3AM

01

Chapter One

She should have been answering the phone and reassuring her sister that she hadn’t just ended it all. But instead, Anne was renting a house in the Everglades, doing everything she could to reconnect with Eliza after Daisy's death. She was absolutely certain that the right path wasn’t to distance herself from her sister. But that’s exactly what she was doing.

It had been a long time since she’d spent more than a few hours outside her 26th-floor penthouse. Manhattan was ridiculously expensive, but she still hadn’t mustered the courage to leave.

A few clothes were thrown into a suitcase on the bed when the name flashing on her phone screen changed.

“What are you doing, hun bun?” Dave’s voice was the first thing she heard when she picked up. “Why aren’t you at your mother’s funeral, for God's sake?”

“Things got a bit out of hand…”

“Did you think that wouldn’t happen? It’s your mother, Anne. You can’t just run away from her funeral.” Dave was irritated, talking like he was scolding a ten-year-old.

“I’m not going back there. My mom died yesterday and wanted to be cremated. I’m not buying a ticket to this circus Samantha planned.”

“There’s no circus. People just want to say goodbye. Your mother was—”

“Someone who was completely rejected and forgotten by her own family and everyone around her for decades!” Anne nearly shouted, her voice trembling. “People waited for her to die to remember her? Give me a break, Dave… I don’t have time for this crap, okay?”

“Where are you?”

“At home.” Anne let out a tired sigh before pausing, staring at the booking screen. “I’m leaving, Dave.”

“What?” The voice on the other end was filled with surprise. “What do you mean? To where? With whom?”

“Alone. To Florida. I…” Anne stopped speaking again. She was exhausted but not so much that she couldn’t feel the suffocating weight of her confession. She needed to take responsibility for the first time. After all those terrible and precise words from Samantha, Anne needed to own up.

“I’m going to stop drinking, Dave.”

There was a long silence on the other end, and she waited until finally said:

“Dave?”

“I’m here.” His voice was hoarse. “Sorry. I’m just really happy, Anne. Really happy.”

Alone in that enormous apartment, the writer smiled, trying to ignore the overwhelming urge to go to the kitchen for a shot of cognac.

(…)

The worst idea she’d ever had in her entire damn life.

Without a doubt.

Her hands pushed the shopping cart while a violent fatigue settled over her body.

It had been a terrible idea. A shitty idea.

Anne closed her eyes, on the verge of an anxiety attack. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone four hours without a drink and doing it while trying to process her mother’s death felt like suicide.

She looked at the cart she’d been pushing for twenty whole minutes, completely empty. If only she had the courage to follow through on what she’d planned in a desperate, prideful fury. But now, with the flames extinguished and Anne reduced to ashes, continuing seemed pointless.

But in the end, she had to.

Even if she had to use the ridiculous pretense that she was doing it for her dead mother’s happiness, she needed to climb out of the incredibly deep hole she’d dug herself into.

Anne stopped in front of the frozen food section, her hands cold and sweaty, teeth beginning to grind. She opened the freezer door and grabbed a few single-serving meals, trying to ignore the fact that she’d have to catch a plane and then drive for hours.

How the hell would she do that in an already alarming f****d up state?

Maybe…

Maybe she should start after she got there.

Her eyes lit up with the idea. Yes, maybe it was a great idea.

But as quickly as it came, the smile died before the freezer door had fully closed.

Maybe it was a shitty idea, like all her recent ones. An endless cascade of shitty ideas.

Anne clenched her teeth.

She needed to ignore any romantic notion her mind was concocting and accept that the only way to get to that damn place alone would be under the influence of alcohol. She let go of the cart and started walking toward the wine section.

Anne almost ran.

Her heart pounded so hard she could barely believe it. She’d been drinking without restraint for so long that the thought of suddenly stopping was... desperately maddening.

