What The Shadows Know--He Knew Things..., Ep. 15
Supernatural Suspense Thriller for fans of Frank Peretti & Ted Dekker
The sharp, chemical bite of fresh latex paint hung heavy in the air, coating the back of her throat with the sterile scent. Even with the windows cracked, the thick, chalky fumes felt heavy on the lungs, a demanding reminder of her new place.
Beth shifted her weight as she stood with the phone pressed to her ear.
“How’s Lily?”
“She’s doing well. Lily is Lily. You know how she is,” her mom said.
“Well, actually, I don’t know.”
Beth’s jaw tightened as she tried to hide the bitterness she felt from their lost sisterhood. She wished things were different, regretting the fact that they didn’t talk.
Neither of them had planned for it to turn out this way. When their father died, they were in junior high and high school. Friends and boyfriends took priority over family. They had felt free at first, a little too free. Their mom worked long hours to pay the bills. With minor oversight, anything goes.
And it did.
They practically raised themselves.
Even though Beth was the more extroverted of the two, she privately poured her emotions into poetry and short stories before stuffing the words into an obscure folder in her bedroom. She kept her musings hidden, only her sister being her trusted reader.
“That’s why I called, Hon.” Her mom cut into Beth’s thoughts. “I was thinking we could all get together for Christmas, like old times.”
“Old times? No thanks. We always had to tiptoe around him.”
Beth paused, trying not to think of it. They both knew she was referring to her father. “Those are not times I want to relive.”
“I know,” her mom said with a hint of sadness. “I thought about the tree, how it wasn’t big enough for all the presents. The gifts spread in heaps across the floor. Remember?”
“How can I forget? Your idea, I’m sure.”
A smile surfaced as she pictured the old living room buried in a ridiculous sea of metallic paper of shiny reds and greens with large bows.
The memory felt fragile now, a distant and faded frame of bittersweet days.
“I guess I was trying to make up for it. Give you girls a happy memory,” her mom said, her voice trailing off.
“Here’s one.” Beth grinned, as a giggle bubbled up, infectious and unrestrained, before she could get out the words.
“Remember the Christmas that you told us—flat out scared the fire out of us—to never ever use roller skates, not even borrow our friends. That we better ‘not be caught dead’ with those things on our feet?”
Beth’s mom belly-laughed, “Yeah, I caught…” she said, trying to catch her breath, barely able to speak. “I caught… you, one time rolling like the dickens…..arms swinging like a wild chicken,” she stopped to restrain herself to finish, “...in time to see you swing around the corner of the neighbor’s garage, so that I would not ‘see’ you…..But I did.”
Beth burst into laughter, her breath sounding more like wheezing. “I thought….I had escaped!” She remembered how much trouble she had thought she was in that day. But when she returned home and her mom said nothing, she felt relieved.
Beth shook her head, giggling. “And then a month later at Christmas, lo-and-behold, roooooller skates under the tree! You really got us! We thought they’d been eternally forbidden.”
Both of their shoulders shook, tears welling in their eyes as peals of laughter echoed through the phone. Her mom, barely containing herself, added, “Then Lily…Lily… put hers on and ‘waaaaalked’ the dog?”
Beth’s laughter turned into a breathless squeak, her chest heaving as the image flooded her mind. “And….he chased… that car…..then, umph! Speed bump….and all!”
They both couldn’t say another word as they remembered Lily zipping at breakneck speed, while who knows what the driver was thinking at Lily’s terrified face that kept in perfect pace next to their car window. A speed bump intended as a warning for the dead end had mutated into a rather bruising and bone-jarring roller coaster for Lily.
But as the giggles stopped, the memory only made Beth feel the sting of their lost sisterhood. An ache that left its own kind of grief in its wake. The chance of them being best friends forever was gone, lost to the past.
“How’s your new place?” Her mom asked.
“I like it. A little noisy from the traffic, but the rooms are big.”
Beth surveyed the long, cavernous living room that opened into the kitchen. A stack of boxes still sat in a corner. An early October breeze rustled the sheer curtains, the crisp air spilling over the sill. In an instant, it pushed out the stagnant warmth of the house as it swept across her bare arms like a cool, silk sheet.
The farm where she’d lived with River had been too far from the city for her, now that she was by herself. Besides, Beth could better manage the rent in Well Springs on just her income.
Finding an older two-story house, she knew why it was cheaper than most. The bustling cars and semi-trucks discouraged families with small kids, and the constant roar of motors and mufflers from the noisy street discouraged everyone else.
“Any reporters hanging around since moving to town? Media hounds?”
“I think I’m old news, thank goodness,” Beth said. “They’re always chasing another crisis or headline.”
“Hey, you never told me how your talk went with that strange guy. Paul, right?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Mom.”
“Whatya mean, you ‘don’t know’?”
“He knew things….”
Beth stopped, her eyes searching the room as if the walls held the answer.
“You’re making me nervous, Hon. Was it bad?”
“No, no. Nothing like that,” Beth said, trying to explain. “It was as if he could see into my soul.”
Copyright (C) 2026 T.H. Meyer, Author. All rights reserved.
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What the Shadows Know—Beth Cane’s glass-house life sits on the shifting sands of New Age promises and unhealed echoes of a traumatic childhood. After being haunted by creeping shadows and disturbing visions, she accepts that she was marked at birth—cursed. But when she encounters a cryptic stranger, his riddles penetrate through the heavy veil of darkness and confusion.
In a world of magic and self-help, the brightest light reveals the blackest shadow once a possessed stalker starts hunting Beth and her family. Hell’s fury appears in both the flesh and the unseen realm, where trust is blurred, and deception is a matter of life or death. In an epic showdown to escape the entities seeking to destroy her, Beth must embrace a mysterious and ancient truth. One that will shatter everything she’s ever known.
Watch Beth’s slow burn from fringe to faith—terrorized to triumph—haunted to healed. For fans of novels by Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker. Expect a bumpy but redemptive ride—eventually.
Free but to Subscribers, only: Want the true behind-the-scenes stories from What The Shadows Know? I’ll be releasing a Director’s Cut, periodically—Only to subscribers. It’ll include narrative stories about my supernatural encounters, my Christian faith behind the words, and inspiration for characters, scenes, or events in the episodes.
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