The rain started the day Piper moved back. Not the gentle autumn mist she remembered from childhood, but cold sheets that turned the streets into black mirrors reflecting pure darkness. She watched it from her condo window, the sparse furniture behind her casting long shadows in the failing light. Across the water, the city glowed like something alive. Here, the town felt like it was holding its breath.
"Piper? Piper Matthews?"
She was in the grocery store, holding a bag of apples she didn't really want, when the woman approached. Mid-twenties, yoga clothes, teeth too white for the fluorescent lighting.
"I thought that was you! How long have you been back?"
Piper manufactured a smile. "A few weeks."
"We should definitely get together sometime." The woman's eyes were already scanning past her, toward the wine aisle. "It's so great to see you."
They both knew it wasn't.
The doctor's office where Piper worked smelled like disinfectant and something else-something sweet and rotting underneath. Dr. Brennan was kind enough, showed her the ancient computer systems, the filing cabinets that still held paper records. Her coworkers, two women named Jennifer and Diane, trained her with professional smiles that never reached their eyes.
"You'll get the hang of it," Jennifer said, demonstrating the billing software. "It's easy once you do it a few times."
Piper nodded. She noticed Jennifer's manicured nails, the way they tapped against the keys. Everything here was surface. Polish and click and flash a bleached smile.
At night, alone in her condo, Piper scrolled through dating apps until her eyes burned. The faces blurred together. She swiped mechanically, matching with men whose bios said things like "looking for something real" and "no games." They all played games.
Tom recognized her at the coffee shop. She didn't recognize him at first-the middle school bully had grown into his features, become almost handsome in that generic way men sometimes do.
"Piper Matthews. Holy shit." He bought her coffee without asking if she wanted it. "Man, takes me back. Remember Mrs. Henderson's class?"
She remembered him pulling her hair. Remembered the names he called her. But she said, "Yeah, vaguely."
They sat. He talked. She half-listened, watching rain bead on the window. When he mentioned a party, she almost said no. But the walls of her condo were closing in, and her phone had become a weight in her pocket.
"It's different," Tom said, leaning forward. "You'll see."
The night was Biblical in its darkness. Tom's truck plowed through streets Piper should have recognized but didn't. The rain hammered the windshield, wipers barely keeping up.
"Here." He reached back, pulled out two black balaclavas. "Put this on."
"What?"
"It's like a masquerade thing. Trust me, everyone does it."
The mask smelled like fabric softener and something else. Something chemical. Through its eye holes, the world looked smaller.
The house appeared suddenly in the headlights-a normal suburban home with a manicured lawn slowly drowning. Tom knocked. A man in a gas mask and a suit answered, water dripping from the rubber edges.
"Password?"
"Nautilus."
Inside, the house breathed. Small lamps created pools of blood-red darkness. Saxophone jazz roared from speakers, furious and discordant. People stood in small clusters, not talking, just existing in the dim spaces between rooms. Their masks made them into creatures-animal faces, skulls, abstract horror.
Piper felt Tom's hand on her lower back, guiding her toward the kitchen. The counter was a pharmacy. Pills in bowls like candy. Cocaine cut into neat lines. Vape pens arranged like silverware.
Tom made drinks, heavy-handed with the vodka. "Relax," he said, though she hadn't spoken.
Back in the living room, she clutched the glass and watched. An older man-his mask was Venetian, ornate-sat too close to a girl who couldn't be more than twenty-one. His hand rested on her exposed knee. The girl stared at nothing.
"Bathroom," Piper said.
The door was locked for seven minutes. When it opened, three people stumbled out on clouds of cherry flavored vape smoke, laughing at something that wasn't funny. Inside, Piper poured the drink into the toilet and ordered an Uber.
Tom was waiting when she emerged. "You okay?"
She pushed past him. More people had arrived. The party was transforming, becoming something louder, more desperate. Bodies pressed against furniture. The man in the gas mask had his hands down another man's pants.
The cold air outside felt like salvation.
