Not every book I start finds an ending, but every word came from something real. This is where I keep them , the raw beginnings, the quiet middles, the almosts.
CHAPTER 1
The wind stung against my cheeks, but I barely felt it anymore.
Nights like this, quiet, strange, and stretched too thin, always left me unsettled.
Like something waited just outside the edges of my vision.
I walked slower than usual.
Not because I was tired, but because I didn’t want to go home.
Home had four walls and a bed, but it didn’t feel safe.
It didn’t feel like mine.
Nothing ever really did.
Streetlights flickered above me, that annoying buzzing sound filling the silence like a warning.
One of them blinked out completely just as I passed underneath it.
Of course.
I swallowed hard and kept walking.
Somewhere behind me, footsteps echoed.
I froze.
Then they stopped too.
I turned, heart in my throat, nothing.
Just a long, empty road.
My shadow stretching too far, like even it wanted to escape me tonight.
I wasn’t paranoid.
At least, I didn’t think I was.
But something in the air whispered otherwise.
You’re not alone.
....I rubbed my hands together and tried to breathe.
I always forgot how to breathe when I got like this.
It wasn’t anxiety, not exactly.
It was more like grief, but I didn’t know why.
Like my body remembered something my mind couldn’t.
Like my soul was haunted by something it never got the chance to scream about.
People always said “you look tired,” but what they meant was you look hollow.
And they were right.
I was.
I was tired of pretending.
Tired of holding myself together just enough not to fall apart where anyone could see.
There was something broken in me.
I didn’t know when it happened.
I didn’t know who did it.
But the feeling had always been there, sitting in the dark corners of my room, curled up beneath my skin like a bruise that never faded.
Some nights I dreamed of things I didn’t understand.
A room with no windows.
Laughter that wasn’t mine.
Cold hands.
A voice I hated but couldn’t place.
I’d wake up gasping for air, heart racing, body shaking.
And I’d feel it, that feeling.
That same emptiness.
Like something terrible happened… and no one remembered but me.
But there were moments, tiny, fragile moments, where I’d catch myself in the mirror and think, you’re not ugly.
I didn’t believe it for long.
Maybe a few hours.
Maybe less.
But those moments gave me hope.
That maybe, someday, I’d be enough.
Even if no one ever loved me.
Even if he, the boy I’d never spoken to, never touched, only watched from a distance, never looked my way.
Even if no one ever knew my name.
Something deep inside still whispered, you matter.
And then I heard it again, the footsteps.
Closer this time.
I spun around.
Still no one.
But this time… the hairs on my neck stood up.
Someone was there.
I could feel it.
Watching.
Waiting.
And for the first time in a long time… I was scared.
By the time I reached the apartment gate, the air felt colder than it should’ve.
I kept my eyes low, pretending not to notice the quiet buzz of something being off.
It was always quiet here, but not this kind of quiet.
This was the kind of silence that pressed against your ears.
The kind that made you wonder if you were being watched.
My fingers shook a little as I punched in the code.
3 7 2 5.
The numbers to the only place I could call mine.
The door clicked open, but something in me didn’t relax.
Inside, everything was where I left it.
Too neat.
Too still.
One photo frame on the counter, the one with me at 7 years old, smiling like I hadn’t learned to be afraid yet.
No family pictures.
No friends.
Just that girl I barely recognized.
I dropped my bag by the couch and grabbed the blanket I always used, the one with the ripped seam I never fixed.
Safe things.
Familiar things.
I sat down and stared at the wall for too long.
I didn’t turn on the lights.
Just the TV for background noise, but I couldn’t even focus.
It was always like this after those dreams.
They left a taste in my mouth, bitter, like smoke and fear.
I used to tell myself I was fine.
That everyone has nightmares.
That I was just sensitive.
But there were things that didn’t make sense.
Like the way I’d wake up crying.
Or how I knew the room I’d never been in.
Or the fact that sometimes I flinched when someone touched me, even gently.
Something happened to me.
I just didn’t know what.
I stood up to make tea, something normal, something boring.
That’s when I saw it.
On the floor, just inside the door.
A folded piece of paper.
I didn’t hear it drop.
Didn’t see it when I walked in.
But it was there now, perfectly placed.
Waiting.
My heart started racing again.
I didn’t move right away.
Just stared.
Like maybe if I didn’t look directly at it, it wouldn’t be real.
But it was.
I finally picked it up.
No name.
No address.
Just a rough fold and handwriting that was… strange.
Sharp.
Slanted.
And yet, something about it made my chest ache.
I opened it.
There were only five words:
Do you remember the screams?
My knees nearly gave out.
I dropped the note.
Backed away from it like it was poison.
My hands trembled so hard I could barely hold the counter.
I couldn’t breathe.
How did they know?
Who wrote this?
Was it a joke?
A threat?
A mistake?
I grabbed the note and crumpled it like it would make it disappear.
Threw it in the bin.
Washed my hands twice like I was trying to erase whatever just touched me.
But the words wouldn’t leave.
They sat in my mind, echoing louder than anything else.
Do you remember the screams?
I don’t.
But now I wanted to.
Or maybe I didn’t.
Because something deep in me whispered back:
Yes.
You do.
You just don’t want to.
I didn’t sleep that night.
Not really.
I laid on the couch with the TV still on, some sitcom rerun with laugh tracks that felt too fake, too loud.
I wasn’t watching it.
I just needed noise.
Something to keep me from thinking.
But my mind wouldn’t shut up.
I kept replaying the words over and over.
Do you remember the screams?
What screams?
My body remembered something I couldn’t name.
Like the ache behind my eyes when I cried too hard.
Like the sharp twist in my stomach every time someone got too close.
Like that one spot behind my left ear that went cold when I was afraid.
There were memories that didn’t exist, but the feelings never left.
And now this note…
Who would send something like that?
My name wasn’t on it.
There was no signature.
But it felt personal.
Too personal.
Like someone had opened up my chest and whispered directly into the part of me I keep locked up.
I told myself I’d throw it away.
That I’d already done that.
But at 2:17 AM, I found myself fishing it back out of the trash.
Smoothing the wrinkles.
Staring at the words like they’d rearrange into something less horrifying.
They didn’t.
By 4 AM, I gave up on sleep.
My eyes burned, but the rest of me felt wired.
Like something was coming, and I needed to be ready.
The next morning, I left the apartment before the sun fully rose.
I didn’t want to be there when the world woke up.
I didn’t want to hear the knocks on my door that never came, because no one ever came.
Except, maybe now, someone had.
I walked without a destination.
Just moving.
Pretending the cold didn’t sting my fingers or that my body didn’t feel too heavy.
I passed by closed coffee shops, dogs barking behind fences, and strangers who didn’t see me.
That part was normal.
I was good at being invisible.
But something was different now.
I felt watched.
Not in the obvious way.
Not like a stranger’s eyes on my back.
No.
This was something deeper.
Something that made the hairs on my neck rise without warning.
Like someone wasn’t just watching, they were remembering me.
Even if I didn’t remember them.
I ended up in front of a building I hadn’t visited in years.
The old community center.
It used to be a school, way back when.
They turned it into a place for group therapy, free art classes, and things for “troubled youth.”
I came here when I was fourteen.
Sat in one of the rooms and stared at a wall while a lady with soft eyes asked me about my truth.
I never gave her one.
I didn’t know it then.
I still don’t.
But something about being near the building made me feel… tethered.
Like part of me was still inside, waiting for answers.
The doors were locked now.
Too early.
But I pressed my palm against the glass anyway and whispered:
“I want to remember.”
The words came out before I realized they were mine.
My breath fogged the glass.
I stayed like that for a second.
Then turned and walked away.
Back home, I tried to act normal.
Tea.
A hot shower.
Music.
I told myself the letter was a prank.
That I was overreacting.
Until I saw the mirror in the hallway.
There was writing on it.
Foggy letters that had been wiped but still left traces, like someone had written it with their finger while the mirror was steamed up.
Three words:
I see you.
I froze.
That mirror was spotless last night.
I would’ve noticed.
I always noticed.
Because sometimes I couldn’t look into it without hating myself.
But now…
Now it was staring back.
And someone had written on it.
I backed away slowly, heart thudding in my ears.
My hand reached for my phone, but I didn’t call anyone.
