Coins in the Dust

November 7, 1871

The pouch was open when I woke.

The coins lay scattered across the floorboards, arranged in a spiral — the same shape that crowns the chapter heads of the Kentucky book. Morning light filtered through the curtains, picking out the faint carvings on their faces. For a moment, they looked harmless. Then one twitched.

I heard them clicking against the wood like teeth shifting in a skull.

When I reached for one, the mark on my wrist flared blue-white. The sound that followed wasn’t quite a whisper — more like a sigh pressed from the walls themselves. The coin rolled away from my hand and stopped beside my foot, trembling slightly, as though it were breathing.

By the time I gathered the rest, dust had clung to my fingers, and the air had gone heavy and sweet, like copper and candle smoke. I set a single coin on the table by the window and watched it under the flame. The candle didn’t move, but its light bent toward the coin, stretching thin as thread until the shadow beneath it grew long and dark.

The coins hum now when the house goes still.

I can’t shake the feeling that they’re listening.

Not to me —

to something else.