Devils ridge a haunting.., p.2
Devil's Ridge: A Haunting Paranormal Thriller, page 2
“Why don’t you ever settle down? Find a nice partner to spend your life with,” Sadie had asked once, years ago.
Susan just shrugged. “Because every time I get close, something in me says no. I don’t know if it’s instinct or trauma, but I’ve learned to trust the weird. If it doesn’t feel right, I’m out.”
That night, everything had felt right. The kids were full of energy and grass stains, Caleb had that lazy summer glow in his smile, and Susan had lit a citronella candle and called it “energy cleansing” while waving it dramatically near the porch rail toward the mosquitos.
Sadie could still hear the creak of the swing, the low hum of Caleb’s laugh, the fireflies blinking across the yard like they were trying to send a message no one could quite translate. It had been one of those nights she didn’t realize was perfect until long after it ended.
Now, in the dark, Sadie blinked, tears slowly rolling down her cheeks, and the memory drifted away like fog burned off by morning. The house around her was so quiet that it felt hollow. Susan was in her room down the hall, asleep, hopefully, or reading one of her dog-eared paperbacks by candlelight like she always did when her thoughts wouldn’t let her rest.
They were leaving in the morning. Sadie didn’t know if it would help. She didn’t know what she was hoping to find there. But she trusted Susan. And more than that, she couldn’t stay here one more day, surrounded by silence and ghosts. She needed a different kind of quiet. One without the painful memories dancing on all the walls.
Her eyes were just starting to close when she heard the soft creak of the door. Susan’s voice floated in, quiet. “You still awake?”
Sadie turned her head on the pillow. “Yeah.”
“Just wanted to say goodnight.” A pause. “And that I’m proud of you. For doing this. For still breathing.”
Sadie smiled in the dark. “You say that like I had a choice.”
“Everyone has a choice,” Susan said softly. “You chose to live. That’s something.” The door creaked again as Susan pulled it mostly shut behind her. “Love you,” she called out from the hallway.
Sadie whispered, “Love you, too.” And this time, when she closed her eyes, she finally slept.
Chapter Three
They left before the sun had a chance to rise. Susan insisted on it, said she liked driving through the stillness, when the world felt half-asleep and the sky hadn't yet decided what kind of day it was going to be. Sadie didn’t argue. She barely slept anyway. The house was too quiet, even with her sister moving through it. Or maybe it was too full of memories, packed into every corner, as heavy as the boxes stacked in the back of the car.
The Subaru purred down the highway, headlights carving narrow tunnels through the dark. The road ahead was empty, a black ribbon stretching between pine forests and the occasional roadside diner with glowing signs that flickered like they were trying to whisper something. Sadie stared out the window, watching trees blur into one another. The deeper they got into the foothills, the more the terrain shifted. The gentle farmland giving way to ridges, the kind of wooded terrain that felt untouched, wild even. There was something timeless about it. The air itself felt thicker. Quieter. But the good kind of quiet. The kind that dulled the racing thoughts in your head.
Susan tapped the steering wheel, humming softly to herself as Landslide played low on the speakers. Her silver rings flashed whenever the dashboard lights hit them. “You okay?” she asked after a while, glancing sideways.
Sadie nodded. “Tired.”
“Want me to stop for coffee?”
“No. Let’s just get there.”
They passed a faded sign that read: WELCOME TO DEVIL’S RIDGE. Est. 1889, Population ?? Sadie did a double-take. “Did that sign have question marks?”
Susan grinned. “You noticed that too?”
“That’s not... comforting.”
“I think it’s charming.”
“That’s because your definition of charming includes tarot decks and antique bone buttons.”
“Exactly.”
The turnoff to the town came just after the sign with the question marks. Susan took it slowly, tires crunching over gravel before they hit cracked pavement again. The trees thinned slightly, revealing a small main street that looked like something out of a faded postcard—an old barbershop with striped poles, a corner store with a crooked OPEN sign, and a squat brick diner with a neon light that flickered uncertainly between “GRIGGS’ PLACE” and “RIGGS’ PL CE.”
