Chapter 641

The Cabo Verde night was heavy, thick with the salt scent of the Atlantic and the unseen weight of something else, something wrong. Manuel, thirteen and nimble, perched on the crumbling wall surrounding his family's small yard, looking out at the street.

The streetlamps cast cones of weak yellow light, barely holding back the darkness that seemed to press in from all sides. Usually, the night was alive with the sounds of Porto Novo – dogs barking, music spilling from open doorways, the low murmur of conversations. Tonight, silence.

A shiver, not from cold, went down Manuel's spine. He pulled his thin sweater tighter around himself, though the air was warm, almost sticky. He wasn't usually afraid of the dark. He'd grown up in it. But this night felt different.

He'd heard whispers during the day, hushed talk among the grown-ups, glances thrown over shoulders. Something was happening in the dark. Something bad.

His Abuela had warned him, her low tone serious. "Stay inside after dark, Manuel. Do not be out when the mannequins walk." He'd laughed then. Mannequins? Walking? Ridiculous.

Now, in the deep quiet, the laugh felt distant, foolish. He scanned the street again. Empty. Too empty.

Then, at the edge of the lamplight, something moved. Not a person, not an animal. Taller, thinner, darker than anything should be in the shadows.

It stepped further into the light. Mannequin. But not wood, not plastic. Shadow. Solid shadow, shaped like a person, impossibly thin, limbs elongated and wrong. No features, just darkness.

Manuel's breath caught in his throat. It moved with a jerky, unnatural stride, as if pulled by strings, its shadow body gliding over the uneven stones of the street. It turned its featureless head, or where a head should be, in his direction.

Fear, cold and sharp, pierced through him. This wasn't a game. This was real. He scrambled back from the wall, heart hammering against his ribs.

His Abuela's warning echoed in his mind. Mannequins walk. He'd dismissed it as an old woman's fancy, a silly story to scare children. But Abuela hadn't been silly. She'd been afraid.

He peered again, from behind the thicker shadows of a bougainvillea bush. The shadow mannequin was closer now, still moving with that unsettling, puppet-like gait. It wasn't alone.

Another emerged from the deeper dark, then another, and another. They were appearing as if the darkness itself was giving birth to them, pushing them out into the meager light.

Four of them now, maybe five. It was hard to count the shifting black shapes. They moved down the street, not together, but spreading out, like hunters searching for prey.

Manuel pressed himself against the cool stone of the wall, willing himself to become part of it, invisible, silent. He wanted to scream, to run inside, but his limbs felt heavy, frozen.

He watched, breath shallow, as one of the shadow mannequins paused outside a house across the street. It tilted its featureless head, then moved towards the door.

A moment of silence, then a creak, too soft to be anything normal. The door was opening. From inside, a soft gasp, quickly muffled.

Manuel's eyes widened. Someone was in that house. Someone was being taken. He had to do something, anything. But what could a thirteen-year-old boy do against shadow monsters?

He glanced towards his own house. Light spilled from the kitchen window, warm and inviting. His parents were inside, probably talking, unaware of the horror unfolding just outside their door.

He considered running inside, shouting a warning. But what if the mannequins heard him? What if they came for his house next? His family? The thought rooted him to the spot.

He watched, paralyzed, as the shadow mannequin emerged from the house across the street. It was dragging something. A shape, limp and indistinct, too dark to make out clearly.

It wasn't alone this time either. Another mannequin came from the doorway, then another. They carried their burdens into the shadows, melting back into the darkness from which they came.

Silence returned to the street, heavier now, tainted. The house across the way stood with its door ajar, a black rectangle against the yellow lamplight, a doorway to emptiness.

Manuel finally found his legs. He moved, not running, but backing away, step by careful step, until he reached the door to his own yard. He slipped inside, heart pounding.

He bolted to the kitchen door, bursting in, gasping for air. His parents turned, startled. His mother, Marta, with a spoon in her hand, halfway to stirring a pot on the stove. His father, João, looked up from his newspaper.

"Manuel! What is it? You look like you've seen a ghost," Marta said, her brow creased with worry.

He tried to speak, but his throat was tight, words caught. He pointed back towards the street, hand shaking. "Mannequins… outside… taking people."

João lowered his newspaper, his expression shifting from mild annoyance to something sharper. He walked to the window, peering out into the night. Marta followed, spoon still in hand.

They looked, but the street was empty now, bathed in the weak yellow light, just shadows and stone. Nothing moved. No sign of the horrors Manuel had just witnessed.

"Manuel, are you alright?" João asked, turning back to his son, his tone now gentle, but laced with disbelief. "What mannequins? There's nothing out there."

"But… but I saw them! Shadow mannequins! They took someone from the house across the street! I saw them!" Manuel insisted, his voice rising, desperation creeping in.

Marta put a hand on his forehead, her touch cool and comforting. "Fiebré? Do you have a fever? You're imagining things, filho. There's nothing there."