She reached the wine aisle and quickly chose the one with the highest alcohol content, one of the few with a screw cap. Using her car key to break the seal, she opened the bottle right there, feeling the weight of stares on her back. Anne took five huge gulps and only stopped when she felt the wine start to trickle down the side of her mouth. She wiped her face, her heart racing like a locomotive. She drank again, downing half the bottle in a minute or two, rooted to the spot as if she needed to reach some limit before moving again.

And she did. After two or three more generous swigs, she felt capable of walking again.

Her hands had stopped shaking, and her whole body began to buzz with energy. Anne took a deep breath.

"Okay," she whispered to herself, staring at the woman watching her intently. "Here we go." She started walking again, leaving behind the creeping sense of defeat that slithered through her soul like a lingering shadow.

(…)

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” declared her younger sister, Eliza, who always acted like the older one. She already had two kids and, despite looking Anne in the eyes, couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Anne Walch moving to another state, across the country, to live in a house isolated twenty miles from the nearest town? No way, right?

“I was expecting more of a ‘I’m sure this will be good for you,’” Anne said, taking a drag from her cigarette, the lines of frustration deepening between her brown eyebrows.

Sitting on one of the many park benches, both of them wore heavy coats and tall boots.

“I can’t keep coddling you,” Eliza shrugged, one hand holding a disposable coffee cup and the other practically breaking her cigarette in half. “You’ve been unstable for like five years, Anne. Now you want to get away from everything and everyone you know? What’s the next step? Finding your rotting body months later after no contact?”

“I want to get better…” Sunk into the bench, Anne watched the snow fall. There was an immeasurable weight on her shoulders she couldn’t shake off.

“You can afford the best rehab clinics in New York. Why the f**k do you need to…” Eliza stopped talking abruptly, realizing she was once again pressuring Anne to do what she wanted.

Even though an intervention was clearly necessary, Eliza knew that pushing Anne too hard might mean losing her entirely. She took a drag from her cigarette, feeling restless.

“Maybe… that’s why… Maybe I just need some time.” Watching a particular snowflake fall, Anne wondered how she could make her life stop spiraling down the drain.

Eliza swallowed hard, looking at her sister’s faded expression. It was as if Anne no longer existed. It was as if, somehow, alcoholism had drowned her within herself. Somewhere inside, the real Anne was trapped. Buried by years of neglect and alcohol.

This was just a shadow.

“It’s going to be okay.” Eliza’s voice broke the intrusive thoughts echoing in both their minds. “Don’t let yourself believe otherwise. Even though I don’t think this move is a good idea, it might be, in the end… the best thing for you.” She took a deep breath and continued, “Sam and Josh…”

“I know.” Anne cut her off. “You’re my only sister, Eliza. And it’s okay.”

“I’m sorry… that all this happened between you guys.” Eliza’s eyes burned, a lump forming in her throat every time this subject came up.

“Don’t be. It’s fine.” Anne needed to leave. “I have to go.” She stood up, taking one last drag before putting out the cigarette and looking at her sister, who still sat with her coffee and Marlboro, her eyes heavy with concern. “I mean it.”

“I know you do. I’m looking right at you, and I don’t know when I’ll see you again.” Eliza shrugged, standing up too. “I’m not letting you get on that plane before you give me the address and everything… And if you stop answering your phone, I swear…”

“Hey, I’ll answer the phone.” Anne gripped her sister’s shoulder, pulling her close. “It’s going to be okay. Right?”

“Right.” They hugged in the cold New York silence, while deep down, their hearts screamed in opposite directions.

(…)

Anne took the night flight and arrived in Fort Myers close to one in the morning. After dragging herself through the terminal and grabbing her luggage, she reached the rental car counter, got the keys to a 4x4, and headed outside. It was raining, typical chaotic Florida weather.

With the ease of an alcoholic, she saw no problem in downing all the drinks she could on the plane, and nothing irritated her more than knowing that was not enough. She threw her bags in the trunk and pulled a cigarette from the pack before getting in the car. Her fingers tapped quickly on her smartphone screen, searching for a*****e to quench her thirst.

Anne started the car when she found one, just twelve minutes away.

