Chapter 1

The remote country house stood silent under the pale moonlight, its weathered walls a testament to solitude. Inside, the air was thick with the stillness of lockdown, the world outside reduced to a distant memory. Kathy, a tanned brunette of 39 years, lay asleep in her bedroom, her widowhood a heavy cloak she wore with quiet grace. An eerie tranquility that enveloped their home. The only sound was the occasional creak of the old wooden floorboards, a haunting melody in the silence.

Indeed, the house was eerily silent, the kind of quiet that pressed against your eardrums, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath. It was well past midnight, and the only light came from the faint glow of the moon filtering through the thin curtains of Kathy Joy’s bedroom. Her son and only child, Eric Jay, stood in the hallway, his heart pounding in his chest, the weight of what he was about to do settling like a stone in his gut. Eighteen years. That is how long it had been since he last felt the warmth of the place he had come from. The hole. The womb. He craved the thought of it. The thought consumed him, an obsession that had grown sharper with each passing day since his father’s death. Covid had taken him, and with him, any semblance of normalcy in his life. Now, he needed release. He needed to feel whole again. Eric Jay was an 18-year-old with a dark complexion and an air of polite sincerity, moved through the house with the stealth of a shadow. His presence was a paradox—both foreign and familiar, as if he had always been there, yet utterly out of place. His footsteps were silent, his purpose unclear, but his gaze was fixed on Kathy’s bedroom door. The room was dimly lit by the moon’s faint glow, casting long shadows that danced across the walls like specters. Jonan’s heart pounded in his chest, not with fear, but with a strange, unspoken urgency.

Kathy stirred in her sleep, her dreams a tangle of memories and desires. She had been a widow for five years, her life a careful balance of motherhood and solitude. Her body, though still youthful, carried the weight of loss and the quiet longing for connection. Her breath was steady, her features relaxed, but beneath the surface, there was a restlessness, a yearning she had long suppressed. The room was cool, the air heavy with the scent of lavender from the sachet on her pillow, yet something felt off—a disturbance in the stillness.