Who would I even call?
The police?
What would I say?
"Hi, someone wrote a creepy sentence on my mirror and left me a horror-movie-style letter about screams I can’t remember."
Yeah.
That’d go over well.
I ended up locking every door.
Closing every curtain.
Sitting in the middle of my bed with a knife from the kitchen clutched in my hoodie pocket like I had any idea how to use it.
The silence was heavier now.
And even though nothing else happened for the rest of the day…
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had just opened a door I couldn’t close again.
CHAPTER 2
I didn’t open the curtains the next morning.
Sunlight felt too loud.
I moved like I was underwater, slow, heavy, unsure.
I didn’t know what to do with myself.
The note was still in my hoodie pocket, smoothed flat now from the number of times I’d reread it.
The words still echoed like a scream I’d never heard with my ears, only my bones.
I see you.
Do you remember the screams?
I hated how my mind looped them like a broken record.
Hated how much I wanted to know more, even though every part of me was telling me not to go digging.
But something already cracked open.
And it wasn’t going to close itself.
I made toast.
Burned it.
Didn’t eat it.
Instead, I sat at the kitchen table, staring at my phone.
My fingers hovered above the search bar more than once.
But what was I supposed to type?
"How to remember a trauma you can’t name?"
"Why do I flinch when no one touches me?"
"Help."
Eventually I typed one word.
“Screams.”
I scrolled through the results like they might point me somewhere.
They didn’t.
Not until one article caught my eye.
“Auditory flashbacks in trauma survivors, when the body remembers what the brain cannot.”
I clicked.
I read.
And I froze.
Every line felt too familiar.
Terror without memory.
Nightmares with pieces that don’t belong to you.
The idea that your mind, is protecting you, might bury things too deep to dig up without bleeding.
Something about that hit me in the chest.
Hard.
The dreams.
The cold hands.
The echo of screams that didn’t belong to this life, this moment, but still curled inside me like they did.
I was afraid of what I’d find.
But I was more afraid of staying this way.
Numb.
Hollow.
Haunted.
So I made a decision.
A stupid one maybe.
But it felt right.
I was going back to the community center.
The sun was already sinking by the time I made it there.
It looked different in the fading light, smaller somehow, almost abandoned.
But the side door was cracked open, just like it used to be when they held the evening art therapy classes.
I hesitated.
Then stepped inside.
Everything smelled the same, old books, dust, and whatever they used to clean the art room tables.
My shoes squeaked on the floor.
A single hallway light flickered near the ceiling.
I walked slowly, each step louder than the last.
I don’t know what I was looking for.
Memories, maybe.
Ghosts.Answers?
Room 6.
That was the room they used for one on ones.
The one where I never talked.
Where I learned how to cry without making a sound.
I touched the doorknob.
Cold.
Then I pushed.
It opened with a soft groan, the smell of old carpet hitting me like a wave.
Nothing had changed.
Still the mismatched chairs.
The pale blue walls.
That faded poster about “emotional safety” peeling in the corner.
And then I saw it.
On the chair in the corner.
A stuffed rabbit.
One ear bent.
Fur dirty.
Missing an eye.
I stared.
I knew that rabbit.
My chest tightened.
I didn’t remember how.
But I knew.
I walked closer, knees weak.
Picked it up.
And under it, taped to the chair, was another note.
Same sharp handwriting.
Same ache in my ribs as I unfolded it.
“You left this behind.”
I dropped the rabbit.
Stumbled back.
The hallway light flickered again.
A sound, somewhere in the building.
A shuffle.
I wasn’t alone.
Back outside, I ran.
Didn’t stop until I reached the corner of my street.
Hands on my knees.
Gasping.
That wasn’t just a memory trigger.
Someone was in that building.
Someone who knew me.
Knew I’d come back.
Knew what to leave behind.
I should’ve gone home.
Should’ve locked my door.
But I didn’t.
I turned back.
Because now I needed to know more.
I didn’t know how I found the strength to turn around.
The street was empty, the fading light turning everything a soft shade of gray.
The world felt quiet, too quiet, as if it was holding its breath, waiting.
But I had to go back.
The rabbit’s dirty fur still burned on my fingertips.
Its one missing eye stared up at me like a secret I wasn’t supposed to know but couldn’t forget.
I walked back toward the old community center, heart hammering loud enough to drown out every other sound.
The side door was still open a crack.
I slipped inside.
The hallways seemed narrower now, shadows stretching long and thin like reaching fingers.
The stale smell of dust and forgotten hopes wrapped around me like a cloak.
I moved toward Room 6, where the rabbit had been left.
But this time, the chair was empty.
I blinked.
Where was the rabbit?
A sudden chill slid down my spine.
And then, from the corner of the room, I saw it, another folded piece of paper taped to the wall.
The handwriting was the same, jagged, sharp, a mix of cruelty and sorrow.
I stepped closer, breathing catching.
The note said:
“Do you remember now?”
My hands shook.
I wanted to rip it down, throw it in the trash, burn it, but I couldn’t.
Something held me there, rooted to the spot.
I swallowed hard and whispered, “No.
I don’t.”
A noise shattered the silence, a soft tap, tap from the hallway outside.
I froze.
The sound stopped.
I listened.
Silence.
My pulse was a wild drum in my ears.
Slowly, I backed out of the room, eyes scanning the shadows.
The side door was still open.
I slipped out.
The street felt different now.
Thinner.
Edgier.
Like the air itself was sharper.
I didn’t stop walking until I reached the safety of my apartment.
But even there, nothing felt safe.
The next day, I tried to pretend none of it happened.
I shoved the memory of the rabbit, the note, the eyes, deep into some dark corner of my mind.
I told myself it was just my imagination.
Maybe a cruel joke.
But the silence around me was heavy.
I sat at the kitchen table, staring at my tea as steam curled like ghost fingers.
And then my phone buzzed.
A message.
I grabbed it like it was a lifeline.
But the screen was blank.
No text.
No numbers.
Just empty.
I tried to call back, but the line was dead.
I told myself it was a glitch.
But when my phone buzzed again five minutes later, this time with the same blank message, my hands started to tremble.
The paranoia settled like a stone in my gut.
Someone was watching.
Waiting.
Days passed, and every little noise set my nerves on edge.
Footsteps behind me on empty sidewalks.
The whisper of fabric against the walls when I was alone.
Phones ringing with no one on the other end.
Each moment, simple and mundane before, now dripped with suspicion.
The world had shifted, and I was trapped in a cage made of my own fear.
I started locking the apartment door the second I walked in, even when I was home.
I stopped looking out the windows.
And when I left the house, I clutched my keys like weapons.
One evening, I was sitting on the couch, blanket wrapped tight around me, trying to lose myself in a book.
But my phone buzzed again.
This time, a picture.
A photo.
My heart nearly stopped.
It was a picture of the old community center.
Taken from the street corner.
From somewhere I’d walked by yesterday.
No words.
Just the photo.
I didn’t know how, but whoever was sending these knew me.
Knew where I’d been.
Knew what I was thinking.
I wanted to scream, to call someone, anyone.
But my voice caught in my throat.
I felt more alone than ever.
Later that night, I lay awake, listening to the silence.
But it wasn’t silent.
There was a rhythm now.
A slow, steady thumping.
Not inside my head.
Outside.
I sat up, breath catching.
The sound was footsteps.
Soft.
Coming closer.
I reached for the knife I’d stashed in my hoodie pocket.
Heart in my throat, I crept toward the door.
Peered through the peephole.
Nothing.
No one.
I locked the door again.
Sat down, trembling.
And then the phone buzzed once more.
I didn’t look.
I couldn’t.
The next day was worse.
I was jumpy, distracted, spilling coffee and knocking over things I usually handled with ease.
At work, my colleagues noticed.
They asked if I was okay.
I smiled and lied.
“Just tired,” I said.
But inside, I was unraveling.
That afternoon, a strange call came in.
No voice.
Just breathing.
I hung up.
Then the call came again.
And again.
Finally, I answered on the third.
“Hello?”
Silence.
Then a whisper.
A voice I didn’t recognize.
Cold.
Empty.
“Do you remember?”
And then the line went dead.
That night, I dreamed.
Again.
The same dream.
A dark room.
Laughter that wasn’t mine.
Cold hands.
And screams.