Susan pulled into the tiny parking lot. “Coffee and pie?”
Sadie looked at her like she’d just suggested they attend a séance. “Before we even see the cabin?”
Susan shrugged. “If it’s terrible, I’d rather face it with caffeine and carbs.”
“Fair enough.”
They stepped out into the crisp morning air. The diner’s front windows were fogged around the edges, but the glow inside was warm. Cozy, even. A bell jingled overhead as they stepped through the door. The interior looked like it hadn’t changed in decades—checkered floor tiles, red vinyl booths, and framed photos on the walls that had yellowed around the edges. There was a long counter with metal stools, and a woman behind it who looked like she’d been born here and never left.
She smiled when she saw them. “You must be the sisters.”
Sadie froze mid-step. Susan smiled back easily. “That obvious, huh?”
The woman chuckled, drying her hands on a dishtowel. “Small town. Word gets around. Tonya, our local realtor, said someone new was comin’ up the mountain. And I figured it’d be you. We don’t get many tourists ‘round here.” She came around the counter and gestured toward a booth by the window. “Go on and sit wherever you like. I’m Brenda, by the way. Griggs. This place has been in my family since 1956. Coffee?”
“Yes, please,” Susan said, already sliding into the booth.
Sadie followed, slower. Her eyes drifted to the wall behind the counter. One of the photos, a black-and-white group shot, caught her attention. People standing in front of the diner, smiling stiffly. One of the women looked… familiar. But she couldn’t place it.
“Something wrong, hon?” Brenda asked, pouring coffee into a chipped white mug.
Sadie blinked and turned back. “No. Just a long drive.”
Brenda gave her a look that was sympathetic, but knowing. “Well. You’re here now. Devil’s Ridge is quiet. Real peaceful.”
Susan took a sip of coffee and nodded. “That’s what we’re looking for.”
Brenda smiled. “Peace has a way of finding people here. Whether they’re ready for it or not.” She turned without another word and walked back to the counter.
Sadie looked at her sister. “What did that mean?”
Susan, unfazed, reached for the menu. “I think it means we should get the pie.” After mulling over the menu for a minute or two, she flagged Brenda down with two fingers and a warm smile. “We’ll take two slices of whatever pie’s best today.”
Brenda didn’t hesitate. “That’d be the pecan. Made it fresh this morning.”
Sadie lifted an eyebrow. “This morning?”
Brenda grinned. “I don’t sleep much.”
As she turned to retrieve the slices, the front bell jingled again. A man stepped in. He was tall, mid-sixties maybe, with a long gray braid down his back and a heavy canvas jacket that looked like it had survived a dozen winters. He removed his hat slowly, eyes scanning the diner until they landed on the sisters. He nodded once, polite but lingering just a little too long.
“Mornin’, Junior,” Brenda called from behind the counter. “Coffee?”
“Please,” he said, voice low and gravelly. Then to the sisters, “New folks, huh?”
Susan offered a friendly wave. “That obvious?”
“You’ve got that look,” he said, settling onto a stool at the counter. “Like the mountain ain’t settled in your bones yet.”
Sadie blinked. “What does that mean?”
Junior just sipped from the mug Brenda handed him and said nothing else.
Brenda returned to their table a moment later, placing two generous slices of pie in front of them. The scent of butter and toasted sugar filled the air. “Don’t mind him,” she said with a tight smile. “Junior’s lived up here too long. Talks like a storybook sometimes.”
Susan grinned and forked into her slice. “Well, I like storybooks.”
Brenda wiped her hands on her apron, then rested them on her hips. “So, sisters, huh?”
Sadie nodded. “We are.”
“Well, family’s important up here. You look out for each other, you keep to yourselves, and the mountain’ll be good to you.”
Sadie tilted her head. “Does it get... not good?”
Brenda’s smile flickered for just a second. “Only when people stop listening.” She tapped a fingernail on the table, a slow, steady rhythm, then turned and walked back to the counter without waiting for a response.
Susan leaned in. “Okay, that was a little weird. I’ll give you that.”
Sadie’s gaze drifted back to the photograph on the wall. “Yeah…just a little.”
