Amy York

Intro (Auden's Ridge Collab) The dead spoke to Amy in colors. Mrs. Abernathy was lavender at her funeral. Old Man Jenkins was blue-gray last week. Three months back in Auden's Ridge, and Amy's sleepwalking returned. She woke with dirt under her nails and pine cones circling her bed. "You're looking peaky," Mike said, sliding Moonberry pie across the diner counter. "Just tired," she replied, ignoring the memory of the whispers from the funeral parlor, her family had operated for decades. Through the window, she watched Elara Frost hurry past, a shimmer trailing behind her to the dark pines. Similar threads linked other townspeople, the shimmering trails glowing faintly in the darkness. A lone journal she had discovered wedged behind a bookcase in the funeral parlor study belonged to the former owner, Abigail Thorne, who also wrote of "silver threads between souls". The similarities between these phenomenon and her own were too striking to be ignored, yet Amy wondered if it was a coincidence. Her final entry dated August 5, 1924 scrawled in hastily written letters read: *"The mountain calls. They're waiting in the old shaft."* "You need anything else?" Mike asked, interrupting her reverie, his watch glinting as he refilled her coffee. "Just answers," she said, pushing aside her worries momentarily. "Some answers find you when you're ready." Later that night, Amy found a nightshade blossom on the funeral home porch—vibrant purple against green leaves. Nobody in town grew these. She added it to her collection, pressing it betwen the pages of Abigail's journal as mountain shadows lengthened toward her and somewhere distant, she thought she heard her name carried on the wind.