I was reading a book alone in my room when my mother barged in, a crash of thunder to compliment the current storm of my mess.

"Your music is way too loud, you've been hiding in this room for weeks, get down here and do the dishes, vacuum this disgusting room, anything, I don't care!"

I rolled my eyes with a sigh, slamming my book shut. My eyes met hers, seething and cold.

"There are a million other ways you could say that, Mom."

She whipped around, storming down the stairs and into the kitchen with a frustrated grumble as she went. I had been getting the cold shoulder and the hot head from her since last year.

My father had taken me to a cabin in the mountains of Tennessee for my sixteenth birthday. For the entire week, we were scheduled to do all sorts of fun things - zip lining, fishing, cave tours, you name it. With my parents being divorced, my mom had hated the idea of us going together for an entire week. Despite her poor attitude and snide remarks, Dad and I packed up and left. The first few days of being in the mountains were the best of my life.

Everything changed on the fourth night.

Tragedy struck and my father lost his life protecting me. Being a child of separated parents wasn't easy, but being the child of a dead parent was much harder.

Since then, I haven't liked silence. I play my music a little too loud, watch a few too many movies, and get invested in not-that-good TV shows (I wouldn't mind if Netflix changed their selection more often).

My mom hasn't seemed to be that upset about his death. Instead, she's been pointing her anger at me. She thinks I've changed because I'm "acting out", desperate for attention since the loss of my father. As badly as I'd like to tell her the truth, I know that it would complicate things and make everything drastically worse. For now, I'd just let her think I was a bratty teenage girl going through a phase. If it provided a hint of normalcy, it was good enough for me.

I demanded to be homeschooled soon after his death when I left class in a hurry, realizing that they had followed me. The things that got my dad. We were taking an exam in my third period Biology class and Ms. Carter had requested complete silence until everyone turned in their papers.

That was the first time I saw them since the night in the cabin. My dad had picked up rather quickly that noise was what kept them away.

So noise I made. Watching YouTube videos of new bands, playing video games with the volume up, talking on the phone with my friends late into the night, I did anything I could do to make constant noise. Unfortunately, this was at the expense of improving an already very strained relationship with my mother.

"It's supposed to storm tonight," she said as I was putting clean dishes away, much calmer now. "Apparently it's going to be pretty bad. I want help with the chores in case we lose power for a while."

I nodded, offering a quick apology for spending too much time in my room. Getting along with her wasn't on my list of priorities, but since my dad died I have missed having someone I could be close to.

Before their divorce, The three of us would play board games whenever the weather was bad as a way to pass time. Maybe mom and I could do that together tonight.

The storm started well into the night at around two in the morning. I had been awake finishing my novel to some instrumental music when the first crash of thunder shook the house. I remembered how my mom used to close her eyes and take a breath when she heard the rumbling, savoring the sound as if it comforted her. She marveled in the sound of a deafening storm.

I jogged down the stairs, through the kitchen and headed towards her bedroom. Maybe she would want to play a game and listen to the thunder, I thought. Our talking would make a safe amount of noise, right?

I made a quick detour to the living room, shuffling through the cabinets at the lowest level of the entertainment center to find a game I thought she'd like. Monopoly? No, too long... Maybe Sorry? I think she said that was "for children". I wasn't really sure what she liked anymore.

I settled on Battleship and made my way back towards her bedroom. I could hear her breathing from outside the slightly cracked door, steady as she slept.

Softly, I knocked.

"Huh?" she started, quickly rolling over to face me. "What? What time is it?"

"It's kind of late... the storm started, so I brought Battleship in case -"

"How late?" she interrupted.

"Um... I think around 2:30 now. Do you wanna play or-"

"I'm really tired, we can play tomorrow. Get some sleep, aren't you behind on those workbooks for school? I have to submit those for you so work on those or something." She rolled back over and pulled the covers back up, signifying that her answer was non-negotiable.

I sighed, turning around and somberly walking back to the living room to replace the board game. I jumped as the cabinet closed, a booming clap of thunder shaking the earth at the exact moment the door clicked shut.

The lights went out.

I looked around aimlessly in the black room, reaching my arms out and fumbling for something that could help me see. A flashlight, one of our battery-powered candles, anything would do.