This time, louder.
More urgent.
I woke gasping, tears streaming down my face.
Something inside me broke.
But it wasn’t just grief anymore.
It was fear.
Fear of what I was forgetting.
Fear of what someone else remembered.
Fear of what was coming.
I didn’t know what I was chasing.
Or running from.
All I knew was that the past was clawing its way back.
And it wasn’t finished with me yet.
I locked my door that night.
For the first time in years, I actually slid the bolt across and shoved a chair under the handle like I used to do when I was little and home alone.
Except now, I wasn’t sure if it was to keep someone out or to keep the memories in.
I couldn’t sleep.
Every creak in the house made my breath catch.
Every shadow outside my window looked like a man standing still, waiting for me to move.
At 2:14 a.m., my phone buzzed.
No name.
Just Unknown Number.
I almost didn’t answer.
But I did.
I shouldn’t have.
There was no voice.
Just... breathing.
Not heavy.
Not fast.
Just calm, like they were lying down, listening to me.
Like they knew I’d answer.
Like they were waiting for my voice.
I hung up and turned my phone off.
When I woke up the next morning, the rabbit was gone.
I swore I left it on the kitchen table before going to bed, dirty, broken, its one eye missing.
I even remembered dropping my keys next to it.
But it wasn’t there.
And the keys?
Still in my coat pocket.
On the table instead, a single paper-clip.
Bent into a crude spiral.
I didn’t know why it terrified me more than the rabbit.
Maybe because it meant someone had been inside.
Close enough to take something, leave something, and vanish again.
Like it was a game to them.
Like I was a game.
The paranoia bled into everything.
I jumped at every footstep behind me on the side walk.
Started checking my mirrors constantly, scanning parked cars to see if anyone sat inside.
I stopped answering my phone unless I recognized the number.
And even then, my voice came out shaky, like someone else was using my mouth.
At the store, I could feel it, eyes on me.
I turned fast, too fast, heart racing.
But no one was there.
Just a woman with her child.
A man reading a cereal box.
Ordinary people.
And still, I couldn’t shake it.
That night, I found a note under my pillow.
Folded once.
Heavy paper.
Same sharp, deliberate handwriting.
“Do you remember now?”
I stared at it for so long, my vision blurred.
Then I screamed.
Just once.
I didn’t recognize the sound coming out of me.
I tore the note in half, then again, then again, until the pieces were so small they felt like ash.
But it didn’t matter.
Because something inside me did remember.
Not clearly.
Not fully.
But like a bruise waking up under the skin, something hurt.
Something knew.
I didn’t sleep that night either.
Because I was sure of two things now, One someone was watching me and two I was starting to remember things I’d spent my whole life trying to forget.
CHAPTER 3
The dreams started again that week.
Only they didn’t feel like dreams.
More like memories, halfway drowned.
I was standing in a hallway. Same flickering light. Same smell of old carpet and disinfectant.
But I was small, too small.
Pink socks. A red crayon in my hand.
I was walking toward a door, holding something behind my back. A secret.
The door opened.
But I always woke up before I could see who was inside.
I tried not to think about it.
Went for walks. Read old books. Cleaned the same corner of the kitchen three times.
But it clung to me.
Every time I looked in the mirror, I saw something in my own eyes I didn’t like, recognition. Fear.
One morning, I found my sketchbook open on the table.
I didn’t remember leaving it there.
I hadn’t drawn anything in months.
But the page was full.
Red crayon. Like the dream.
The lines were jagged. A child’s drawing. A house. A chair. And something sitting in it, a scribbled figure with long fingers and no face.
Underneath, written in block letters:
“BE QUIET OR HE’LL HEAR YOU.”
I dropped the book. My hands were shaking.
Because the handwriting?
It looked like mine.
But not mine now, mine when I was a kid.
Later that day, I went to visit the old neighbor across the street, Mrs. Langley.
She used to babysit me when my mom was at work.
I didn’t plan on saying much. Just… checking in. Seeing if anyone else remembered.
She looked surprised to see me.
“You’re back,” she said, voice warm. “Thought you’d never come home.”
I smiled, but it felt fake. “Did you ever notice anything weird? Back then, I mean. With me?”
Her eyes shifted. Not shocked, careful.
“Well… you were a quiet child. Sweet. But quiet.”
“What do you mean?”
She stirred her tea. “You’d disappear sometimes. For hours. Your mom always said you were at the center. But sometimes, you’d come back different. You wouldn’t talk. Wouldn’t eat. I always thought… well. Maybe something happened.”
My throat closed.
She reached for my hand. “I didn’t know what to do. I’m sorry.”
I left before I could cry in front of her.
As I crossed the street, I felt it again, like someone was behind me. Breathing down my neck.
I turned.
Nothing.
Just the wind pushing dead leaves down the sidewalk.
But when I got back to the house, there was something on the porch.
An envelope.
No stamp. No name.
Inside: a photo.
It was old, faded.
A man holding a child in his lap.
Me.
Smiling.
But my eyes…
My eyes were wrong.
Flat. Blank. Like no one was home.
On the back of the photo, written in red ink:
“You used to love sitting with me.”
I stared at the photo for what felt like hours.
There was no date on it. No obvious place I could place it in my timeline. But something in my stomach clenched when I looked at that man’s hands, one resting on my shoulder, the other holding me still, fingers too tight for comfort.
I was smiling.
But I didn’t look happy.
I looked… practiced.
Like I’d been taught how to smile just enough.
I turned the picture over again. That handwriting. The red ink.
“You used to love sitting with me.”
No, I didn’t.
I didn’t even know who he was.
Or maybe I did.
Maybe some part of me had always known.
I texted my mother.
me: we need to talk. now.
me: it’s important.
me: pls.
No answer.
I called.
Straight to voicemail.
She always answered. Even when she was drunk. Especially when she was drunk.
Something was wrong.
Or something was already happening.
I didn’t sleep that night either. Not because of the dreams, but because of the silence.
The silence felt too perfect. Like the world was holding its breath around me, waiting for something to break.
At 3:12 a.m., my doorbell rang.
Just once.
A short, sharp sound.
I froze in bed, heart pounding so loud I could hear it in my ears. I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
Then it rang again.
This time longer.
I slid out of bed and crept to the front window, pushing the curtain aside just enough to peek out.
No one.
Nothing.
Except…
A box on the front step.
Small. Wrapped in brown paper. Tied with a red ribbon.
I stared at it through the window for a full ten minutes before I dared open the door.
The air was still. Dead still. Like even the wind was afraid.
I stepped out and grabbed the box, hands trembling.
Back inside, I cut the ribbon and peeled the paper back slowly, my skin prickling with cold sweat.
Inside was a tape recorder.
The old kind, chunky, plastic, something from the early 90s.
And a note.
“Press play. Or I will.”
My fingers hovered over the buttons.
I didn’t want to. Every cell in my body screamed not to.
But I did.
CLICK.
At first, static. Then… a voice.
Mine.
Small. High-pitched. Younger.
“I don’t want to go in there again.”
A man’s voice next. Calm. Coaxing.
“Come on now, Maya. Don’t make a scene. You’re my special girl, remember?”
My breath caught. I slammed the stop button.
But I could still hear it.
His voice. My voice. That word:
Special.
I stumbled back, hand over my mouth, bile rising in my throat.
How the hell did they have that recording?
Why did I not remember saying those words?
How much had I forgotten?
And why was it all coming back now?
I ran to the bathroom and threw up.
When I looked in the mirror afterward, my face was pale. Lips trembling. Eyes wide.
And behind me, in the hallway, something moved.
I spun.
Nothing.
But on the bathroom floor, another note had been slid under the door.
“You were always so good at pretending.”
I sank to the floor.
And I cried.
Not the soft kind. Not the quiet kind.
The ugly kind, raw, choking sobs that came from somewhere deep, somewhere buried.
Because something was breaking open inside me.
Something I’d worked my whole life to keep shut.
The next day, I went back to the community center.
Not because I wanted to.
Because I had to.
The rabbit was back.
On the steps this time.
Just sitting there, like it was waiting for me.
I picked it up, turned it over. No note this time.
But someone had stitched a new button where the missing eye had been.
Not sewn neatly. Crooked. Jagged.
And in red thread, barely visible unless you looked closely, were three words stitched into the ear:
“I see you.”