They finished their pie quickly after that. It was delicious, but Sadie couldn't shake the feeling that something, or someone, was watching them from just beyond the edge of comfort. Outside, the fog was beginning to roll in thicker between the trees.
They stepped out of the diner into a cool morning that had turned damp and moist with mist. The air smelled like wet earth and chimney smoke, and the mist clung to the corners of buildings like it didn’t want to let go. Susan paused next to the car, fumbling for the keys in her coat pocket. Sadie stood beside her, arms crossed, taking in the town in its full, faded glory.
As Susan slid the key into the driver’s side door, her breath puffed white in the crisp morning air. “You know what they call this?” she said with a little smile. “Blackberry Winter.”
Sadie tugged her jacket tighter. “Blackberry what?”
“Blackberry Winter.” Susan gave her a knowing glance. “It’s what folks around here call these cold snaps in May. Happens when the blackberry brambles start blooming. When mother nature is trying to decide if it’s going to move from winter to spring.”
Sadie huffed a breath, watching it curl into the air. “Figures. We move just in time for the one week the mountains remember it’s still winter.”
Susan snorted.
“I think I liked it better when we were inside,” Sadie muttered.
Susan finally pulled the driver’s side door open. “Oh, come on. It’s cute in a Twin Peaks kind of way.”
“Exactly my point.”
They climbed into the car, and Susan started the engine. Sadie glanced back at the diner as they pulled out of the lot. Brenda was still inside, standing at the counter with her hands folded neatly in front of her. She didn’t wave. She just watched them go. The fog consumed the town behind them within minutes.
The road leading out of town narrowed quickly, turning from cracked pavement to a winding stretch of asphalt barely wide enough for two cars to pass. Trees leaned in, close on either side, thick and tangled, their limbs arching overhead like they were trying to reclaim the space. Fog twisted through the branches like smoke. Susan slowed the car as they began to climb. The GPS on her phone had already gone gray, the signal lost somewhere between civilization and the ridgeline.
“Didn’t the listing say this place was ‘easily accessible’?” Sadie asked, squinting out the window at a mailbox that had been overtaken by ivy.
“It is,” Susan said cheerfully. “For mountain goats.”
The road curved sharply, then again, slithering back on itself like something alive. Sticks and twigs cracked beneath the tires as the car bumped over a rut deep enough to make Sadie grab the door handle. “This is how horror movies start,” she muttered.
Susan smiled, but it was tight. “Don’t jinx it. We’re almost there.”
The trees grew denser as they climbed, darker too, blocking out what little sunlight had managed to filter through the fog. The forest here didn’t feel like parkland or hiking trails. It felt untouched. Old. Like something that had existed long before towns or maps or people. Just as Sadie started to wonder if they’d taken a wrong turn, the road opened into a small clearing, and there it was. The cabin.
Chapter Four
Six Months Ago - Susan
The wind picked up just before the rain began. Susan stood in the kitchen, barefoot on the cool tile, cradling a mug of forgotten tea. Outside, the sky had darkened, heavy with something that felt less like weather and more like a warning. Her playlist played softly in the background, something gentle, familiar, but she no longer heard it. The air had shifted. Not just in the house, in her.
It hit low and hard, like the drop of her stomach on a steep hill. A sudden ache bloomed in her chest—sharp, immediate, undeniable. Then the mug slipped from her hands. Ceramic shattered across the floor. Tea splashed against the cabinets and soaked into her pajama pants, but she didn’t move. Her hand had already flown to the crystal hanging on a silver chain at her neck, fingers tightening around the charm like it might anchor her to something solid. “Sadie,” she breathed. The name left her lips without conscious thought, barely more than air. Something had happened.
She lunged for her phone on the counter, dialing her sister’s number. It rang once. Then voicemail. She tried again. Voicemail. “No, no—come on,” she whispered, her hands already fumbling for keys and a jacket. Her breath came fast. Shallow. Her body was moving before her brain had caught up, and within seconds she was out the door and into the downpour.