I hummed to myself as I climbed the stairs, realizing that the radio had shut off with the power outage. My heart began to race and I slowly took a step backwards down the stairs. Fear began to creep up my body, numbing my feet and legs as it crawled higher and higher.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Snapping back to reality, I began humming a quick and uneven tune, rushing back to my mother's room.

"Hey mom, do you think you could get up now? I'm pretty bored and we just lost power so-"

"Seriously, I already told you I'm trying to sleep," she whispered harshly. "You are way too old to be scared of the dark. Go to sleep!"

"Mom I just-"

"Close the door. Now."

With a frustrated sigh, I pulled the door shut harshly. I snapped my fingers and continued my desperate song, feeling my way back into the living room to the couch.

I had no clue what these creatures were. My first run in with them was at the cabin with my dad. He called the police, who were less than helpful. It was a Google search that came up based on our description of the creatures, who seemed to disappear once we spoke or made noise.

The Silence.

In pure quiet, they hunt. According to my dad and his phone, they are native to mountain ranges and are known as a cryptid, something make believe.

They are not make believe.

We had one more night in the cabin. Dad and I had taken turns watching, humming tunes and playing a radio as we kept the noise going so one of us could sleep. He was so tired. He left the radio with me, saying he'd be right back. The last thing he had ever done was make sure that I was surrounded with noise.

When I woke up the next morning, he was gone. The radio was still playing in the room I'd slept in. I saw what was left of him on the couch, where he'd apparently dozed off while giving me some alone time. I remember seeing him, touching his cold arm, noticing the dried blood that trickled from the strange mark on his forehead down his nose and cheek. He should've taken the radio with him. We should've stuck together. It didn't matter now, they'd gotten to him. He was dead.

And they had followed me home. They were back again.

My mind shuffled through an array of ideas, quickly giving up on each one. There was a small chance I'd be able to find my phone in the dark and it was even less likely to have sufficient charge. Getting my mom to talk to me would end up in her slamming the door and locking me out, ignoring me for the rest of the night. I was fairly certain that we only had one flashlight with batteries in it and that it was sitting in the car outside. It would be impossible to find the keys in the pitch black and a light wouldn't make much noise, anyhow.

Dim, murky grey orbs glared at me from the left side of the living room. I quickly realized that I had stopped humming while trailing off in thought. With a gasp, broken and strangled notes escaped my mouth as I forced myself to sing. I blinked, and the eyes were gone. Tears formed in my eyes and poured over onto my cheeks. I could not keep this up all night and with it being so late, no one would work on the power until morning.

Softly, I whispered a tune and cried. My eyes were feeling heavy with sleep and the sting of tears was making it worse. It was so hard to stay awake in pitch black room, despite all of the fear in my body. I looked around the room as I hummed some more, terrified to see something looking back at me. Again.

I hated feeling as if I was staring death in the face. I wanted to turn around and curl up, covering my head in a blanket and waiting until it was all over. The room didn't feel empty as I closed my eyes and sang through my tears. I knew something was watching me, waiting for me to mess up, but I would not go down without a fight.

BEEP!

I jumped, heart pounding out of my chest. A breathless laughed escaped me as I realized the microwave had turned on in the kitchen. The power was back.

Immediately, I scrambled off the couch and darted through the house, skipping every other step as I ran up the stairs to my room. I flipped the bedroom light on and examined the chaotic, poor excuse of a bedroom. My phone was among the mess on the end table and a blinking red light beckoned from the radio, begging me to turn the music back on.

I took a deep breath, turned the dial and threw myself on to my bed with a sigh. That was way too close, I thought. I had to be more careful. Heart-rate finally returning to normal, my eyelids succumbed to the weight of sleep.

A sharp stabbing pain in the center of my forehead jolted me into consciousness. As I went to rub the sting, I realized my arms were stuck at my side. With no visible restraints, I struggled against cold, unforgiving air. I looked around the pitch black room, realizing my lights and radio had been shut off while I was asleep.

Mom. My stomach churned. The tears begin welling up in my eyes again as six cloudy eyes pierced mine. They surrounded my bed, towering over me.

"Marked."

It was unclear which set of eyes the raspy whisper came from but it was obvious it had to do with the liquid running down my nose from my forehead.

Just like it did on my dad.

Panic filled every cell of my body as I struggled, whimpering but unable to make a sound. Each of the eyes softened and an icy gust of air swept over my lips. Instinctively, I knew it was touching me.

That was the last thing I felt before slipping out of consciousness.