Sown in Light

The sun was a warm weight on the back of my neck, the kind of heat that promises a summer spent in a haze of salt air and slow afternoons. My name is Summer, and for as long as I could remember, this small coastal town was our place. Every year, we would spend the season here, a tradition passed down through generations. My grandmother always said there was no better place for a summer vacation, a sentiment I’d believed my entire life. My main goal this year was simple: to finally finish the monstrous, 2,000-piece puzzle of a shipwreck that had sat half-done on the dining room table for two years.

This year, though, something felt different. The usual boisterous seagulls were silent, perched on pilings like statues. The scent of honeysuckle was tinged with something metallic, like old coins left out in the rain. I first noticed it by the lighthouse, a faint scratching sound that seemed to come from inside the stone itself. It was a relentless, dry whisper that felt less like a sound and more like a vibration on my skin, making the hairs on my arms stand on end. I shook my head, dismissing it. Old buildings make old noises. It was probably just the wind.

But the whispers returned, and they weren’t just in my head. I heard them on the boardwalk, a chorus of faint, dry scrapes that seemed to follow me. I saw it on the faces of the people who had come to vacation here, a vacant, almost ecstatic look in their eyes. On the beach, I saw the same strange spiral symbol etched into the wet sand, a pattern that no one else seemed to notice. I even saw it in a child’s drawing, a crayon sketch of a stick figure family with that same swirling shape over the sun.

I began to second-guess myself. Was I just overtired from the long drive? Was the metallic smell just a strange coastal wind? It wasn’t until I saw Mr. Gable, the old fisherman, that my doubts vanished. He was a creature of habit, always sitting on the same bench, cleaning his nails with a tarnished knife. But today, he had the same odd symbol carved into his forearm, a swirling spiral but it pulsed with a faint, unidentifiable light. He seemed proud of it, smiling a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. His hand, as it compulsively traced the design, trembled with a nervous energy I’d never seen before.

Unable to shake the feeling of unease, I went to the town’s historical society, hoping to find a mundane explanation for the symbols. I wasn’t looking for anything specific, just a dusty old book about local history. Instead, a book, brittle and smelling of mould, seemed to have been left out just for me, lying open on a lectern. The title page was gone, but a line had been underlined repeatedly in what looked like faded ink. “They return to this land to abide,” it read, “to consume and to replenish, to rest and to feed.” I dropped the book, the pages fluttering open to show crude drawings of a swirling pattern, eerily similar to the one on Mr. Gable’s arm.

A chill, far colder than any ocean breeze, began to seep into my bones. The warmth of the summer I knew was an illusion, a lie told to the world. It was not a season. It was an event. A cosmic lie. I looked out the window at the setting sun, its orange light painting the sky. It wasn’t a sunset. It was a harvest. They were not dwelling here. They were feeding. The heat was a byproduct. The light was their hunger. We were the crops. I backed away from the window, my legs weak, and a single, frantic thought pounded in my head: You are next. You are one of them. You always have been.