Days became weeks. Piper drove past the house in daylight-just a house, neat and ordinary in a new development. Tom texted until she blocked him. She went on dates that went nowhere, had coffees with women who talked about nothing.
Winter came hard and fast. The town turned gray, then white, then gray again under the weight of dirty snow.
At work, she clicked the wrong calendar. Dr. Brennan's personal schedule opened. Every Saturday: "Night Feast" with an address. She photographed the screen quickly, before anyone noticed.
The first Saturday, she only drove by. Cars lined the street like a funeral procession. Tom's truck. Dr. Brennan's Mercedes. The house dimly lit, curtains drawn against the winter night.
The second Saturday, she went inside.
The password was "Helix." Her mask was a raven, long-beaked and cruel. No one questioned her. No one questioned anyone.
She told herself it was curiosity. Told herself she'd leave after one drink, after seeing what it really was.
She didn't leave.
The cocaine made her teeth numb and her thoughts sharp. The vodka softened the edges. In dark corners, hands found her body and she let them. The jazz was louder now, or maybe she was just deeper inside it. Someone passed her a pill-small, blue-and she swallowed it without asking what it was.
She woke in her condo with no memory of the drive home.
She went back the next week. And the next.
Each party was at a different house, but they were all the same house. Same dim lights, same roaring jazz, same buffet of chemicals and willing bodies. She cycled through masks-a demon, a cat, a blank white face with no features. She became addicted to the anonymity, the way she could be anyone or no one.
The shame came in the mornings, heavy as wet concrete. She'd lie in bed staring at the ceiling, reconstructing the night in fragments. A hand on her thigh. Her own hand reaching for pills she couldn't name. The taste of someone's mouth, chemical and wrong. She'd shower until the water ran cold, scrubbing her skin raw, but it never felt clean.
She'd swear she wouldn't go back. Would delete the calendar photos from her phone. Would block the addresses. Saturday afternoons she'd make plans-order takeout, queue up movies, promise herself a quiet night in.
But by evening, the walls of her condo would start closing in. The silence would become unbearable. Her skin would itch with restlessness. She'd find herself in the car, driving toward whatever address was next, hating herself with every mile.
At the parties, she'd watch herself from somewhere outside her body. Saw herself accept drinks from strangers. Saw herself follow masked figures into dark rooms. Saw herself become the thing she'd been disgusted by at that first party. Each time, she promised it would be the last time. Each time, she lied.
The disgust was a living thing inside her. It fed on her during the daylight hours, grew fat on her self-loathing. At work, she could barely look at herself in the bathroom mirror. When Jennifer made small talk about weekend plans, Piper wanted to scream. I know where you were. I know what you did. I know because I was there too.
But she never screamed. She just smiled and said, "Nothing much. Stayed in."
The worst part wasn't the drugs or the anonymous sex or the mornings spent vomiting into her toilet. The worst part was how normal it started to feel. How the shock wore off. How she stopped flinching when she saw things that should have sent her running.
She recognized people by their movements, their voices. The way Jennifer from work laughed-too loud, too sharp-gave her away. Dr. Brennan had a distinctive posture, shoulders slightly hunched. She saw Tom often, saw his mask come off in dark rooms, saw what he did there.
She saw teenagers. Young faces, uncertain, being guided into bedrooms by older hands. And she did nothing. Just took another drink, another pill, let herself dissolve into the music and the darkness.
Every Sunday she'd wake up hating herself a little more. Every Saturday she'd go back anyway, still telling herself she wouldn't go even as she drove there.
Spring came reluctantly. The snow turned to gray slush, then muddy water.
At the party in March, she was three drinks deep, something synthetic coursing through her veins, when she saw them-a girl, maybe seventeen, being led toward the stairs by a man in an elaborate bird mask.
"I don't want to," the girl said. Her voice was small.
"Come on," the man said. "You're here, aren't you?"
Piper moved without thinking. Grabbed his arm. "She said no."
"Mind your business." He tried to pull away.
Piper yanked his mask off.