Following the GPS, she pulled up in front of the liquor store at 1:23 a.m. She went in alone, ignoring the homeless people sleeping near the iron doors, and grabbing a blue basket, she walked through the aisles picking out several bottles.

The torrential rain had completely stopped by the time she left the store. She got back into the car, placing the three heavy bags on the passenger seat floor, and opened a bottle with her teeth. "One for the trip, the rest to settle in.” Walch took three good swigs of whiskey.

“Jack, Jack, Jack.” The brunette lit her cigarette, starting the 4x4. “Always by my side.” Placing the bottle of Jack Daniels between her legs, she continued her journey.

The closer she got to the Everglades, the worse the weather became. What started as a few sprinkles turned into drizzle, and now it had transformed into heavy, relentless raindrops. It was almost three in the morning when she found herself on that dirt road. Drunk, completely alone, in the dead of the night, with torrential rain pouring down.

"This has to be the height of stupidity," she whispered to herself, trying to see something in the darkness that even the powerful headlights couldn’t cut through. The last houses had faded into the night over half an hour ago. The internet signal was so weak that, on the GPS, her car appeared to be floating in the middle of a forest.

Anne reached for the control and switched the car into four-wheel drive as it began to slip in the mud. Her heart was pounding fast, so she took another sip. Nervous, she took enough gulps to make sure none of those factors bothered her anymore. Seeing three or four different roads, Anne knew the house she rented was the last one on the road. There was no other road or path after the supposed location, and that was the only thing keeping her going.

The end of the line hadn’t come yet.

With both hands on the wheel, a cigarette in her mouth, and Taylor Swift blasting, the writer had already drunk half a bottle of whiskey when she felt the car suddenly stop.

The engine had died, and after two seconds of shock and confusion, she started it again. But the car didn’t make it more than thirty seconds before it died again. She checked. Still half a tank of gas. No engine lights on.

The headlights, once so bright, started to flicker.

"You’ve got to be kidding me," she muttered directly to the car, trying to start it again.

This time, the sound was a frustrating, choking "nhe-nhe-nhe-nhe" that soon disappeared. She stared at the bottle of Jack Daniels, the weight of frustration pressing down on her chest. Her gaze shifted to the map on her phone, the directions blurring in her vision as a storm of anger brewed inside her. The boiling rage finally erupted—she pounded the steering wheel with both fists, unleashing all her pent-up fury. The car shook with the impact, and the horn, which had been sounding weak and off-pitch, gave one last feeble cry before falling silent forever. She kept pounding, as if each strike could somehow release her from the spiral of frustration and despair that had overtaken her.

She was exactly two minutes away from her destination. A third of a mile.

Taking the cigarette and lighting it with trembling hands, Anne took a drag, staring at the GPS intently. She was too drunk to call her insurance, or the police. She was too drunk to get any kind of help without throwing the rest of her dignity in the trash.

"It’s fine," she sighed.

Of course, she could walk three hundred meters in a straight line in total darkness, having never been there before, in the f*****g rain.

Of course she f*****g could.

If there was one thing Anne was good at, it was making bad decisions.

She made bad decisions all the time!

And this was definitely one of those bad decisions.

"It’s fine!" she repeated, grabbing the whiskey bottle, her phone, and the house key. All she needed was a place to shower and sleep. Naked, for all she cared, whatever. But under no circumstances would she sleep alone in that dead car in the middle of nowhere.

She grabbed a plastic bag and put her phone inside, turning on the flashlight without realizing she only had 5% battery left. With a thousand thoughts and a war of words and insults spinning in her drunken mind, she put the house key in the inner pocket of her jacket, grabbed the bottle, and took one last drag of the cigarette before opening the car door.

Immediately drenched, Anne began walking quickly. The phone’s flashlight helped a little, but it was so minimal and ridiculously useless when you were as drunk as she was.

"You must really have something against me," she muttered to God. "You must’ve talked to my mom, and now you’re trying to punish me!" The scream echoed through the Everglades Forest.

