The bells of St. Mary’s Chapel tolled a mournful rhythm against the steady beat of the rain. Inside, a suffocating silence had fallen over the congregation. Two small, white coffins rested side by side near the altar, their polished lids gleaming under the dim chapel lights. In the front pew, Clara Rivera sat rigid, her hands gripping the shoulders of her seven-year-old niece, Laya. Behind them, her husband Jonas stood stiffly, his face a mask of stone, refusing to let the tears fall.

Everyone in the small town of Stonehaven had come to pay their respects, but no one could bear to look at the coffins for too long. No one except Laya. The little girl stared, her eyes wide and unblinking. As the priest raised his hands to begin the final prayer, a piercing scream tore through the sacred silence.

“He moved!” Laya shrieked, her small finger trembling as she pointed at the coffin on the left—Noah’s coffin.

A wave of gasps and panicked whispers swept through the pews. Before anyone could dismiss it as a child’s grief-stricken imagination, a sound echoed through the chapel that no one could deny. Knock. Knock. Knock. Three soft, yet distinct, thuds from inside the sealed wooden box. Chaos erupted. People scrambled from their seats, their prayers turning to screams. The undertakers, their faces pale with shock, hesitated until the priest, shaking, gave them a frantic nod. Inch by agonizing inch, they pried open the lid.

The boy’s body lay still, his white hair fanned out like a halo. But it was the inside of the lid that made Clara’s breath catch in her throat. Carved into the polished wood were fresh, frantic scratch marks, as if someone had been desperately clawing to get out.

To understand the terror that unfolded in that chapel, one must go back to the house on the edge of the forest, where the nightmare began. The Rivera family was already fractured. Clara, a nurse, worked long hours, while her husband Jonas, a long-haul trucker, was often gone for weeks, his heart seemingly as distant as his destinations. Their world revolved around their 12-year-old albino twins, Noah and Nia. They were more than siblings; they were mirror images, with hair as white as snow, pale, glass-like eyes, and a bond so deep they often finished each other’s sentences.

The whispers in town labeled them as “special” or “cursed,” but the twins were a universe unto themselves. Then Noah started drawing. At first, they were simple sketches of trees and animals. But soon, the drawings took a dark turn. He began sketching tall, faceless figures lurking outside their windows, their long, shadowy hands reaching for the house.

One night, Nia woke to find Noah standing by the window, his lips barely moving. “He is here again,” he whispered, and the words sank into her bones like ice.

Clara found the drawings and tried to dismiss them as a child’s overactive imagination. But one drawing stopped her cold. It depicted the interior of a church, with two small coffins under the roof. Scrawled above them was a date: March 18th. When she checked the calendar, her hands began to shake. The date was only weeks away. She hid the drawing, but the date was branded into her mind.

The house itself seemed to absorb the fear. Doors creaked open on their own. Footsteps echoed in empty hallways. When Clara told Jonas, he laughed it off. “Old house, loose wires. You’re just tired,” he’d say, his denial a wall she couldn’t penetrate. But Clara saw the terror growing in her children’s eyes.

The breaking point came during a fierce storm. The twins screamed in unison, “He’s coming to take both of us!” On Noah’s desk lay a new drawing that hadn’t been there moments before. It showed their farmhouse with a split roof, and bending over it was the tall, faceless figure, its arms spread wide. The darkness was no longer just in the drawings; it had stepped inside their home.

One night, Noah vanished from his bed. Clara and Nia found muddy footprints leading to the back door, which was bolted from the inside. Hours later, Noah stumbled back in, his pajamas soaked, his face blank. “He took me to the trees,” he whispered. “He showed me the gate.”

Jonas’s denial turned to rage. “Enough!” he roared, slamming his fist on the table. “I break my back on the road while you spin ghost stories into their heads!” But his anger couldn’t stop what was coming. At school, Noah collapsed, clutching his chest. “The watcher doesn’t want one,” he gasped before passing out. “He wants both.” Doctors found nothing medically wrong, but one physician told Clara they found faint, finger-like burn marks along his ribs.

That night, Clara refused to leave the twins’ room. At 3:00 a.m., a whisper brushed past her ear: One down, one to go. She leaped up and rushed to Noah’s bed. He was cold. Lifeless. Her scream tore through the farmhouse.

Less than 24 hours later, the horror repeated. Clara found Nia in her bed, her eyes wide open, her chest still. Two children, two deaths, one unspeakable tragedy. Jonas was a ghost, signing papers and answering calls, his guilt a silent, crushing weight.

The night before the funeral, Clara found Noah’s sketchbook, which she had locked away, lying open on his desk. The page showed the church, the two coffins, and something new: tiny, frantic claw marks drawn over the lid of one. She knew then that the funeral would not be a place of peace.

After the horrifying discovery in the chapel, the family returned home, broken. The entity’s focus had shifted. Clara found Laya furiously drawing the same faceless figure. “He told me how to draw him,” the child whispered, her voice hollow. The next morning, the funeral director called, his voice strained. Noah’s body had moved in the coffin, his arms now crossed over his chest.

Desperate, Clara dug through old town records and found it: a 1983 newspaper article about twin boys found dead on the same night, with witnesses reporting strange lights near Ravenwood Forest. The article led her to a boarded-up house and a frail, haunted woman named Evelyn Cross.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Evelyn rasped, her eyes holding a terrifying recognition. “He’s come again.” She told Clara about “The Watcher,” an ancient entity that waits for twins. “He doesn’t steal them,” she explained, her voice trembling. “He waits until they give themselves. Every thirty years, he feeds.” She explained the only way to defeat him was for both twins to “walk by choice” to the gate—two twisted trees in Ravenwood Forest—and refuse him, causing him to starve.

Clara’s blood ran cold. Her twins were gone. “What about my niece?” she cried. “He’s after her now!”

“If he’s touched her dreams, it’s already begun,” Evelyn warned. “You can’t fight him in hospitals or with prayer. Only at the gate.”

Clara drove home, Evelyn’s words echoing in her mind. As she pulled into the driveway, she saw Laya standing at the window, her small hand pressed against the glass. Her lips were moving, whispering to someone in the reflection, but she was utterly alone. The Watcher wasn’t finished, and the fight for the last child in her family had just begun.