MONSTER HOUSE: MY MONSTROUSITY FAMILY

The school day ended in a smear of noise and faces, but Elian didn't remember any of it. He walked home alone, deliberately avoiding the family van. Something in his gut, not instinct, not even fear, something older, told him he needed space.

Clouds swam above the rooftops like bruises. The wind was strangely warm. His backpack bounced against his shoulder with each step, every movement too loud in his ears. Too sharp.

Behind him. The echo of footsteps.

He stopped.

The street was empty. A bird cawed from a power line. A leaf skittered past, dry and crackling.

He turned the corner into an alley shortcut, concrete narrowing, fences bowed inward like jaws closing.

More footsteps. He froze.

"Elian."

The voice came from behind, but not aloud.

He turned sharply, and Willow was there, stepping out of nothing like mist uncoiling from shadows. She stood perfectly still, her eyes unfocused.

"You should not be alone," she said, her voice directly inside his mind. "He's not walking. He's... Following without walking."

"What does that even mean?" Elian whispered.

Willow tilted her head. "He moves between footsteps. Like a skipped frame in film."

A chill swept over Elian, starting in his spine and running all the way into the bones of his hands.

"He's too close," Willow added.

Then, without warning, every streetlight in a two-block radius flickered out, not all at once, but in a ripple. One by one.

POP. POP. POP.

From the edge of the alley, just barely out of the light, a figure stood still.

Elian's breath caught.

Mr. Cane.

Perfectly still. Arms at his sides. Not smiling now. Just watching.

The air shimmered faintly around him, like a heat mirage in reverse, cold and hungry.

"Elian," Willow said urgently, stepping in front of him now, "if he speaks your real name, cover your ears."

"I don't know my real name."

Willow didn't blink. "Then pray he doesn't either."

Mr. Cane took one step forward. Not loud. Not sudden. Just one step, but something in it made Elian's knees buckle.

Willow's fingers laced with his. "Don't look back again."

The alley behind them opened like a wound.

Willow pulled him into shadow.

And Mr. Cane's eyes never left them.