The Darkest Night

THE DARKEST NIGHT
Book One of The Darkest Night

The town calls it the Hollow House. A storefront is attached to the side of it that never quite worked, shelves still stocked, cans facing out, waiting for customers who stopped coming years ago.

Sigil is nine. She knows which floorboards announce her and which ones do not.

She has decided the moon belongs to her. It comes up after the house goes quiet and finds her wherever she is and stays as long as she needs it to. She has told it that it is her friend. She has never said that to a living person.

She builds a castle out of cardboard and draws the kingdom on the wall behind it. Her mother finds it and feeds it into the woodstove piece by piece.

So Sigil builds the next one in the basement, behind the furnace, where nobody goes.

That is where the doll is. Behind a bookshelf she has checked a hundred times and found nothing but dust. Porcelain, chipped, one eye gone. The other one red, like an ember that went quiet instead of out.

She names her Scarlet.

Something has been listening to that basement for a while now.

The first of seven.