Stumbling and with her boots sinking into the mud of the road, Anne pointed the phone forward now and then, making sure she wasn’t walking into a swamp or a f*****g bog. She knew Florida was full of pythons and gators, and she didn’t want to be eaten by either of them without first setting foot in that damn house.

But then, the battery died, and the flashlight’s disappearance made Anne Walch’s heart sink into her chest.

Just when she was thinking about snakes and gators.

"If you think you’re gonna make me cry, forget it!" And as she started running, Anne tripped a few times before falling to her knees, having no idea how far she’d gone.

Drunk and sad as hell.

How do people get into situations like this? Or better yet… How did I manage to get myself into this mess? My God, Anne, how can you be so ridiculously… stupid!?

In the mud and under the torrential rain, Anne pulled the bottle from her jacket pocket and drank until she felt she was about to pass out. The gulps went down like acid in her throat. Hot and fast, entering her system at lightning speed.

"Everyone's rushing ahead, Mom… But all I want is to stop, to never move again… Please, Mommy… Please take me with you… Set the f*****g appointment, Mommy!" The words trembled as tears welled up, drowning any remnants of strength.

Collapsing into the suffocating embrace of darkness, the weight of grief consumed her without restraint.

The world outside vanished, swallowed by a void that mirrored the emptiness within. Tears fell like a lost child's, each sob echoing in the silence, minutes stretching into an eternity of despair. The darkness offered no comfort, only a hollow space where agony spiraled endlessly, where time stood still, and the pain felt infinite, wrapping around her like cold, unforgiving chains.

The brink of unconsciousness loomed when a firm grip lifted her body off the ground. Shock rippled through the haze of drunkenness, but strength to resist was gone. A scream barely formed. Maybe the truth had been clear to everyone but her—how deep things had sunk. Warnings were ignored, preferring the intoxicating feeling of floating.

Gazing up, the heavy rain and total darkness obscured everything. Lifted off the ground with absurd ease, her face collided with a dry, warm, and strong chest. With a heart racing inside the chest, and legs that attempted to push down, Anne was sure that the last gulps of whiskey had drained every ounce of her energy.

(…)

When she woke up the next morning, her headache was so bad it almost sank her into the soft, warm upholstery she was lying on. The realization made the blue eyes fly open, and she jumped up to inspect the room.

The couch looked old, but not too old.

How did she get there?

The last thing she remembered was… driving in the rain.

Anne paused, trying to remember. She had no memory of opening the door. Of bringing in her bags. Taking a shower or changing clothes.

Staring at the clothes she was wearing at that moment a chill ran down her spine. She searched the entire house, which now, with the powerful daylight, revealed every shadow, every corner.

Alone.

Digging through her bag for headache medicine, the brunette struggled to piece together fragments of memory. Had she really arrived last night? Unloaded the car, put away the bottles and frozen food?

But making coffee? She hadn’t bought any coffee. She was sure of it.

With furrowed brows, she stared at the cold coffee sitting in the glass carafe, a ghostly reminder of something she couldn’t recall doing.

"I’m losing it… I need to stop drinking so much…" The words were barely a whisper, a desperate attempt to cling to the fraying edges of her sanity.

(…)

“I’m telling you, there’s a town nearby.” It had been six hours since she woke up there, not knowing exactly how, but that was a secret she would take to grave. Mentioning it to her sister would be like asking for an intervention.

“I believe you,” the female voice replied sarcastically on the other end of the line.

The cell phone didn’t work very well in those places. The house, or rather, the mansion, was a three-hundred-year-old structure with white walls stained with rust and dirt, and with weeds climbing the pillars and window curves of the facade.

Inside, it was spacious, and even older than it appeared from the outside. Old chandeliers filled with cobwebs and wallpaper destroyed by time. The house had been closed for a decade, or more, until now. It needed some urgent repairs, but she couldn’t think too much about that since she was only renting it for a year.

In search of inspiration and, at the same time, redemption for herself.