I almost dropped it again.
But instead, I stuffed it into my bag and pushed through the center doors.
The lights were off. The air heavy with silence.
Room 6 still looked exactly the same.
I stood in the doorway, unsure what I was even looking for.
And that’s when I saw him.
A man. Down the hallway. Just standing there.
Watching me.
He didn’t move. Didn't say anything.
Just... looked.
Then turned and walked away.
I chased him.
Heart in my throat. Feet echoing on the floor.
But when I turned the corner,
No one.
Just a single chair sitting in the middle of the hallway.
And on it, a photo.
Me again. Maybe seven years old.
This time, I wasn’t smiling.
This time, my face was wet, tears streaking down my cheeks.
And behind me, blurry but visible…
That same man.
Only now, I remembered his name.
Caleb.
My mom’s old boyfriend.
The one I thought had moved away.
The one she never wanted to talk about.
The one who used to come over after work, always bringing me candy. Always wanting to tuck me in. Always
No.
No, no, no.
It hit me like a wave.
Like drowning.
He was the one.
He was the reason I couldn’t remember.
He was the reason I never wanted to.
I left the center with shaking legs and tear-blind eyes.
I didn’t go home.
I didn’t know where I was going.
But I knew one thing now:
This wasn’t just about the past anymore.
It was happening again.
And I had to remember before he made me forget all over again.
CHAPTER 4
I barely slept.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the rabbit. That bent ear. The missing eye. The way it sat so still in the corner, like it had waited years for me to come back. I didn’t dream, not exactly, but flashes kept me awake.
The corner of Room 6.
The note.
That feeling of someone watching.
I sat up around 4 a.m., my sheets clinging to me like skin, heart racing like I’d just run a marathon. My phone was still clutched in my hand. I’d fallen asleep holding it, waiting for a text that never came. Or maybe I was scared I’d get one.
I unlocked the screen.
No new messages.
No missed calls.
I wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse.
My fingers hovered over my mom’s name. Then I tapped “Call.”
It rang twice before going straight to voicemail.
I tried again.
Same thing.
A pit opened up in my stomach, slow and cold. She was always turning her phone off when she was using again, or when she didn’t want to be found. But I’d seen her just two days ago. Her hands were shaking, but she said she was getting clean. Said she had something to tell me.
Maybe this was about that.
Maybe she changed her mind.
Or maybe Caleb had found out.
I didn’t know why the name felt like an echo in my chest. I’d seen it once, yesterday, scribbled in the corner of a half-torn drawing I found buried in the storage box. A stick-figure man with no face. Labeled: “Caleb. He said don’t tell.”
The handwriting was mine.
But I didn’t remember writing it.
The drawing had been folded up inside an old Hello Kitty diary I hadn’t seen in years. It wasn’t even a real diary, just a cheap one from the grocery store, pages curling at the edges, the lock missing. I don’t know why I kept it.
There were only a few entries.
Mostly nonsense.
One stuck out.
“He smells like smoke. Not like dad smoke. Bad smoke. I don’t like the way he looks at me. Mom says be good. I am trying.”
That’s all it said.
The date was smudged. But I must have been young, maybe six or seven. And I knew, deep down, that I hadn’t written that with the expectation that anyone would read it. It was a child trying to make sense of something too big, too dark.
I shut the book and held it in my lap.
I didn’t cry.
There was something dry about the pain. Like it had been dehydrated by time, just waiting for water to make it real again.
My phone buzzed, loud in the silence.
I jumped.
One new message.
Blocked number.
“Do you remember what he called you? Little Mouse.”
I dropped the phone.
No.
No.
That name.
My breath caught in my throat.
Somewhere in the back of my brain, a door creaked open. Just a little. Just enough for the cold to get in.
“Little Mouse.”
That’s what he used to call me.
Who?
The word was there, but the memory wasn’t fully formed. Like a song you almost remember, stuck on the tip of your tongue.
I stood up too fast, the room tilting for a second before settling.
I needed to move. Think. Do something.
I grabbed the diary, shoved it into my bag, and left the house.
It was still early when I got to the library.
They weren’t open yet, but I sat on the cold stone bench out front, my breath fogging the air. The morning light was soft, like a secret.
I used to come here as a kid. They held reading programs and art workshops in the back room. My mother would drop me off and disappear for hours. Sometimes she came back high. Sometimes she didn’t come back at all until closing.
There was a woman who worked the desk, Miss Carol. She used to braid my hair and bring me peanut butter crackers. She’d let me nap in the bean bag corner when I was too tired to read.
I wondered if she was still alive.
Or if anyone remembered me at all.
I felt like a ghost in my own story.
When the doors opened, I walked inside like I’d never left. The place still smelled the same, paper and ink and something warm. Safe.
I didn’t go for the books.
I went to the microfilm room.
If I couldn’t remember, maybe the town paper could.
I looked up every article with the name “Caleb” from 2003 to 2010. There were dozens. Some irrelevant. Some too vague. But one caught my eye.
“Man Questioned in Local Abuse Case, No Charges Filed”
Published: September 18, 2006
The article was short.
Caleb T. Garrison, age 38, was questioned in connection to allegations of inappropriate conduct involving a minor. The name of the child was withheld due to age and privacy laws. The investigation was later dropped due to “insufficient evidence.” The article mentioned a previous arrest in 1999 for possession of methamphetamine, and that he had a “domestic history” with a woman referred to only as “M.W.”
M.W.
My mother’s initials.
I read the paragraph five times before printing it and folding it into my bag.
It felt like the ground had shifted beneath me.
I had no memory of this. None. And yet, my name was probably the one they were trying to protect in that article.
The door creaked behind me.
Footsteps.
I froze.
Turned.
No one.
Just the echo of movement.
But still, I felt it.
That weight on my skin. Like eyes. Like breath.
I was being watched.
By the time I got home, my fingers were numb from cold and nerves.
I locked the door behind me. Pulled the curtains shut. Checked all the rooms. Under the bed. In the closets.
Nothing.
Still, I couldn’t relax.
I made tea and sat at the kitchen table, staring at the folded paper like it might come alive. I was trying to decide if I was losing my mind or finally waking up from something much worse.
My phone buzzed again.
Unknown number.
I didn’t want to answer.
But I did.
“Hello?”
Breathing.
Then,“Maya?” My mother’s voice.
Slurred.
Shaky.
“Mom? Where are you?”
“I’m... I messed up,” she whispered. “I....I said I’d tell you, but he found out.”
My heart dropped. “Who found out? Caleb?”
A silence.
Then a whimper.
“You weren’t supposed to remember, baby. I thought I had more time.”
“More time for what?” My voice cracked. “What did he do to me?”
“I can’t” she cried. “I can’t say it. Not over the phone. He might be listening. I don’t” Her voice faded.
“Mom? Are you there?”
“I think... I think he knows you remember”
The line went dead.
I stared at the phone like it might ring again.
It didn’t.
And the silence was louder than the truth.
I didn’t even realize I was crying until I tasted salt.
The silence that followed that dropped call wasn’t just empty, it was deafening. I stared at my phone for a full minute before trying to call back.
No answer.
I tried again.
And again.
Voicemail.
Always voicemail.
It was like she’d disappeared the moment she said his name.
And worse, she didn’t deny it.
She didn’t say, “You’re imagining things,” or “There’s nothing to worry about.” She knew what I was starting to remember. She knew the name. She knew the fear.
And she was afraid too.
I stood up, legs shaking, and dug through the rest of the storage box. There were more drawings, some torn, others childishly colorful.
One showed a little girl with stick arms hiding behind a couch.
Behind her stood a tall figure drawn in black crayon, arms like branches, no face. Just red dots for eyes.
Above the drawing, I had written:
“Be quiet. He hears when I talk.”
I dropped it like it burned.
I wanted to rip it in half. Burn it. Make it disappear. But I didn’t. I folded it, gently, and tucked it into the Hello Kitty journal with shaking hands.
That was me.
I don’t remember making that picture.
But that was me.
And he was real.
I opened my phone again.
This time, there was a new message.
Blocked number.
“Little Mouse used to be so quiet. Maybe she should be quiet again.”
I nearly threw the phone across the room.
My body went cold. Like I was full of snow and static. Like someone had pressed their hand to the back of my neck and whispered a threat into my bones.
