Page 29 of Where the Dark Things Bloom

My little stepsister.

She’s afraid.

But little does she know, this is just the beginning.

I knelt beside her, brushing a loose strand of hair from her face. How could someone be so beautiful… and so dangerous?

Sliding my arms under her, I lifted her gently, her body light against mine. I carried her down the hallway, leaving silent footsteps behind us, up to the bedroom on the top floor.

“Oh, Trouble,” I whispered, my lips close to her ear. “I’m going to break that pretty little mind of yours. You’ll never leave me again.”

I pushed the door open and laid her down on the bed, her limbs soft and still. Then I crossed to the far corner of the room, settling into the old ricochet chair that creaked as it rocked beneath me.

I watched her. Just watched. Wondering where it all went so wrong. She was never supposed to leave.

“You promised,” I muttered, rubbing my temples with trembling fingers. “You promised you’d never leave me. Not here. Not like this.”

She didn’t flinch. Didn’t stir. Just lay there, eyes shut, as if sleep had claimed her as if the world we built wasn’t crumbling in front of us.

I looked down at my hand—at the faint scars etched across my skin. Little reminders of the nights I wanted it all to end. They called me crazy for that—for just wanting to beseen, to beloved, to beunderstood.

I grew up with a father who was there, but never really present. He loved his whiskey more than his own son. And my mother? She made me her project. Told the world I was sick, and fed me pills and syrups until I actually started believing it myself. That’s how she kept me close—how she made herself feel needed. I was the sick boy. The weak one.

Then one day, she found someone else. A man who looked at her like she was sacred. Like she was salvation.

She left my father and me and moved here.

And when my father died, she locked me away. Threw me into an asylum and called it protection. Calledmeinsane. I stayed there for ten years. Ten fucking years.

I was already fragile before. But what they did do to me there? That broke whatever was left. Crushed it until there was nothing but a shell—a cold, hollow body without feeling, without purpose.

And then Lenore happened.

She showed up at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and still, something in me shifted. She looked at me,reallylooked. And something inside cracked open. For the first time in forever… I felt alive.

But she fucking left me.

Looked me straight in the eyes, promised she’d stay—and then walked away as if none of it mattered. Call me stupid for falling for a bitch like her, but Iwantedher. I didn’t care how crazy she was. I didn’t care how twisted her mind worked. I wanted her. All of her.

I was already mad. I just wanted to be kind of mad.

But she had to pay the price for making me fall in love.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

She turned my brain to oatmeal. Nothing but chaos and heat and her name stitched into every thought.

The second she started to move upstairs, I got up. Quiet. Controlled. I walked toward the door—not because I was leaving, but because I wanted her tomiss me. To search for me the way I had begged for her to stay.

I moved down the stairs, step by step until I reached the front door. I picked up the box that sat waiting on the porch, brought it inside, and placed it gently on the small table in the hallway—right beneath those golden-framed lies. All those perfect portraits of a family that never was. We were good at pretending.

I heard her.

Footsteps above. Slow. Hesitant. Dragging.

She was coming.

Just as I opened the box, she reached the top of the stairs.

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