Dr. Brennan's face stared back at her, eyes wide with sudden fury.
The room froze. But the jazz couldn't take a hint to pause.
"You don't-" Dr. Brennan started.
Hands grabbed Piper from behind. She was lifted, carried, thrown out the front door into the spring mud. The door slammed. Locked.
The consequences came quickly. Monday morning, she arrived at work to find her belongings in a box. "It's not working out," Diane the office manager said. Not Dr. Brennan. He wouldn't even look at her.
Her condo was broken into Tuesday night. They smashed her TV, slashed her couch, spray-painted words on the walls she couldn't bring herself to read.
Her car: keyed, tires slashed.
No one would talk to her. The grocery store clerk wouldn't meet her eyes. Former coworkers crossed the street to avoid her.
Saturday, she drove to where the Night Feast should be. The house was dark, empty. They'd moved it. Or cancelled it. She'd been excommunicated.
Wednesday night, she woke to hands on her throat. Four masks-gas mask, skull, demon, cat-surrounded her bed. They tied her hands with zip ties, covered her mouth with tape.
"Leave town," the gas mask said. The voice was muffled, could have been anyone. "Or next time we don't stop."
They beat her with fists that felt professional, calculated. Ribs, stomach, thighs-places that wouldn't show. When they left, she lay there until dawn, tasting blood.
The GPS tracker cost forty dollars on Amazon. She attached it to Tom's truck outside a bar, her hands steady despite the bruises.
Saturday night, she followed the signal to a house on the north side. She parked three blocks away and walked through the darkness.
The liquid in her bag was clear, tasteless. She'd researched it carefully-benzodiazepines dissolved in water, enough to make someone sleep but not enough to kill. Probably.
The back window was unlocked. She'd counted on their confidence, their certainty that she was broken.
Inside, the party was in full swing. Bodies pressed together, jazz screaming, chemicals flowing. She wore a devil mask, a red dress. She looked like she belonged.
She moved through the kitchen like a ghost, adding drops to every drink, every glass. No one noticed. They were too busy being anonymous, being free.
She watched them fall. First one, slumping on the couch. Then another, sliding down the wall. They laughed at first, thinking it was the drugs they'd chosen, not the drug she'd given them. Within twenty minutes, the house was full of sleeping bodies.
Piper worked methodically. One by one, she removed their masks. One by one, she photographed their faces. Dr. Brennan. Jennifer. Diane. Tom. The woman from the grocery store. The mayor. A teacher. A youth pastor. The police chief.
So many faces she knew. So many faces that smiled at her in daylight.
She uploaded the photos to a website designed to handle leaks. Anonymous. Untraceable. She included addresses, dates, everything she'd documented.
Then she walked out the back door, got in her car, and drove toward the bridge.
The city across the water glowed brighter as she approached. In her rearview mirror, the town grew smaller, darker.
Then she saw the headlights.
A truck. Large, high up. Keeping pace three cars back.
Her heart hammered. It could be anyone. The bridge had traffic even at this hour. But the shape was familiar. The way it sat heavy on the road.
Tom's truck.
Or maybe not. Maybe paranoia had finally won.
The bridge stretched ahead, lights reflecting off black water. Her phone buzzed in the cup holder.
She glanced down.
Unknown number: "You can't escape."
Her hands tightened on the wheel. In the rearview mirror, the truck was still there, matching her speed exactly.
Behind her, phones would be buzzing. People waking up on strange floors with their secrets exposed. The entire town's carefully maintained surface cracking open to reveal the rot underneath.
But they were waking up. And they would know.
The bridge seemed longer now, the city on the other side suddenly less like salvation and more like just another place to hide. The truck's headlights grew brighter in her mirror.
Piper pressed the accelerator. The engine whined.
The truck accelerated too.
She drove faster, the city lights blurring, the rain starting again-just a few drops on the windshield at first, then more. Always more rain.
The phone buzzed again, but she didn't look.
Ahead, the city waited. Behind, something followed.
And Piper drove into the uncertain darkness between them.