The Damned Walk Among Us

A Daughter's Vow

1847

The night was as black as coal, the moon hidden behind thick clouds smothered the stars. Bittercreek felt almost like a ghost town, every corner wrapped in shadow. A sharp wind howled through the empty streets, rattling the wooden shutters and carrying with it the scent of rain – cold, metallic, foreboding.

Inside the modest sheriffs office, a single lantern flickered, walls lined with wanted posters and old rifles. The silence felt heavy, pressing in around the room like the clouds overhead. A storm was coming, and Bittercreek could feel it.

Katrina Van Buren sat at the desk, her father's old pocket watch in her hand, the soft ticking a steady heartbeat against the storm that churned outside. She held it close, feeling the cool weight of the brass against her palm. It was a comfort, one of the few left to her now.

She was seventeen – young perhaps, but already shaped by the harsh realities of life in the West. Each day seemed to carve another line into her mind, marking her with lessons of grit, loss, and survival. Her father, sheriff, James Van Buren, had made sure she was prepared for a hard life, but couldn't prepare her for this feeling creeping up her spine.

Something was wrong. She could feel it in her gut, a stone-heavy dread that made her fingers tighten around the watch. Her father was late. He'd gone out to investigate reports of strange activity on the outskirts of town – cattle mutilated, a family missing. He was usually back by now.

The door to the office suddenly banged open, shattering the silence, and Katrina shot to her feet. Her heart leapt into her throat, hope and dread twisting together in a painful knot. For a brief, desperate moment, she thought it was him.

But it wasn't her father.

Instead, a young man stood in the doorway, one of the townsfolk - Jeb, she realised, his face pale as death, eyes wide and frantic. She knew him well enough to know he wasn't a man easily spooked, which only made her stomach twist tighter.

"Miss Katrina!" he gasped, barely able to catch his breath. "It's your pa–he's in trouble! Out by the old Miller farm!"

Her heart sank, cold and heavy.

There was no time to think. No time to even feel the fear clawing at her chest. In one smooth motion, she grabbed her father's spare revolver, the weight of it both familiar and foreign in her hands. She pushed past Jeb, out into the storm, her mind blank but for one burning thought:

I have to get him.

The Miller farm lay just beyond the edge of town, a decrepit place, forgotten and left to rot. Katrina's boots sank into the muddy ground as she approached, each step weighted with dread. In the distance, a lantern swayed, its light small and vulnerable against the vast darkness.

She stopped short, her breath catching. And then, cutting through the hiss of rain, came a sound that would stay with her forever.

A deep, guttural growl, like an animal – but wrong, too low, too feral. And then, unmistakable, the sickening crack of bone.

Katrina froze at the edge of the clearing, her blood turning to ice. The lantern lay on the ground, casting a faint, flickering glow over the horrific scene before her. Her father stood with his back to her, revolver raised, his entire body tense, but she could see it – the fear in the rigid lines of his shoulders.

And then she saw what he was facing.

The figure loomed in the darkness, its body barley more than a silhouette, shifting and distorting as though it were made of smoke. Every inch of it felt wrong, as if the creature was something half-real, not meant to exist in the world of the living.