Longest Night

Karina stood there for several heartbeats. 

Soaked, shaking, and every breath a sob. She looked toward the faint glow ahead. The farmhouse porch light flickered through the fog. 

Home…

She forced her numb legs to move. Each step squelched through the mud, her soaked hair clinging to her face, her lungs raw from crying. She didn’t look back.

The door to the house creaked open before she reached it, as if expecting her. Karina stumbled inside, dripping water onto the wooden floor. The house smelled like the usual wet herbs and oils. Her hand trembled as she locked the door behind her. Then she collapsed to her knees, clutching the keys to her chest, sobbing so hard she could barely breathe.

Outside, the wind howled again. Only this time, beneath the storm, she could swear she heard her grandmother’s voice calling her name.

No no no no no no no 

Karina slammed the last lock shut. One by one, she checked every door, every window, every hinge, her hands trembling so violently that she could barely feel the knobs anymore. The house moaned under the wind’s assault. Fog pressed against the windows like something alive, sliding down the glass in long streaks.

She dragged furniture after furniture against the door. Stacked chairs, anything with weight. Her body moved without thought, driven only by fear and the promise that her grandma will also be rescued. After what seems to be an eternity, Karina collapsed to the ground in exhaustion.

The silence inside felt worse than the storm outside. Karina’s heartbeat filled the space like a drum. She needed to do something. Anything.

Karina stumbled to the table, plugged her phone into the wall. No signal. The screen flickered red, then black. She tried her power bank. Nothing. She moved to the kitchen, to the living room, to the hall, searching every socket as if one might magically work. The storm had killed the power completely.

Her reflection stared back from the dark window. Pale, soaked, eyes rimmed with red. Behind her, the shadowed room seemed to breathe.

‘Just stay calm,’ she whispered. ‘You’re safe now. You’re inside.’

Her voice broke on the word safe. She could be, but her grandma?

She forced herself to keep moving. If she stopped, her mind would start showing her things. Her grandmother’s hand disappearing into the fog, the sound of her own scream calling for her underwater.

Karina opened the old wardrobe in the hall. Inside, behind a stack of folded quilts and a jar of dried herbs, she found a long, cloth-wrapped bundle. She unrolled it.

Her grandfather’s rifle.

The wood was old, the metal dull, but the weight was solid in her hands. Familiar somehow, a relic of all family bonding times. She checked the chamber. Still loaded. Her hands shook as she laid it across her lap and sat down by the front door, waiting. Despite being a city girl, her grandpa taught her a thing or two about the country.

Hours passed like hours always do when fear slows them. The rain softened to a drizzle. The fog thickened again. The forest outside whispered.

Then, something knocked.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Not at the front door. Karina was camped in front of it. It sounded like it came from somewhere deeper. Even the knocking sound didn’t sound like not an actual knock, but a mimicry. 

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Slow, deliberate. Coming from the back porch.

Karina froze.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

She rose halfway, rifle clutched tight.

‘Grandma?’ she whispered before she could stop herself.

The voice that answered was her grandmother’s.

‘Karina… sweet girl… open the door.’

Karina’s breath caught in her throat.

‘I fell, darling. I hurt my leg. Let me in.’

Her heart clenched. She could hear the pain, the tremor, the rasp in Winona’s voice.

She turned toward the sound, taking one, two steps before freezing mid-stride.

Don’t let them look this way. He’s already sacrificing himself.

Her grandmother’s words echoed in her skull like a prayer.

Karina backed away.

‘You’re not her,’ she whispered.

Silence.

Then came the crying. Soft, pitiful sobs outside the wall.

‘Karina, please… it’s so cold. It’s me. You can see me, can’t you?’

Karina clamped her hands over her ears, shaking her head violently. ‘Stop it… stop it, stop it, stop it!’

The sobs shifted and grew deeper. Became two voices.

‘Karina, it’s Mama. Please, baby, please open up. She’s hurt so bad. Help her.’

Karina collapsed to her knees, pressing her forehead against the rifle stock, biting her lip until she tasted blood.

‘I buried you,’ she whispered. ‘You’re gone. You’re both gone.’

The sound outside changed. The voices turned to screams. Long, jagged screams of agony overlapped

It was her mother’s voice. It was her grandmother’s. Both at once.

‘KARINA! HELP ME!’

The floorboards shook as if someone was throwing their body against the door. Karina’s sobs broke free. She screamed back, voice cracking, ‘LEAVE ME ALONE!’

Something scraped against the window behind her. Nails dragged slowly across the glass. A distorted face pressed close, fog distorting it into something grotesque. Two face pressed in one. Her mother’s and grandmother’s.

Karina fired.

The blast shattered the silence. The window blew inward. But nothing fell. Nothing bled. Only laughter. Mocking, guttural laughter that echoed through every wall.

Karina reloaded with shaking hands. ‘You’re not real!’ she yelled into the darkness. ‘You’re not real!’

The laughter faded. The house groaned again, low and heavy, like it was exhaling. Karina mustered her last remaining strength and covered the busted window with the dining table. It fit perfectly.

Then, whispers. Soft as breath. They slithered through the cracks in the walls. Through the floorboards. Through the chimney. Voices, hundreds of them, murmuring her name over and over until it became meaningless sound.

Karina. Karina. Karina.

She huddled into the corner, pulling the cardigan tight around her, tears streaming down her face. The rifle lay across her knees.

Time melted. Minutes turned to hours. The night stretched thin and cruel.

She dozed off once or twice, startled awake each time by the faint sound of her mother humming a lullaby from the other side of the door. The same song she used to sing when Karina was little. It was so beautiful, she almost stood up.

Almost. But she stayed still. She stayed all night. She never opened the door.

By the time dawn bled weakly through the mist, she was hollow — eyes swollen, lips cracked, mind drifting in and out of coherence.

She didn’t know when she fell asleep, only that she woke to silence. No whispers. No knocks. Just the faint tick of rainwater dripping from the eaves.

Karina blinked at the faint light coming through the curtains. Her body ached. Her throat burned.

And then, a knock. A heavy, sharp, real knock. Not on the walls. On the door.

‘Miss Rozakis?’ a man’s voice called.

Karina flinched violently.

‘Roxas City police, ma’am! Are you alright in there?’

She stared at the door in disbelief. The voice was steady. 

Human?

‘We found your car by the road,’ another said. ‘Do you need help?’

Karina staggered to her feet, limbs numb. Her hand reached for the doorknob. Then the edges of her vision dimmed.

The last thing she saw was the sunlight rising glinting off a silver badge, and the way the fog outside began to curl again, just behind them, before her knees buckled and everything went black.