Whoever this was, they weren’t just trying to scare me.
They were watching me.
Knew where I lived.
What I was finding.
What I was starting to remember.
I opened my notes app and typed a single sentence, just in case I forgot again:
“Caleb Garrison hurt me. My mother knew. And now he knows I remember.”
I didn’t know what I was going to do with that yet.
But I needed to keep it somewhere. Needed to acknowledge the thing that had been following me since childhood like a shadow I never dared to turn around and see.
I closed my phone.
That’s when I noticed the light outside the window had changed.
Not quite dusk. That strange hour before it, where the sky looks bruised and the world holds its breath.
Something pulled me to the window.
And there he was.
Across the street.
Standing still.
Too far to make out his face, if he even had one, but close enough that I felt it. Felt him.
Just standing there.
Watching me.
Not moving.
Not waving.
Just… staring.
I blinked.
And he was gone.
I didn’t scream.
I didn’t run.
I just sat down on the edge of my bed, every muscle in my body buzzing like they were trying to scream for me.
I knew what this was now.
This wasn’t just memory.
This wasn’t just trauma waking up.
This was real.
And someone didn’t want me to remember why.
CHAPTER 5
The window stayed empty.
I stood there for what felt like hours, just staring. Waiting for him to come back. For the sky to shift. For something to make sense. But all I got was silence.
Not the peaceful kind. The kind that crawls under your skin and drags its nails down your bones.
I didn’t sleep that night. I didn’t even sit down. I just moved, from room to room, checking locks, turning on lights, whispering “you’re okay” to myself like it was a spell that could keep the monsters away.
It didn’t work.
By morning, I was hollow. My hands shook as I brewed coffee I wouldn’t drink. I scrolled through old messages, old photos, desperate to anchor myself to something real, something warm. But everything looked like it belonged to someone else.
And then, my phone buzzed again.
Blocked number.
I didn’t want to look.
I looked.
"You forgot what he made you do, Little Mouse. But he didn’t."
My stomach flipped. I pressed my hand to my mouth and ran to the bathroom. I threw up bile and nothing else, dry-heaving until I felt like I was going to snap in half.
I didn’t forget on purpose.
I forgot to survive.
I didn’t even realize I was crying until I saw myself in the mirror. Eyes red. Pale as chalk. Hair matted to one side.
I didn’t recognize her.
And somewhere deep in my ribs — something cracked open. A sliver of memory. A sound.
Screaming.
Not mine.
Another child.
A boy.
Tied to a chair.
A basement. No windows. Moldy concrete.
“You keep watching, Little Mouse, or I’ll make him scream louder.”
I collapsed against the sink, clutching my chest like it might tear open.
He made me watch.
I wasn’t just hurt.
I was forced to see him hurt others. Other kids. Maybe even ones I knew. Maybe even,
I gagged again but nothing came up.
The memory disappeared just as fast. Slipping through the cracks. But it left something behind.
Guilt.
Heavy. Ugly. Ancient.
I washed my face in cold water and stared at myself again.
This time, I didn’t look away.
“You didn’t do it,” I whispered. “You were just a kid.”
But I watched.
I watched.
And then I forgot.
By noon, I couldn’t take it anymore.
I needed answers.
The journal. The drawings. The newspaper clip. My mother’s voice, echoing through the broken phone call, it all pointed to one person.
Caleb.
But if I was going to survive this, if I was going to stop being afraid of shadows, I needed more than scribbled memories. I needed truth.
And there was only one person left who might know more.
Monimam.
That’s what I used to call her. My mom’s mom. Mona. She raised my mom after her first stint in rehab. Hard woman. Smelled like lavender and menthols. She was strict but kind in her own strange way. We hadn’t spoken in years. Not since she told my mom she was “raising rot.”
Still, she might know something.
And she always answered the door.
The drive to her house felt like sleepwalking.
Gray streets. Old houses. Trees still bare from winter. It felt like driving backward through time.
When I pulled into her driveway, I sat there for a few minutes, unsure if I could go through with it.
But then I saw her curtain move.
She was watching.
Of course she was.
I got out and walked up the steps, every one creaking like it remembered me.
I knocked.
The door opened immediately.
She hadn’t changed much. White hair pulled tight into a bun. Deep lines around her eyes and mouth. A cardigan that looked like it had survived two wars.
She stared at me.
“You look like hell,” she said.
“Good to see you too,” I said, my voice brittle.
She stepped aside without another word.
Her house smelled exactly like I remembered.
Lemons. Cigarettes. Dust.
She sat down in her old recliner, lit a cigarette, and motioned for me to sit on the couch across from her.
I didn’t waste time.
“Do you know who Caleb Garrison is?”
She froze.
Just for a second. But I saw it.
She blew smoke out slowly. “That name never should’ve been in your mouth.”
“But it was,” I said. “When I was a kid.”
She said nothing.
“I found a drawing. A journal. Articles. My mom said he knows I remember. Someone’s been texting me. Watching me. I don’t know what’s real anymore.”
“You were better off forgetting.”
“I was a kid.”
She looked at me like I had just said something painfully naïve. “You were a kid who saw too much. And your mother—” she flicked ash into a tray. “She let him back in. Over and over.”
I swallowed. “He hurt me. But he also hurt others. I remembered a boy. He made me watch.”
Monimam’s eyes darkened.
“So you do remember.”
“Who was he?” I asked. “The boy?”
She didn’t speak for a long time.
Then she said, “Your mother’s sister had a son. Eli.”
I blinked. “I have a cousin?”
“Had.”
My stomach dropped.
“Eli was staying with your mom for a few weeks. She was supposed to babysit. But she let Caleb in.”
The air went cold.
“Is Eli”
“He didn’t make it out.”
I covered my mouth. My body trembled.
“And I watched?”
“I don’t know what you saw, Maya. But you stopped talking for weeks after that. You’d draw these awful pictures. Scream in your sleep. Then one day, you stopped. Like someone flipped a switch. Your mom said it was just trauma. She said to leave it alone.”
“And you did?”
“I was scared too, baby.” For the first time, her voice broke. “You were five. What was I supposed to do?”
“Call the police. Tell someone. Save me.”
Silence.
Then she whispered, “I didn’t think anyone would believe us.”
I left without saying goodbye.
I couldn’t.
My chest was a war zone.
I had a cousin. He died. I was there. I saw it. And I forgot.
I wasn’t just a victim.
I was a witness.
Maybe even the reason no one else ever knew.
That night, I sat on my bed, the journal open in front of me. I wrote a name:
Eli.
And then, I started drawing.
A small hand.
A broken chair.
A boy with no mouth.
I cried the whole time.
Three days passed.
I didn’t go back to the library. I didn’t call my mom again. I didn’t answer any more texts.
I barely left my bed.
Until he showed up.
At first, I thought I was dreaming.
I opened the door expecting a delivery.
And there he was.
Tall. Quiet. A little bruised looking, like the world had taken too many swings at him but never knocked him out.
He looked about my age.
Sharp jaw. Messy hair. Eyes that held stories I wasn’t ready for.
“Are you Maya?” he asked.
I hesitated. “Depends.”
He pulled something from his pocket, a photo.
It was one of the drawings. The one of the red-eyed man and the girl behind the couch.
My drawing.
“I found this in my mom’s attic. With a box of old reports. I think you knew her.”
I looked at him. “What’s your name?”
“Blake.”
And something in me cracked.
Because I knew that name.
Caleb had hurt him too.
I just didn’t know how yet. instead of trying to find out more, I closed the door and went to bed.
I didn’t sleep that night either.
Every sound was a threat.
Every shadow in the hallway, a man.
Every creak of the house felt like breath against my neck.
I locked my bedroom door.
Then I put a chair under the handle.
Then I pushed the dresser in front of it too.
And still…
I didn’t feel safe.
At some point near dawn, I must’ve drifted.
Not quite asleep. Not quite awake.
I saw a hallway. Too long. Too narrow.
The floorboards groaned under invisible steps.
A door at the end slowly creaked open, but no one stepped out.
Instead, a voice from the dark whispered:
"She always tried to tell. But she used the wrong words."
I woke up gasping.
The room was cold. My mouth dry.
The dresser hadn’t moved.
But something was different.
