The scream kept echoing in my head long after the storm began to fade. It wasn’t just the sound itself—high, raw, desperate—but the way it had cut off so suddenly, like someone had clamped a hand over a mouth mid-breath. I lay on the couch downstairs because my room felt too small, too exposed, the quilt pulled up to my chin like a shield. Every creak of the cabin’s old floorboards sounded like footsteps on the porch.
