe. He believed that the more pens the victim had… the worse all this got.”

“Henry Vanil,” I whispered. “Also, anyone else out there with a pen—like maybe that college student—could be next.”

We exchanged another solemn, silent look, as words felt too cheap. I put my hand on her shoulder for reassurance. Cassidy reached up, giving my hand a gentle squeeze.

“I have so many horrible questions,” I murmured.

“So do I,” she replied. “Too many. Especially around what if a bloodleech—like Valeria Moffet or Dorian—had one of these pens? Does Dorian already know about this, which is why he wants the pens?”

I pursed my lips, meeting her gaze with an even look.

“Let’s go ask him.”