Chapter 25

Chapter 25


The scent of old paper and dust clung to the library like a ghost that refused to leave. It wasn’t anything like the cozy libraries in TV shows where people fell in love between the shelves. No, this one felt heavier—like the shelves knew secrets they weren’t eager to share.

Lisa was in her element, perched at a table already drowning in books. Her glasses slid halfway down her nose, and her short black hair stuck up like she hadn’t brushed it all morning. Sam leaned back in her chair with that effortless posture only she could pull off, spinning a pen between her fingers. Brandon was standing behind me, tall enough that I kept catching his reflection in the library windows, while Nick… Nick was leaning far too close to me over the same book. His golden-brown eyes scanned the words like he’d written them himself.

“I don’t get it,” Brandon muttered, flipping the brittle page of a town record book. “Why would anyone write this stuff down in the first place? ‘Beware the well at the north edge, for debts unpaid may call the dead back to the living.’ Sounds like a bad horror movie.”

“Yeah, one we’re starring in,” I said under my breath.

Nick’s lips quirked. “Not the worst cast, though.” He glanced at me with that little half-smirk that always made my stomach twist.

“Focus,” Lisa hissed, smacking the table with the back of her hand. She pointed to a passage she’d circled in pencil. “The well is older than Sherfield itself. Built before settlers claimed the land. Local legends say it was used for offerings. People tossed coins, jewelry, even animals into it to ask favors from… something. A spirit. Or worse.”

Sam frowned. “And if you didn’t pay back the favor?”

Lisa adjusted her glasses, eyes sparkling with excitement. “Debt owed.”

Those two words hit me like ice water. My dream, that horrible hand clawing at the well, whispered them again in my head.

“So you’re saying,” Brandon began slowly, “that someone here—back then—made a deal. Never paid it back. And now it’s still collecting?”

Lisa nodded. “Generational curses. Spirits don’t care about time.”

The room felt heavier. My banshee senses—the part of me I never asked for—itched at the back of my skull. I didn’t hear wailing, not yet, but there was a pull. A warning.

I tried to shake it off and flipped another book open. “So what do we do? Dig the well up? Toss in spare change like it’s a wishing fountain?”

Nick chuckled. “You’d owe it more than a fiver, Aili.”

“Funny,” I shot back, but my voice was thin.

Sam leaned forward, serious now. “We need to see it. Tonight.”

Brandon sighed, raking his hand through his dark hair. “Because walking toward creepy wells with clawed hands reaching out of them is always the best plan.”

But he didn’t say no. None of us did.

By the time night wrapped around Sherfield, the five of us were standing at the edge of the woods, the path to the old well half-hidden under wild ivy. The air was damp, heavy, and the closer we walked the more my chest tightened. It wasn’t banshee-wailing tight, but like the world itself was holding its breath.

“Okay,” Brandon muttered, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets. “On a scale of one to Blair Witch, how screwed are we?”

“About an eight,” Nick replied, too cheerfully.

“Can you two not?” I snapped. My nerves were frayed enough.

The well loomed ahead, its stones cracked and dark with moss. The wooden cover over the mouth was half-rotted, splintered in places like something had pushed from below. My dream replayed in brutal detail. The clawed hand. The voice.

Sam froze a few feet away, her body tense. “Do you guys feel that?”

Nick squinted at her. “Feel what?”

She swallowed hard. “Water. I can feel the water down there. Moving.”

Lisa tilted her head. “That’s… not normal.”

“No kidding,” Brandon muttered.

I stepped closer, my breath shallow. And then I heard it—the soft wailing. Not the piercing banshee scream that signaled death. This was… grief. Endless and raw. It wrapped around us, pressing into our bones. My eyes stung and before I realized, tears were sliding down my cheeks.

Nick brushed his sleeve across his face roughly. “What the hell—why do I feel like crying?”

“It’s the spirit,” Lisa whispered, clutching her grimoire to her chest. “It’s bleeding sadness into us. Feeding on it.”

Suddenly the wooden cover cracked. A shadow surged up from the well, formless but heavy, dripping with water that didn’t touch the ground. And then a hand—just like in my dream—clawed up, nails scraping stone.

I staggered back with a scream. Brandon grabbed my arm to steady me, his eyes locked on the well.

“Not good,” he said flatly.

Sam stepped forward. Her curls clung to her damp face as she raised both hands. The air around us thickened, dampened, until water surged upward from the well like a fountain under her command. It crashed down, slamming into the shadow. The thing shrieked, the wail turning sharper, furious.

I stared, wide-eyed. “Sam—how are you—”

“I don’t know!” she yelled, pushing her hands forward. “But it’s working!”

The water wrapped the shadow like chains, binding it, dragging it back down. The clawing hand thrashed, then sank under the tide. The wailing softened, muffled, until the well grew still again.

We stood frozen in the aftermath. My chest heaved, Brandon’s grip on my arm hadn’t loosened, and Nick looked like he might be sick.

Sam finally lowered her arms, trembling. “Okay,” she whispered. “That… was new.”

Lisa’s glasses fogged as she exhaled. “You  did it again,"

“Don’t.” Sam shook her head, voice sharp. “Don’t make me into some prophecy thing. I’m just trying not to freak out.”

The night went quiet again, too quiet. But the pull in my skull, that banshee-sense, didn’t ease.

I whispered, almost to myself, “It’s not over."

And from deep in the well, faint but chilling, the words rose again