Summer along the Gulf Coast has a feeling to it. The air settles in heavy and thick with salt,

diesel fumes, and the lingering scent of metal, cooling after a long day in the sun. It's the kind of

heat that doesn't just fade when the sun goes down. It changes shape and just waits for you in the dark.

But on the night of June 5th, the temperature wasn't what people remembered. The lights were out.

Not because of a storm or a failure in the grid, but because the world was at war. Under military

blackout regulations, every window in town was covered, cardboard, heavy curtains,

even layers of paint.

The streets disappeared into darkness, and the town of Pascagoula became something quieter,

more uncertain.

The only thing moving with any consistency was the humid breeze drifting from the singing river.

Inside of Our Lady of Victory's convent, two girls were trying to sleep. Mary Evelyn

Briggs was 11. Edna Marie Hydele was 12. They shared a room, lying awake in the dark,

waiting for the air to cool enough to make sleep possible.

It was the kind of night where every sound carried just a little farther than it should.

Mary Evelyn woke first.

While pulled her out of sleep wasn't a scream or the crash of something breaking,

it was softer than that.

A slow shift in the room.

The sound of fabric moving, followed by something that felt like a presence before she fully understood what she was seeing. When her eyes adjusted, there was a

man leaning over her. He wasn't a silhouette, he wasn't something she could dismiss as a trick

of the dark. He was there, close enough to touch.

He was short, slightly heavy set, wearing a white sweatshirt that caught what little light

...