I am old now and time has nearly run out.

It's nights like these, dark and terrible nights, when I remember most clearly. Nights when the wind sounds like a scream, like a siren’s song, a banshee’s call. When it whips through this ramshackle house, and the rain batters the windowpanes, I hear it all again. It’s like I never left that lonely street, like I’m still standing, frozen, listening to the raspy words of the pale stranger.

How innocent we were, Devin and I, so young and naïve. So ready for adventure. And it was adventure that brought us to that town, to that street, to that cursed house.

To say that we were attracted to the dark side would be both an understatement and an exaggeration. We grew up sheltered in our rich little hamlet less than an hour n...

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