The night air was thick with the fragrant decay of autumn leaves, and the moon hung like a pale ghost in the starless sky. It should have been just another Halloween night in our small town, the kind where laughter echoed in the streets and children darted from house to house, their bags bulging with candy. But this year was different; this year, my little sister, Lily, had changed.

Lily had always been the kind of girl who laughed at the shadows, whose imagination was larger than life, but something dark had seeped into her soul. It started a week before Halloween when she found an old book hidden away in the attic—a dusty tome with strange symbols and echoes of a long-forgotten ritual. She’d spent hours pouring over its pages, her eyes gleaming with a lust for secrets not meant for children. At first, I thought it was just a phase, something to distract her from the mundane. Little did I know that she had awakened something far more sinister.

I first noticed it when we went out to get candy. She wore a ragged costume, a tattered black dress that seemed to swirl like smoke around her, and her pale skin glowed eerily under the streetlights. But it wasn’t just her appearance—there was something unsettling about the way she moved. I glanced at her, and for a fleeting moment, I thought I saw something else in her eyes, a hunger that made my skin crawl.

The first victim was Mrs. Thompson, the sweet old lady who lived two doors down. She was known for baking cookies that tasted like childhood memories. One night, she didn’t answer her door. Later, they found her lifeless body in the kitchen, mouth twisted in a silent scream, blood painting the walls like some grotesque art piece. I felt a cold chill, a premonition that gnawed at my gut.

As days passed, more bodies began to pile up....