The Hello Kitty journal laid open on the floor.
I didn’t leave it open.
I didn’t leave it on the floor.
I knelt to pick it up, heart pounding.
A page I hadn’t seen before stared back at me.
The paper was torn at the top like it had once been removed and taped back in.
A drawing.
A house with boarded-up windows.
A car parked outside, red, with a dented bumper.
A stick-figure girl crouched behind the mailbox.
Above her head, in my own childish handwriting:
"Don’t let the rabbit see."
I blinked.
No.
Not the rabbit again.
The memory was right there.
Like the surface of a frozen lake, cracking beneath my feet.
I sat back against the bed and tried to breathe.
There was something about that car.
Something about that mailbox.
It wasn’t just a drawing, it was a place.
I knew where it was.
By the time the sun came up, I was already driving.
I hadn’t eaten.
Hadn’t brushed my hair.
Didn’t even remember grabbing my keys.
But I was heading toward the edge of town, toward an old trailer park near the woods.
The kind of place no one visited unless they had to.
Most of the units had been abandoned after the flood in 2011.
But a few still stood, water-damaged and sagging, like ghosts waiting to be condemned.
As I turned onto the gravel path, something inside me clenched.
Déjà vu.
Like my body remembered this place even if my brain didn’t.
I slowed the car, scanning the trailers.
Then I saw it.
The red car.
Or what was left of it.
Rust-covered. Tires flat.
But the dent in the bumper was the same.
And next to it, the mailbox. Crooked. Faded numbers.
I parked and got out, every step toward that spot feeling like a step into quicksand.
The moment my feet hit the gravel beside the mailbox, I remembered.
...
Blocked Number: “Little Mouse is digging too deep. Careful, or she’ll drown.”
...
“Little Mouse is done being quiet.”
...
Underneath, in red,
“This time, you don’t get to forget.”
CHAPTER 6
I didn’t sleep.
Not really.
I lay there, stiff beneath the covers, phone clutched to my chest like a lifeline, or a weapon, waiting for more red scrawl to bleed into my night. But nothing came. Just the low hum of silence. The occasional car. My heartbeat in my ears.
By morning, the streaks on the window were gone.
Vanished like they’d never existed.
Like I’d imagined the whole thing.
Except I hadn’t.
The picture was still in my phone.
And I hadn’t told anyone.
Because who could I tell?
“Hey, someone’s stalking me through my bedroom window, but don’t worry, it’s probably just my fractured trauma resurfacing for fun.”
Yeah. No.
I showered like a machine. Brushed my teeth with the same stare I’d worn in the mirror for weeks now, too hollow for real reflection. Too tired to care.
But the grocery list on the fridge felt like an anchor. Something normal. Something alive.
I needed normal.
So I went.
The air outside was sharp. Cold. Like it knew what I knew and didn’t want me to forget.
The local market was busy, noisy, filled with carts and chatter and that faint smell of roasted chicken and disinfectant. I pushed my cart slowly, mind adrift, body on autopilot. I was reaching for a jar of peanut butter when I heard it, a laugh.
Familiar.
Too familiar.
I froze, fingers brushing the label.
Then turned.
She was maybe ten feet away. Blue hoodie. Long dark curls I once used to braid during sleepovers. A cart full of snacks I used to binge with her.
Jenna.
My best friend. My "used to be" everything.
My mouth opened before I could think. “Jenna?”
Her body stiffened before she looked.
Then her eyes met mine, and went cold.
Not surprised.
Not relieved.
Not warm.
Just ice.
She stared for a second too long. Then gave a short, disbelieving laugh, dry and sharp.
“You’ve got some nerve,” she said, voice low, venomous.
My heart dropped.
“I... I didn’t know you were, I didn’t even know you still lived here,” I stammered.
“Of course you didn’t,” she snapped. “You didn’t know a lot of things, did you?”
She turned her cart away before I could say another word.
I watched her walk off, throat tight. Everything inside me screaming. Something shattered behind my ribs, a soundless crack.
I didn’t finish shopping.
Didn’t even remember walking out the store.
Just the rush of cold air. The echo of her voice in my head.
You didn’t know a lot of things, did you?
I was halfway home when it hit me.
Another flash.
This one sharper.
Brighter.
Hotter.
We were in Caleb’s basement. The unfinished one with cement floors and that god awful mildew stink.
I was sitting on the bottom step. Hands over my ears. Heart racing.
Someone was crying.
No, screaming.
A boy.
Younger than us.
Begging.
And Caleb,
He wasn’t just yelling. He was hurting him.
The crack of something hitting skin. The thud. The sobbing.
Jenna was there. At the top of the stairs. She looked at me. Then at Caleb.
And then she walked away.
Caleb’s voice boomed.
“You didn’t see anything. You don’t say anything. Or next time, it’s you.”
I shook my head, crying.
He grabbed my wrist so hard I felt it in my bones.
“Say it, Maya.”
“I… I didn’t see anything.”
“Say it louder.”
“I didn’t see anything.”
I stumbled on the sidewalk, nearly falling. The memory vanished, ripped away like a page from a burning book.
I bent over, hands on my knees, trying to breathe.
So many things I’d buried.
So many truths in locked rooms I never wanted to open.
I made it home somehow.
Shoved the door closed. Locked it twice.
And then I went to the park.
I don’t even know why.
Maybe I wanted air.
Maybe I wanted to run until my brain emptied.
But when I got there, I saw him.
Blake.
Sitting alone on the bench under the tree with the crooked branch. The same one we used to climb as kids.
I turned to leave, panic rising in my throat.
“Maya, wait.”
His voice stopped me.
Calm.
Almost pleading.
I didn’t move.
“You don’t have to talk. I just… I saw you. And I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
I laughed, a short, broken sound.
“Do I look okay to you?”
He stood slowly, hands raised. “No. You look like you’re carrying ghosts.”
I looked at him for the first time. Really looked.
Older. A little taller. Eyes still too soft for someone who’d seen what we’d seen.
“You shouldn't talk to me,” I whispered.
“Why not?”
“Because I bring things back.”
His brow furrowed. “So do I.”
He stepped closer.
And for a moment, we just stood there.
Two people shaped by the same fire.
Neither sure if they were the match or the ash.
I turned away first.
“I have to go,” I muttered.
“Maya, wait.” His voice was still quiet. But it carried weight.
I kept walking. Fast.
He didn’t follow.
But he didn’t leave either.
“I think I remember what he did to Alex,” he said.
My legs stopped moving.
The trees swayed.
Somewhere nearby, a dog barked.
I slowly turned back. “Alex?”
Blake nodded once. His jaw clenched. “You don’t remember?”
The name lit something inside me, a flicker of recognition, pain, nausea.
“Alex…” I whispered. “He was, he was small. Quiet. He… he had a birthmark on his neck.”
Blake’s face tightened. “Caleb made him cry just for fun. You and I were both there that day. You froze. I ran. And then…”
The air seemed to drain from my lungs.
I clutched the park fence, knuckles white.
“I did freeze,” I said. “He told me not to move. He told me if I said anything, he’d”... My voice broke. “God. I think I wanted to forget so badly that I actually did.”
“Me too.”
We stood in silence for a long time. The sky stretched pale above us, washed out like old paper.
“Do you think he’s back?” I finally asked.
Blake looked at me.
Really looked.
“I think he never left.”
I shivered.
Blake stepped closer. Not touching me. But near enough I could feel the gravity of it.
“Maya,” he said. “Why did we forget so much?”
I didn’t answer.
Because I didn’t know.
Because the truth felt like a broken bone I’d been walking on for years.
Because the photo on my phone, the message scrawled beneath it, was starting to make a brutal kind of sense.
This time, you don’t get to forget.
He was forcing me to remember.
But why?
“I have to go,” I said again, voice thinner now.
This time Blake didn’t stop me.
He just nodded. “If you remember more... anything... tell me.”
I nodded back, barely.
Then I left the park, my legs carrying me but my mind spiraling.
By the time I got home, I felt like I was unraveling.
I went to the journal.
My hand shook as I opened it.
The last page I wrote on stared up at me, ink bled, words jagged.
But something was different.
A new page.
One I hadn’t written.
I blinked.
And read.
“You remember him now. But do you remember what you did?”
My throat closed.
Because the handwriting wasn’t mine.
