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Webby, her guardian angel, had told her something the night before it happened.
Find starlight.
She hadn't known what was coming at the time. But in the morning, she saw it. A singing mob downtown, moving together in perfect synchronization.
People in the streets were smiling their awful smiles, spinning in horrific pirouettes and miming jazz hands right before they grasped your throat and put their essence where your voice once was.
There was nowhere you could go that you didn't see it. It was unnerving watching people dance outside her small trailer. Hearing their voices become louder and louder, until they nearly became a singular voice.
But even then, that wasn't what scared Hannah Foster.
It was that Lex and Ethan had been out of the house that day.
We'll be back soon. Love you, Banana, they had said.
They told her they were going to work. Hannah knew what they were really doing. They were selling mom's pills for money so the three of them could eat for the rest of the week.
They said they'd be downtown.
The bad things were downtown. They were downtown.
Starlight, starlight, starlight. Webby's voice chanted.
Ethan, Lexie, Ethan, Lexie. Hannah's thoughts screamed.
Hannah knew Ethan and her sister were dead. She wasn't stupid. And finally, after all this time, knew she wasn't crazy either like everyone said. Like her mother had always said.
But she wanted them here. She didn't want to be alone.
She was scared.
Webby once told her she was capable of power beyond anything she could imagine. That as long as Hannah vowed to be her best self, no one could take the strength she had away from her.
Lex was the best of her. Everything good that Hannah was came from her sister. And now she was gone.
How could she be strong now?
You have to try, Hannah.
Theyre going to come for you.
But there's still time to make things right.
There's still a way out of this.
Make it through the crowd.
Find starlight.
I know you can.
Webby whispers her words of encouragement in Hannah's mind, and as the tears flow, as sorrow takes ahold of her nearly, she thinks about what Lexie and Ethan would want her to do.
They would want her to run, to hide, to find someone to trust. They'd want her to be safe.
There's no one you can trust here anymore.
I'm sorry, Hannah.
I want you to be safe, too.
But this world needs you.
Why did it need her? Why did she have to be the one with this gift, why couldn't someone else have it? It wasnt fair.
She just—
She just wanted to go home.
But she was home. She was. She was in the trailer she grew up in, the only place she'd ever known.
And with biting terror, she realizes it may be the last place she'll ever see.
We're running out of time.
I know you're scared, Hannah, but you're not alone.
You have me.
I'm not going to leave you behind.
Webby was her friend, even when others claimed her to be imaginary, she was always there. And she was real, all this time.
She didn't have Lex and Ethan anymore.
But maybe, just maybe, she could help who she had left.
Hannah made a move towards the front door.
And then the doorknob moved on its own.
Oh god, no. No, no, no.
Someone was—
It's too late. I'm sorry.
They're here.
You need to protect yourself, Hannah.
"How?" Hannah asked webby, her voice raw from disuse. Hannah's hands shook as the doorknob rattled, she moved her mother's rocking chair to the door to try and block it off, and then she ran back into the hallway with frantic legs.
There is a gun in your mother's room.
Do you know how to fire it, Hannah?
"N-no, I don't."
That's okay.
I'll tell you how.
"Where— where's the gun, webby?"
In her bedside drawer.
You need to use it.
Quickly, Hannah.
Hannah opened the door and stepped into her mom's room, opening the first drawer, and there it was.
The phrase hidden in plain sight would be too generous. No, Pamela Foster was just reckless. Reckless and dead, too, probably.
Hannah couldn't bring herself to grieve the loss.
Hannah grabbed the handgun. It was cold to the touch, black and small and heavy. It didn't feel right in her hands.
"Now what do I do?" Hannah asks through her tears.
From across the hallway, she hears something crashing, something falling. Something breaking. The chair hadn't worked, Hannah realizes with horror.
They're in the house, now.
Hannah sobs harder. She's so scared. She's going to die here all alone. She's sure of it.
No, Hannah.
You're not dead, yet.
Undo the safety on the gun.
Pull back the hammer, aim, and fire.
It's simple, you can do this.
There's only two of them.
"Only... two?" She asks. She doesn't know what she was expecting.
A swarm of the possessed, just like the zombie movies Ethan liked to watch, perhaps.
Hannah could handle two. She... She could fire the gun, now that webby told her how. It'd be okay.
That's when she hears it.
The singing.
Not just the singing, no, it's the voices. Two smooth, harmonious voices that put ice in Hannah's heart the second she hears them.
"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray..." One voice begins—soft, perfectly on-key, and wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
She was always off-key when she'd sing after Hannah had a nightmare, continuing even after she thought her sister was long asleep. Because she'd never say it outloud, but it comforted her, too.
"You'll never know, dear, how much I love you..." The other joins in. Light and airy, complimenting the first. But the way he sings dear, it lacks the fondness you'd find in his voice. The kind he had while cooking in the kitchen, or when he'd sing under his breath as he worked on cars in his dad's garage.
Hannah sobs out a gasp, nearly dropping the gun before holding onto it again with a vice grip and pointing it forward.
She stares down the hallway in shock, in horror, as she's met with the faces of the only two people that ever cared for her.
No.
She's looking at what's become of them.
The things that were once Lex and Ethan smile, blue light shining in their irises.
Hannah can't hear Webby anymore. She can hear nothing at all as blood rushes in her ears.
Nothing but them.
And on the next verse, they sing together.
"Please dont take my sunshine away."