Whidbey Island

Olivia Childers steps onto Whidbey Island, the salty air thick with secrets. Her inheritance-a crumbling cabin on Puget Sound-waits, its splintered wood and warped windows whispering of a past eager to break free. As she peels back layers of dust and decay, something stirs beneath. Old letters. Faded photographs. Unfinished stories clawing their way into the present.

But it's not just the past reaching for her. Something else is waiting-patient, calculating. The shadows shift. Watching. Waiting. A ghost lingers-trapped in time, convinced she still lives, reliving her greatest regret in an endless, suffocating loop. Olivia's grasp on reality wavers. Is she truly alone? Or have Whidbey Island's forgotten voices begun to rise?

Solitude presses against her from all sides-both everywhere and nowhere. But beneath the decay, beneath the memories, there's something darker. Something insidious. The walls breathe, but not with the echoes of the past. No, there is something else in this house-something that never left. A presence that has waited, feeding off the sorrow embedded in its walls. It knows her fears. It knows her name. And as the island exhales, as time bends, Olivia realizes the truth isn't just waiting to be uncovered-it's watching her. Smiling.

She isn't restoring this home. She's waking it up.