“Aren’t you scared of staying there alone?”

“Scared of what?”

“I don’t know, s**t, it’s a three-hundred-year-old house! And from what I can see in the ad, very spooky…” Anne hadn’t mentioned the second part. And she wasn’t going to. She shifted in the armchair as her eyes fell on the bottle of cognac on the table.

“There’s nothing wrong with the house, Eliza, it’s just old, not spooky… Tomorrow the cleaning crew will fix everything. I’ll take the opportunity to do some quick renovations and make it… more livable.”

An uncomfortable silence followed that statement. It was as if she knew what was going through her sister’s mind.

“I need to hang up,” she said, before they got into that cycle again.

“Anne…”

“I’ll call you tomorrow.” She completely ignored Eliza’s silent plea. “Make sure you stop working and go spend time with your kids.”

And without waiting for even a sigh, Anne Walch hung up, staring at the bottle of cognac for at least ten seconds before grabbing it and taking a generous swig.

Her heart felt like it weighed a ton.

When would it be time?

When would she finally have the courage to just…

Win.

Win over the overwhelming urge… that only alcohol brought.

Yes, Samantha was right, the media, all her friends, the crazies writing in all caps in the comments on YouTube videos about her, and even the old gossipers who couldn’t talk about anything else, they were all right. Everyone except her, because she was just a stupid alcoholic running from death and grief.

Running from herself.

Tears filled her eyes, and Anne Walch drank a few more gulps straight from the bottle.

What a huge, strangely comforting hole she had dug herself into. While those gulps locked her deeper and deeper into a dark, foul-smelling pit, they also blocked the effects and pains of life’s blows. It was a dreadful buffer, but on many sleepless nights, a welcome one.

(…)

Anne Walch was a woman on the edge, teetering between moments of good humor and bouts of despair. She valued solitude above all, a true introvert with a skeptical nature, often finding herself more irritable than she cared to admit. A wary soul, venturing out only for essentials, avoiding unnecessary interactions or casual conversations. New friendships held no allure, and small talk was an annoyance best left untouched. Anne didn’t want to go around traveling, meeting people, and seeing the world, no.

She wanted a quiet, silent place, the perfect spot to do the one thing she loved most: getting drunk.

Writing!

When she woke up the morning after talking to Eliza, Anne felt the real impact of being isolated. The first day had been chaotic and full of too many boxes for her to notice how quiet and still the place was.

Too quiet.

Too still.

She walked to the backyard and gazed at the morning sky for a few minutes. A deep headache settled in with each passing second outside, as if her body was ordering her to go back inside and drink something.

So that’s what she did. Walch went back inside, and when she reached the kitchen, she stopped in front of the coffee maker with a deep frown.

“What the hell is this?”

The coffee, made and now cold in the glass carafe, looked strong.

And she didn’t drink strong coffee. She didn’t had any f*****g coffee!

Lately, with her growing insomnia, she didn’t drink coffee at all. Why the hell was she making coffee when she was too drunk to remember?

“No…” She clearly remembered blacking out in the library. “No way.”

And as if she were being pulled in that direction, Walch stared at the cup sitting on the counter. Seeing it immediately made her walk over and pick it up, starting a deep examination.

But the sound of the doorbell made Anne jump, dropping the cup.

“Holy f*****g s**t!” She jumped back, trying to dodge the splash of coffee that the angle of impact caused. “Ugh! Damn it… now, besides not remembering making coffee, I have to clean…”

Anne crossed the room and opened the front door just as the cleaning company van pulled up. Standing before her was a woman with a warm, welcoming smile.

“Good morning, Ms. Walch,” the woman greeted. “I’m Laura, and we’re here to take care of the cleaning for you today.”

(…)

After a heavy cleaning by a team of twenty people over the course of an entire day, the house looked much more livable, and for some reason, much more terrifying.

Night fell, and although she was a skeptic, Anne felt uneasy.

