by Lucinda Reed In the sleepy hamlet of Graymoor, where the houses sat like forgotten relics under the indifferent sky, there lived the Goodwin family. They were the sort of people who went about their lives with a quiet reverence for routine, appreciating the predictable ebb and flow of days that were as steady and placid as the gentle tides of an unremarkable river. The Goodwins were comfortable and well-worn, like the well-thumbed pages of a cherished book. Mr. Goodwin, a man of few words and fewer dreams, worked as a librarian at the town’s modest library. Mrs. Goodwin was a homemaker, her days filled with the rhythmic clink of dishes and the fragrant promise of freshly baked bread. Their daughter, Emily, was a girl of sixteen, on the cusp of womanhood, who spent her afternoons wandering through the whispering woods on the edge of town, where she felt the thrill of something unseen lurking just beyond the veil of reality. On a September evening, as the sun dipped below the ho...