"No! I'm not imagining! Abuela warned me! She said to stay inside when they walk!" Manuel pleaded, but he could see the doubt in their eyes, the dismissal in their gentle touches.

João sighed, running a hand through his thinning hair. "Your Abuela… she has a vivid imagination. And she worries too much. There are no mannequins, Manuel. It was a bad dream, that's all."

"It wasn't a dream! It was real! You have to believe me!" Manuel cried, tears welling in his eyes, frustration and fear mixing into a bitter cocktail.

Marta pulled him into a hug, holding him close. "Hush, filho. It's alright. You just had a fright. Come, let's have some warm milk, and you can tell us all about your bad dream."

He clung to her, the warmth of her embrace a small comfort against the icy grip of fear. But even as he allowed himself to be comforted, a cold knot of dread remained in his stomach. They didn't believe him. No one would.

He drank the warm milk, trying to swallow down the rising panic. His parents talked in low tones, soothing words meant to calm him. But he knew what he'd seen. He knew it wasn't a dream.

Later, tucked into his small bed in the corner of the room, Manuel couldn't sleep. The silence of the night pressed in again, but now it was filled with the memory of those shadow shapes, their jerky movements, the muffled gasp from the house across the street.

He listened, straining to hear anything beyond the quiet breathing of his parents in the next room. He waited, his body tense, eyes wide open in the dark. He knew they would come back. He could feel it in the cold dread that had settled deep inside him.

Hours crawled by. The first hint of dawn began to lighten the edges of the window. Hope flickered within him. Maybe they were gone. Maybe they only came in the deepest dark.

He was almost asleep when he heard it. A soft sound from outside, a scraping, sliding noise on the stone street. His eyes snapped open. He held his breath, listening.

The sound came again, closer now, right outside his window. He sat up slowly, heart hammering again. He had to see. He had to know.

He crept to the window, peering cautiously through a gap in the curtains. The pale light of dawn was just starting to bleed into the sky, casting long, weak shadows.

And there they were. More of them now, maybe six or seven, clustered in the street outside his house. Shadow mannequins, still and silent, like statues carved from the night.

But they weren't statues. He saw a slight movement, a jerky twitch of an elongated arm, a featureless head tilting almost imperceptibly. They were waiting. Watching his house.

Fear turned to ice in his veins. They knew he'd seen them. They were here for him. He wanted to scream, to run to his parents, but his voice was frozen, his limbs leaden.

He watched, trapped, as one of the shadow mannequins detached itself from the group and began to move towards his door. The jerky, puppet-like stride, so unnatural, so terrifying.

He backed away from the window, stumbling, tripping over his own feet. He had to warn his parents. He had to get them out. But where could they go? Where could they hide from shadows?

He turned towards his parents' room, then stopped. Another sound from outside, this time from the back of the house, a soft creak of the back gate. They were surrounding the house. They were everywhere.

He was trapped. They were trapping him. Panic surged, choking him. He was alone. His parents wouldn't believe him. They wouldn't understand until it was too late.

He wanted to cry, but no tears came. Just a cold, empty dread. He stood in the center of the room, paralyzed, listening to the soft sounds of their approach, the scraping, sliding, jerky movements.

The front door creaked open. He heard no footsteps, just the soft whisper of shadow moving over stone. They were inside. They were in his house.

He closed his eyes, waiting for them to come for him. He imagined their cold, shadow hands reaching for him, pulling him into the darkness, into their world.

But they didn't come for him. Not directly. Instead, he heard a sound from his parents' room. A soft gasp, like the one he'd heard from the house across the street. His mother.

Then another sound, a muffled cry, his father's voice, cut short. Silence followed, deeper and more terrible than any silence before.

Manuel opened his eyes, tears finally streaming down his face. He moved towards his parents' room, feet dragging, heart broken. He pushed the door open.

The room was empty. His parents' bed was rumpled, blankets thrown back. The window was open, curtains swaying gently in the dawn breeze. But his parents were gone.

He ran to the window, looking out at the street. The shadow mannequins were still there, clustered at the edge of the lamplight, but they were moving away now, retreating back into the shadows as the dawn grew stronger.

They had taken his parents. They hadn't come for him. They had taken the ones he loved most. A cruel, twisted choice. Leaving him alone, with nothing but the memory of their warmth, the sound of their voices, the weight of their disbelief.

He stood at the window, watching the shadows disappear with the fading night, tears blurring his vision, a hollow ache growing in his chest.

He was alone in the world now, a thirteen-year-old boy left behind, not taken, but abandoned in a silence that would never again be broken by the sound of his parents' laughter, their gentle scolding, their love.

He was spared, but at a cost far greater than he could ever have imagined. He was alive, yes, but utterly, irrevocably, alone. The mannequins hadn't wanted to kill him, they had sought to dismantle his world, and they had succeeded with brutal, chilling precision.