Chapter 401

The town of Aylesworth was small, tucked far enough from the highways so that it had retained an old-world charm that most places had lost. The houses were plain, the roads winding, and every evening the sunsets bathed the far hills in a melancholy glow.

People lived simple lives, bound together by generations of shared history, with their problems too quiet to echo in the world beyond. It was a place where you'd never expect something to go wrong, until it did.

The first sign of something wrong came with Mrs. Braxton's cake.

She had always been a kind woman, perhaps too kind. A relic of the old generation, her house smelled of sugar and flour every afternoon. Her cakes were legendary. People had known about them for years.

They were always perfect, impossibly soft, with frosting that never slid off. Her most famous one was the chocolate cake, rich enough to drown in but light as air. Everyone who had a bite would leave with a smile, their faces as round as the cake's edges.

But one night, on the eve of the Harvest Festival, when the town had gathered for their usual potluck, something strange happened.

Mrs. Braxton brought her cake as she always did. The townsfolk crowded around, eager to dig in. But when the first person took a bite, their face twisted.

Not with disgust, but with something else—a shudder of recognition, perhaps, or even dread. It wasn't a taste anyone could place, yet it was overwhelmingly wrong.

The second person to try it didn't even get the chance to swallow before they spat it out, their hand trembling as they wiped their mouth. The cake wasn't just wrong—it felt wrong. It was cold. Not just in temperature, but in a deeper sense, as if it had been frozen in time.

By the time people stopped trying it, whispers of something strange began to spread. But there was no panic. Not yet. People simply went home, the uneaten cake left behind like a forgotten relic of some terrible event.

The next morning, Mrs. Braxton was dead. Her body was discovered in her kitchen, curled up in a position so unnatural that it seemed impossible.

She hadn't been sick. She hadn't even been old. Her heart had stopped, but no one could say why. The police didn't know what to make of it. There were no signs of foul play. Her death didn't fit any known pattern.

That was the first death. But it wasn't the last.

It wasn't long before others in the town fell ill, though no one could pinpoint exactly why. A cough here, a fever there. The symptoms were mild at first, easy enough to ignore. But they started to grow worse, spreading like a sickness through the community. People stopped leaving their homes, doors stayed locked, and the sunlight seemed to fade more quickly each day. A sense of unease settled over Aylesworth, and though no one spoke of it directly, everyone knew something had changed.

Then, two weeks after Mrs. Braxton's death, young Timothy Carter disappeared.

Timothy had been the quiet type, never one to raise a fuss. He had a small group of friends, but he never caused trouble. He wasn't the sort of boy to wander off without telling anyone where he was going.

Yet when his parents went looking for him that evening, they found nothing. No sign of struggle, no broken windows, nothing except his shoes, abandoned at the edge of the woods.

The town began to fray. There were talks of evil spirits or curses. People began to remember the old stories—stories that mothers used to tell their children on nights when they couldn't sleep. The ones about creatures that crept into the dark, things that tasted of sweetness and death. Everyone dismissed them as just that—stories. But in Aylesworth, they weren't stories anymore.

And then the cake appeared again.

It was at Mrs. Braxton's house. An old friend had gone to clean up the place, to clear out her belongings. When they opened the door to the kitchen, they found the cake. The same one, sitting on the counter as if nothing had changed. But this time, it wasn't just a cake—it was something else. It was alive.

The cake had a face.

Not in the way a human does, but a grotesque parody of one. The frosting twisted into something resembling a mouth, gaping wide with jagged teeth made of hardened sugar. The cake's body pulsed as if breathing, and from the center, something thick and viscous oozed out. It was a cake, but not a cake. It had no business being there. It had no business being alive.

The woman screamed and ran, leaving the house without looking back. And so the cake was left, alone again.

A few days later, the nightmares began.

It started with the children. They would wake in the middle of the night, crying for their mothers. They spoke of seeing the cake—their eyes wide with terror, their voices trembling. Some said it followed them, chasing them down dark hallways or rising up from their beds. The parents brushed it off as just a bad dream, until the children began to vanish.

It didn't stop there. The adults too were haunted. They'd wake to find their kitchens filled with the scent of cake—sickly sweet, rancid almost. But when they went to check, nothing was there. Just empty countertops, and sometimes, a lone fork left behind, stained with something dark and thick.

And then came the third death.

It was old Mrs. Campbell, who had lived on the edge of town. She had been sick for months, her body slowly withering away. But it wasn't her age that killed her. It was the cake. She had gone into the kitchen one evening to bake, though no one knew why. Her family had begged her to rest. They found her in the morning, on the floor of the kitchen, half-sitting and half-lying. Her face was frozen in a look of terror, as if she had seen something so hideous that her heart couldn't take it. And in her hands was a single piece of cake—half-eaten, the frosting smeared across her face.

When the sheriff arrived, the house was still. There was no sign of struggle. No sign of anything that made sense. But there, on the table, sat the cake—cold, unyielding, and oddly expectant. It had been waiting.

It wasn't long before the remaining people of Aylesworth started to leave. One by one, the town emptied. Families packed up and fled in the dead of night, leaving behind their homes and memories. But still, the cake was there. It didn't stop.

It wanted them. It always had.

And then, in the final hours before the last of the townsfolk left, the town's only survivor—a man named Jacob—stood in the middle of the square. His house had been abandoned, his family gone, but he couldn't leave. Not yet. Not without knowing why.

Jacob had seen the cake. He had seen it for what it was. It wasn't just a thing. It was a hunger, an ancient thirst that had been lying dormant, waiting for something, waiting for someone to open the door.

He found it in the old bakery, the last place untouched. The door creaked open, and he walked in. The cake was there, sitting as it had always been. But now it was bigger, its face more distinct, its mouth twisted into something darker.

It looked at him, and for the first time, Jacob understood.

It wasn't after them. It was after him. After all of them. It had always been. And it was too late.

Jacob ran. But there was nowhere to run.

He never made it out.

The next morning, the town was gone. All that remained was the cake, its mouth wide open, waiting for the next to come. Waiting for the next to taste. To fall.

And in the distance, from the hill, the sun set once more, casting the land in the same sad glow it always had. Nothing had changed. It had only begun.