10/04/2026
TWO-MINUTE TERRORS: ST. AUGUSTINE, FL - "YOU KNOW" by Jamie Narehood
By the time you leave the bar, Tuesday night has morphed into Wednesday. While walking back to your Lincolnville rental, the warmth of that last double wh***ey begins to sour into regret. It was a reckless choice for sure, especially with a realtor meeting looming, in but a handful of hours.
As you walk across the deserted plaza, your own footsteps echo hollowly, a sound that is eerily distant. Although you are alone, the air circulating through the trees presses down on you like a rude crowd, and the branches within the live oaks canopy hum with half-heard voices speaking things unfamiliar.
You quicken your pace and sober up with each step.
When you hit the corner of King and Cordova, you notice that even the Flagler students have called it a night.
The air turns heavier as a sudden flash of lightning shatters the darkness above Lightner Museum, casting a haunting silhouette of the building’s grand Spanish Renaissance towers. A low rumbling thunder dominates the scene, conjuring shadows to the grounds. With every step across Lightner’s courtyard, the rustling palms seem to close in, the night giving life to the secrets of the century-old building and its surroundings.
Your heart races, anxiety overwhelms.
It is as though the thunder follows you and those nondistinct murmurs from the oaks taunt you.
There is a light at the restaurant bar across the street from the city office where the locals pay their water bills. Even though you’re just two blocks from your rental, you slip in not for a drink or for a bite but for a moment of respite from this weirdness.
You walk through the propped-open door.
No one seems to be around but the restroom door too is propped open and there is light. As you reach to shut the bathroom door behind you, a powerful wind pushes through, pulling the door with it as it engulfs the space, sucking up the air, stealing your breath. In that briefest of moments, between lightbulbs shattering and complete darkness, you see something terrifying in the mirror.
And you know.
You know that you won’t be making that appointment with the realtor in the morning.
Not ever.