The thunder cracked like a beast roaring from within the walls, jolting Anne out of her spiraling thoughts. Her blue eyes flicked to the wall clock—2:40 a.m. Another night slipping away, claimed by the relentless grip of insomnia. The hours bled into each other, her mind a battlefield of intrusive thoughts that kept sleep at bay. The ceiling above, once a blank canvas, now loomed like a void, swallowing the little peace she had left.

No.

Anne preferred to spend her sleepless moments writing because writing came with whiskey, and whiskey made her sleep like an angel. Even if she needed to drink more each day to achieve that.

The sigh came to shake off the arrhythmia. She needed to close her eyes for a while, Anne knew that. She just didn’t want to accept it. The brunette stretched her legs and, getting up, decided to go upstairs, for the first time, to the master suite.

Drunk, she leaned off the counter and took the bottle with her. Trying to ignore the boxes strewn across the hallway floor, she made her way upstairs. She hadn’t unpacked much beyond the library, and she had lied to her sister when she said she was eating well.

Well, if she considered whiskey with fries and sausages a good meal, maybe she hadn’t lied after all.

When she reached the bedroom, the light was off, and the sound of the rain seemed much more intense than downstairs. The pen holding her hair was pulled out, releasing the improvised bun as her free hand lightly tapped the switch. Warm and orange, the lamp illuminated the room, casting shadows in the darkest corners.

Her vision started to spin subtly, like a shift that offset one view from another, highlighting two frames and making each step very confusing.

She stopped, leaning against the doorframe.

An unusual tranquility hovered in that place. Despite its eerie appearance, Anne felt good there. Whatever energy circulated in that centenarian house seemed to resonate on the same frequency as hers. An unforgiving sadness and loneliness. Like being in the right place at the right time, about to create the right thing, which was to start trying to do something other than write the garbage she’d been writing. Something that was up to her great successes, and no matter how hard she tried, she felt that all that creativity would simply disappear the moment she stopped drinking. The exact moment she decided to get sober, her imagination… would dry up.

There was a bed there.

Anne stared at it with pragmatic eyes.

It was huge and, from there, very cozy.

The grieving daughter’s body, exhausted and hollow from nearly 72 hours without sleep, collapsed onto the mattress with the weight of a soul drained dry. The bottle, her only companion, clinked softly as it met the bedside table. Anne blinked against the dizziness that washed over her, the ceiling above swirling like a dark vortex. The chandelier’s shadows seemed to drip down the walls, thick and black like ink seeping into her mind.

Outside, the branches clawed at the window, synchronized with the rhythmic drum of raindrops and the mournful wail of the wind. A strange, almost sinister comfort enveloped her, as if the bed had transformed into a warm nest, coiling around her, whispering promises of rest that she hadn’t felt in days. There was a pull, an invitation to surrender.

Tired.

That's what she kept repeating, desperately clinging to a fragile thread of denial. The growl of her empty stomach and the dryness in her throat were easily ignored.

The next breath she took filled her lungs with an eerie, unmistakable scent of lavender, a fragrance that felt too vivid, too intrusive. Teetering on the edge of sleep, a chill skittered across her skin, raising the fine hairs on her arms.

Anne squeezed her eyes shut, but the temperature in the room seemed to plummet, the air growing colder, more oppressive. Then, as if the darkness itself had cracked open, a scent invaded her senses—pine trees, wet earth, and the sharp tang of grass. It was overwhelming, suffocating in its intensity.

The wind began to howl, a distant sound at first, but growing closer, more insistent. Her turquoise eyes fluttered open, heavy with a reluctant awareness, as if something had forcibly yanked her from the bed and flung her into another world. The scene before her was as unreal as it was terrifyingly authentic.

She inhaled deeply, the fragrant air of a forest filling her lungs, and sat up abruptly, feeling the slickness of dew against her skin. The sensation was too real, too tangible for a dream.

What was this?

A nightmare? Or perhaps something darker, something that blurred the line between sleep and waking, dragging her into a reality where her mind no longer had control.