Chapter 1
🌙 Chapter One — The Girl in the Neon Light The desert night pressed against downtown Yuma like a heavy blanket. Even after midnight, the air shimmered with leftover heat, and the neon signs hummed like insects caught in glass.Lutes Casino stood at the corner, its red and yellow lights flickering over the cracked sidewalk. The sign buzzed faintly, spelling out COLD BEER & WEIRD STUFF in letters that looked older than the building itself.Craig Smith had walked past it a hundred times, but tonight felt different. The street was empty. The air was still. And the faint smell of dust and old cigarettes hung in the doorway like a memory that refused to fade.He stepped inside.The bar was quiet, chairs stacked, jukebox dark. Only the mirror wall caught the glow from the neon outside, reflecting the room in warped fragments. Craig moved closer, watching his own reflection bend and ripple.Then he saw her.A little girl, barefoot, standing in the reflection behind him. Her hair hung straight, her dress pale and old‑fashioned, the kind of thing you’d see in a photograph from the 1940s.Craig turned.Nothing.But the mirror still showed her — head tilted, eyes wide, one hand raised as if pointing toward the back hallway.The air dropped ten degrees. The hum of the neon deepened into a low vibration that seemed to come from the walls themselves. Craig took a step forward, heart pounding.From somewhere deep in the building came a faint sound — a piano, one note at a time, slow and deliberate.He froze.The girl’s reflection smiled.And every light in Lutes Casino went out.
