{ Part 1 } I came home from deployment three days early. My daughter wasn’t in her room.

snap.

“I’ve got you, baby. I’m here. You’re safe.”

Emma sobbed into my shoulder, her words coming out in jagged fragments: “Grandma said… bad girls sleep in graves. She said if I moved, I’d stay down here forever.”

I looked up toward the porch. Myrtle was standing there, watching us with a chilling, self-righteous smile. My predator instinct, forged in continue reading …