Evan slammed the book shut, the words still burning in his head.
Lila Moore and Noah Carter were the only two who survived the incident. Even then, they did not defeat the Grinner. They merely put it to sleep. It would awaken again thirty years later.
"What?" Evan scoffed, running a hand through his hair. "This is bullshit."
He flipped the book open again, rereading the paragraph like it might change if he stared hard enough. It didn't.
"They killed Tiffany. They killed Derek." His voice rose with every name. "All of that—all of it…just to make that motherfucker sleep? Not even dead?"
Evan leaned back against his bed, staring at the ceiling as anger boiled in his chest. His heart thumped hard enough to hurt.
"My blood pressure." he muttered.
He had liked those characters. They had been brave. Funny. Human. And the author had butchered them for an ending that felt like a bad joke, evil postponed, not stopped.
Evan exhaled slowly, closing the book for good.
"If I were in that town," he said quietly, "I'd do it differently."
The room felt too quiet after Evan closed the book.
No music. No traffic noise from outside. Just the soft hum of the electric fan and the sound of his own breathing.
"Calm down," he told himself. "It's just a stupid ending."
Still, his chest felt tight.
He picked up his phone, scrolling mindlessly, but the words from the book kept replaying in his head.
"They didn't even kill it."
"Thirty years."
"Everyone else died."
"Such lazy writing," Evan muttered. "If you're going to kill characters, at least make it mean something."
He stood up, pacing his small room. Posters on the wall, old movies, games he never finished. His life felt unfinished too, suddenly. Like something had been cut off mid-sentence.
Evan sighed and glanced at the clock.
11:47 PM.
"Great," he said. "Now I'm pissed and tired."
He grabbed a glass of water from the kitchen. The hallway light flickered once, then steadied.
Evan paused.
"…Huh."
Probably nothing.
He took a step forward.
The world tilted.
The glass slipped from his hand, shattering on the floor. A sharp pain exploded in his chest, stealing the air from his lungs.
"What?" Evan gasped.
His knees buckled.
He collapsed, vision blurring, heart hammering like it was trying to tear itself apart.
"No…no, this isn't…"
He clawed at his shirt, panic flooding in.
"I'm too young for this. I don't have heart problems. This is stupid. This is—"
Pain.
Pressure.
Darkness creeping in from the edges of his sight.
As he lay there, gasping on the cold kitchen floor, one final thought burned brighter than the rest.
"If I were there… I'd save them."
The lights went out.
Cold.
That was the first thing Evan noticed.
Cold air brushing against his skin. The scent of damp earth and pine.
He sucked in a sharp breath and sat up.
"…What?"
Grass pressed into his palms.
Real grass.
Evan looked around, heart pounding, not from pain this time, but from confusion.
A playground stood nearby. Rusted swings creaked gently in the wind. A cracked slide loomed like a broken rib.
Beyond it, houses. Old ones. Quiet ones.
A wooden sign stood at the edge of the road.
GRAYHAVEN
Evan's blood ran cold.
"No," he whispered. "No, no, no."
His voice sounded wrong.
Too high.
Too young.
He looked down at his hands.
Small. Thin. Scraped at the knuckles.
"This isn't my body."
Panic surged.
He scrambled to his feet, stumbling toward a reflective surface—a car window parked nearby. He stared into it.
A boy stared back.
Dark Brown hair. Pale skin. Wide, unfamiliar eyes.
Thirteen years old.
"…Jayce Whitman." Evan breathed.
The name surfaced in his mind effortlessly, like a memory that wasn't his.
"This is impossible."
"I died."
"I died."
A sudden headache slammed into him.
Images flooded his mind, school hallways, a small bedroom, a man shouting, a woman crying.
Jayce's memories.
Evan clutched his head, teeth gritted.
"Stop, stop, this isn't mine!"
The pain faded as suddenly as it came.
Silence returned.
Then another realization hit him, heavier than the rest.
The year.
A calendar posted on a nearby community board flapped in the wind.
1994.
Evan's heart sank.
"The year it starts."
The killings.
The missing children.
The smiling monster.
His breathing grew shallow.
"…I'm inside the book."
A laugh escaped his lips, thin, shaky, almost hysterical.
"No," he said aloud. "No way. This is a dream. This has to be a dream."
It had to be
The end of prologue