And it was dated,
Tomorrow
CHAPTER 7
The days that followed slipped through me like shadows. I moved through them but didn’t really live them. The world was a distant, blurred place. The air in my apartment felt too thick, suffocating. Every creak, every sigh from the walls made me jump.
I started seeing things out of the corner of my eye. A shadow darting past the hall. A face reflected in the window, gone the moment I turned.
Paranoia settled in like an unwelcome guest.
I told myself it was just my mind unraveling. The trauma clawing its way back. But still, every time I left my apartment, I felt eyes on me. Watching. Waiting.
The street lamps cast long fingers of light and shadow on the pavement, and I found myself looking over my shoulder too often.
My sketches became my only solace.
I hadn’t drawn in years, not since Caleb’s basement and that day I’d stopped trusting myself.
But one restless night, I pulled out my old sketchbook, the one I kept hidden beneath my bed.
The pages were yellowed, edges curled.
I flipped through them.
Faces.
Shapes.
Fragments of a girl I used to be.
Then I started to draw.
Lines shaky at first.
Then stronger.
I drew the crooked tree from the park.
The park bench where Blake sat.
A face I couldn’t quite place.
Shapes that didn’t make sense yet but felt important.
In the mornings, I’d wake to find new details had appeared in my mind, the flash of a memory, a phrase, a sound.
Each drawing was a puzzle piece.
A code to unlock what I’d buried.
One evening, Blake called.
I didn’t answer.
He left a message.
“Hey, Maya. I’m at the café on 5th. If you want to talk or just sit in silence, I’m here.”
My heart pounded.
I wanted to say yes.
I wanted to say no.
Instead, I texted.
“I’m scared.”
His reply came almost instantly.
“Me too.”
We met the next day.
The café was quiet, a little hidden gem with creaky wooden floors and the smell of espresso and old books.
Blake was waiting by the window, sipping coffee.
When I sat down, he didn’t say anything at first.
He just looked at me.
Then finally.
“Tell me about the drawings.”
I hesitated.
But I showed him.
Page after page.
The crooked tree.
The park bench.
A little boy’s face, eyes wide, scared.
A dark figure looming behind.
He nodded slowly.
“They’re good.”
“I don’t know what they mean,” I said.
“Maybe it’s not what they mean. Maybe it’s what they remember.”
He sipped his coffee.
“Do you think the boy is Alex?”
I swallowed hard.
“Maybe.”
Blake leaned forward, voice low.
“Maya, you have to understand something. What happened to us, to Alex, it wasn’t just bad luck. It wasn’t random. It was planned. Calculated. And there’s a reason Caleb did what he did. And a reason he made us forget.”
A chill crept up my spine.
“Why?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t know. But I want to find out. And I think we need to work together.”
I looked into his eyes and saw the same haunted hope that had brought me here.
And for the first time in a long time, I believed.
The message in my journal echoed in my mind.
You remember him now. But do you remember what you did?
I didn’t want to remember.
And I was afraid.
Because this time, the past wasn’t just coming back to haunt me.
It was demanding justice.
And I wasn’t sure I was ready to answer.
That night, Again I couldn’t sleep.
The apartment was silent, but the shadows grew louder in my mind.
I pulled the sketchbook onto my lap.
The crooked tree stared back at me, twisted and gnarled, like a warning.
I traced the lines of the boy’s face—the fear in his eyes mirrored my own.
Then, the words from the journal kept repeating:
“Do you remember what you did?”
What did I do?
The question clawed at me.
Was I a victim or a culprit?
The memories weren’t clear. They were fragments, like shattered glass I couldn’t piece together.
Images flashed:
A scream.
A hand reaching out.
A flash of cold steel.
But then darkness.
I pressed my palms against my eyes, willing the fragments to stop.
I needed answers, but the answers might destroy me.
I wanted to run.
To hide.
But Blake’s voice echoed, steady and sure:
“We have to face it together.”
I didn’t know if I was strong enough.
But I knew I couldn’t do this alone.
The next morning, I met Blake again at the café.
He had brought something—a folder thick with old photos, police reports, and newspaper clippings.
“This is everything I’ve found on Caleb and what happened to Alex,” he said, sliding the folder across the table.
I picked up a faded photograph, a young boy, eyes too old for his age, standing under the crooked tree.
A wave of nausea hit me.
“He looks like...” I started, voice shaking.
“Like someone we both knew,” Blake said softly, eyes fixed on the image.
I closed my eyes and took a shaky breath. The weight of the past settled into my chest like a stone pressing down on my ribs. My fingers trembled as I traced the worn edges of the photo.
“We need to start digging,” I whispered. “We have to know everything.”
Blake nodded, his jaw tight.
“We’re going to uncover the truth. No matter how dark it is.”
As I left the café that day, the world felt sharp and real, dangerous but alive.
Because some shadows hide the darkest secrets.
And those secrets were waiting.
Waiting for me to find them.
Later that afternoon, I was back in my apartment, staring blankly at the wall, when my phone buzzed.
A text from Blake.
“We need to be careful.”
I frowned.
I texted back: “What do you mean?”
A moment passed, then another message.
“Caleb’s reach might be longer than we thought. Someone was watching me earlier.”
My heart pounded.
“Watching you? How? What happened?”
No reply.
Minutes later, another message popped up.
“I’ll explain when we meet again, tomorrow same place. Just... be cautious.”
I stared at the screen, my mind racing.
The past wasn’t just a distant memory anymore.
It was active.
Hungry.
Hungry for silence.
The next day, I waited at the café, nervous and restless.
Blake arrived late, his face drawn and pale.
“You okay?” I asked as he slid into the seat opposite me.
He shook his head.
“Last night, when I was leaving, I noticed a car parked across the street. At first, I thought it was nothing. But then, I caught a glimpse of the driver, someone I recognized from those old photos.”
I swallowed hard.
“Caleb’s people?”
Blake nodded.
“They’re watching us. Trying to scare us off.”
I felt a cold shiver run down my spine.
“We can’t let them.”
Blake’s hands curled into fists.
“No. But we have to be smart.”
He pulled out a small envelope from his jacket pocket and slid it across the table.
“What’s this?”
“Something I found in my mailbox this morning,” he said quietly.
I opened it and pulled out a single Polaroid.
The photo was grainy, taken from a distance.
It showed Blake, walking home the night before, his figure caught in the harsh glare of a streetlamp.
Written on the back, in shaky handwriting: “Stay away.”
The warning was clear.
Blake looked up, meeting my eyes.
“They want us to stop.”
I nodded, a fierce fire burning in my chest.
“We won’t.”
But deep down, I knew this was just the beginning.
Whatever Caleb had planned wasn’t over.
And the closer we got to the truth, the more dangerous it would become.
That night, I locked my apartment door twice.
Windows shut tight.
Still, every shadow seemed to twitch and pulse with hidden menace.
The fear that had settled in months ago was returning, but now, it was sharper, colder.
And I realized something terrifying:
Blake and I were not just fighting to remember the past.
We were fighting to survive the present.
CHAPTER 8
I didn’t sleep.
The warning in Blake’s photo etched itself into my thoughts, replaying in the silence between heartbeats.
By morning, my hands were shaking.
Not from fear exactly, from the anticipation of something I couldn’t quite name.
I wanted answers.
No... I needed them.
And they were coming whether I was ready or not.
It started with a dream.
A corridor. Dim. Cold.
My footsteps echoed, too loud, too alone.
A door stood at the end, slightly ajar. Faint light spilled out from the crack like a secret begging to be told.
I pushed it open.
The smell hit me first, metallic, sour.
Then I saw them.
Two figures.
One small.
One towering.
A shadow holding a flashlight. The beam flickered across the wall like a twitching pulse.
I saw her.
My best friend, Jenna.
Bound.
Mouth gagged.
Eyes wide.
Screaming without sound.
And me...
Frozen.
In the corner.
Watching.
Doing nothing.
I jolted awake with a strangled cry, tangled in sweat soaked sheets. My mouth tasted like iron. My fingers were curled into fists so tight my nails left crescent moons in my palms.
It was real.
It had happened.
Not just to Alex.
But to Jenna.
I had been there.
I had seen Caleb hurt her.
And I had done nothing.
Just like the journal said.
Do you remember what you did?