Rain lashed against her skin in icy sheets. She didn’t bother with shoes. Her tires kicked up water as she turned onto the main road, the windshield wipers struggling to keep up with the storm. The crystal bounced wildly on its chain, tapping against her sternum with every pothole and curve. She didn’t have a destination. She just drove.
The panic came in waves, crashing harder the farther she went. She tried to focus, tried to feel where Sadie was. But there was no guiding pull. No voice from the other side. Just this gut-deep terror that wouldn’t let go.
“Please,” she whispered, clutching the wheel, “just let me find her.”
She passed familiar roads, storefronts blurred by rain, unsure of where she was headed, until the highway exit for Summerville’s regional hospital appeared like a sign from the universe. Her hands turned the wheel without hesitation.
She didn’t remember parking. Didn’t remember running through the automatic doors, dripping and breathless. All she remembered was the front desk, the nurse behind it, the desperate sound of her own voice. “Please, I need to know if someone’s here. Sadie Sharpe. Please, can you just tell me if she’s here?”
The woman’s expression shifted almost imperceptibly, eyes softening as she typed. Then a quiet nod. “She’s here. Room 217. She’s stable.” Susan didn’t wait for anything more. Her feet were already moving.
The hospital room was dark and quiet. Sadie lay still beneath crisp white sheets, her skin pale against the bruises mottling her face. Bandages covered one side of her forehead. An oxygen tube curled across her cheek. One arm was strapped into a brace, and her fingers, those familiar hands Susan had held a thousand times, were scraped and motionless. But it wasn’t the injuries that made Susan’s breath catch. It was the emptiness. No stuffed animals tucked by her side. No crayon drawings taped to the wall. No soft giggles from the corner or lullabies humming on a tablet. No Caleb pacing the room, running a worried hand through his hair. Just Sadie. Just silence. Just Susan.
She sank into the chair beside the bed, soaked clothes clinging to her, her feet now frozen from dampness. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, and gripped the crystal so tightly her fingers went numb.
“I felt it,” she whispered. “God, I felt it.” Her voice cracked. She pressed a kiss to her knuckles and laid them gently against Sadie’s temple, as if that might somehow reach the part of her that was still drifting in the dark. “I should’ve known where you were. I should’ve found you sooner.”
Outside the window, the rain had softened to a mist, tapping lightly against the glass. But inside, the storm hadn’t passed. Susan stayed in that chair all night, hand never leaving her sister’s, whispering prayers into the quiet. Not to God—she didn’t know if she believed in him anymore. If there was one, up behind the sky, why would He allow things like this to happen? Why would he let her sister be hurt or let their mother fall to cancer. She prayed to whatever may be out there. To her guides, to her family that left long ago. To anything or anyone that might still be listening.
The room had grown even darker, the only light now coming from the faint glow of the machines and the hallway beyond the partially open door. Time didn’t seem to exist here, just the steady beep of the monitor, the soft whisper of the oxygen, and the storm that had slowed to a sorrowful drizzle outside.
Suddenly, there was a flutter. Barely perceptible but enough. She leaned forward, holding her breath. Sadie’s lashes twitched. Then her lips parted, dry and cracked, and a hoarse whisper slipped out—ragged, broken, but unmistakable. “They’re gone.” Susan’s whole body stilled and goosebumps gripped her skin.
At first, she wasn’t sure she’d heard it. It was so quiet. So fragile. Like the words had traveled through ash and ruin to reach her. But then Sadie turned her head slightly, her face crumpling with the weight of it, and repeated, softer this time, almost like it was a secret. “They’re gone.”
And just like that, Susan’s heart shattered. Not with sound or spectacle, but with the silent devastation of knowing that her worst fear was true. She didn’t speak. She couldn’t. Instead, she climbed into the narrow hospital bed without asking, slipping beside her sister as carefully as she could. The rails groaned under the shift of weight. Sadie didn’t protest. She just let herself be held. Susan curled an arm around her shoulders and pressed her cheek to the top of her sister’s head. Her crystal rested between them like a fragile, powerless thing. “I know,” Susan whispered at last, her voice breaking. “I know.” And outside, the storm kept moving. But inside the room, the world had already ended.