Now I did.
And the memory was poison.
I couldn’t sit still. The walls of my apartment pressed inward, whispering accusations with every creak. I threw on clothes, not even caring if they matched. My throat burned. My heart thundered.
I needed to see her.
I needed to tell her.
Jenna.
We hadn’t spoken in years except for the one time in the store the other day.... after everything, she’d vanished.. Changed numbers. But I knew where she worked, a quiet bookstore nestled in a side alley of a forgotten part of town.
I found her there.
Same stormy eyes. Same dark curls pulled into a messy bun. But she was different. Hardened. Guarded.
Her eyes widened when she saw me. Then narrowed.
“Maya?” she asked, her voice low, sharp.
“I need to talk to you,” I whispered.
She didn’t move.
Then finally, with a small, bitter laugh: “You’ve got nerve.”
“Please. Just five minutes.”
She crossed her arms but nodded toward the break room.
We sat opposite each other, a chipped coffee mug between us like some sort of peace offering.
“I remembered,” I said.
Her face stiffened.
“I remembered what Caleb did to you.”
She stared, unmoving.
“And I remembered watching.”
Still, she said nothing.
“I didn’t stop him,” I whispered. “I didn’t scream. I didn’t move. I was so scared. I’m sorry, Jenna. I’m so, so,”
“You knew,” she said, voice hollow.
I froze.
“You knew what he was. You saw what he did. And you stayed silent. You watched me suffer.”
Tears filled her eyes, but her voice was sharp, edged with fury.
“You left me there. You ran.”
“I was a child,”
“So was I!”
Her voice cracked.
Silence fell between us. Thick. Crushed by years of unsaid pain.
“I hated you,” she said quietly. “Every day after, I hated you for surviving.”
Tears rolled down my cheeks. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe.
“I thought I imagined it,” she whispered. “That no one saw. That maybe I made it up. But now? Now you remember and you come crawling back with your apologies?”
“I didn’t know what to do,”
“You didn’t do anything!” she screamed, slamming her fist on the table. The mug tipped and shattered on the floor.
She stood, trembling.
“I don’t want your guilt, Maya. I don’t want your redemption. I want you gone.”
I staggered out of the bookstore like a ghost with skin.
The world blurred. The sidewalk tilted beneath me. My breath came in sharp, panicked bursts. I clung to a lamppost and let the tears fall, burning like acid.
She was right.
I had failed her.
And remembering didn’t undo the damage.
I thought I could find peace in the truth. But the truth was a weapon. And it had just gutted me.
I didn’t go home. I didn’t go to the café. I wandered. Past people and windows and memories I didn’t want.
Eventually, I found myself at the park.
The crooked tree stood like a scar against the grey sky.
I sat beneath it, curled into myself like I could fold away the past.
My phone buzzed.
Blake.
I ignored it.
I wanted to disappear.
Hours passed. Maybe more.
I don’t remember falling asleep. But I remember waking to a cold wind and a voice beside me.
“You okay?”
Blake.
I looked at him, barely able to speak.
“She hates me.”
He didn’t ask why.
He just sat next to me in silence.
Eventually, I spoke.
“I saw it. I saw everything Caleb did to her. And I froze. I left her. I left my best friend.”
Blake was quiet.
Then he said something I didn’t expect.
“You were a victim too, Maya. You were a child. You survived. And now, you’re trying to make sense of it all.”
“I don’t deserve forgiveness.”
“Maybe not yet,” he said softly. “But you deserve a chance to heal.”
We sat there until the sun dipped behind the rooftops.
And even though the guilt hadn’t lifted, something in me shifted.
I had faced the memory.
Now I had to live with it.
That night, my apartment felt colder than usual.
I didn't turn on the lights.
I didn't eat.
I just sat on the floor by the window, staring out at the street below, shadows of people walking dogs, someone dragging their trash bin to the curb, headlights slicing through the dark.
Normal life going on while mine quietly caved in.
I kept replaying her voice.
"You knew. You watched. You did nothing."
The words hit different in the dark. They echoed deeper. Louder. More honest. Like they belonged here, in the silence, in the guilt.
I wanted to scream.
I wanted to beg the universe to rewind time.
I wanted to disappear.
Instead, I reached under my bed and pulled out the sketchbook.
My hands moved like they belonged to someone else, someone braver, someone who wasn't afraid to see. I sketched Jenna.
But not how she looked today.
I drew her younger, the way she looked in the sixth grade, the way she looked the last time we truly laughed. Her eyes wide, one tooth missing, always a bit of marker ink smudged on her cheek.
Then I drew her bound to that chair.
I drew myself in the corner.
The shadow of Caleb standing over us both.
I didn't stop. Not when my eyes blurred. Not when my chest ached from sobbing.
When I finally looked down, the page was torn where my pencil had pressed too hard.
I closed the book and shoved it aside like it burned.
And then my phone buzzed.
A text from Blake.
"I think I’ve found something."
I stared at the screen.
I didn’t want to get up.
Didn’t want to move.
But something inside me, something cracked but still stubborn, whispered, Keep going.
“Come over,” I texted back. “But use the back entrance. Just in case.”
Fifteen minutes later, a soft knock on the back door.
When I opened it, Blake stepped in quickly, shoulders hunched against the wind. He looked worse than he had earlier. Eyes sunken, like he hadn’t slept at all.
“You look like hell,” I said, my voice raspier than usual.
“Mirror you,” he replied with a weak smile.
He pulled a folded paper from his coat pocket. It was old. Yellowed. He laid it out on my table, a floor plan.
“This was Caleb’s old summer house,” he said. “Abandoned now. No one’s touched it in years. But look.”
He pointed to a section marked storage cellar.
“It’s not listed in any of the blueprints I found online. This is from a physical archive in town.”
I leaned in.
The layout was weird.
Rooms that didn’t quite connect.
Hidden doors.
“That’s where it happened,” I whispered.
Blake nodded. “I think so. Or at least, part of it. This might be where he... kept things. Evidence. Records.”
My blood went cold.
“You want to go there?”
He didn’t answer.
He didn’t need to.
We were already going.
But before we could even start planning, a sharp thud echoed from my front door, followed by the unmistakable sound of something sliding beneath it.
I jumped.
Blake was already halfway to the door, crouching low.
He waited a moment.
Then reached for the envelope and pulled it through.
It was plain.
No return address.
Inside was a single photograph.
This time, not of Blake.
It was of me.
Taken just an hour ago.
I was sitting by the window. Drawing.
And in the corner of the photo…
A reflection.
In the window glass.
Someone standing just behind me.
I hadn’t seen anyone.
I hadn’t heard anything.
But the photo didn’t lie.
My knees gave out and I sank to the floor, heart jackhammering in my chest.
Blake crouched beside me, holding my hand.
“They’re not just watching,” I whispered. “They’re in this. They’re still in it.”
Blake didn’t respond.
He didn’t need to.
Because everything was shifting again.
It wasn’t just about remembering anymore.
It was about staying alive long enough to use the truth.
The apartment was cloaked in silence, the kind that presses against your eardrums and makes your own heartbeat sound too loud. Blake had fallen asleep on the couch, his breathing steady but shallow. I sat on the floor, back against the wall, knees drawn to my chest, eyes fixed on the front door.
Every creak of the building settling, every gust of wind rattling the windows, sent a jolt through me. The photograph from earlier lay on the coffee table, the image of me at the window with that shadowy figure haunting my thoughts.
I couldn't shake the feeling of being watched, of unseen eyes tracking my every move.
Suddenly, a soft tapping echoed from the hallway outside. Not a knock, but a deliberate, rhythmic tap-tap-tap.
I froze, breath caught in my throat. Blake stirred, eyes fluttering open.
"Did you hear that?" I whispered.
He nodded, already on his feet, moving silently toward the door.
We stood there, hearts pounding, as the tapping continued. Then, silence.
Blake reached for the peephole, peering out.
"No one's there," he murmured.
He opened the door cautiously, revealing an empty hallway. But on the floor lay a small, black envelope.
He picked it up, hands trembling slightly, and opened it. Inside was a single sheet of paper with a typed message:
"Some truths are better left buried."
No signature, no indication of who had delivered it.
We exchanged a glance, the weight of the message settling heavily between us.
"They're trying to scare us," Blake said, voice tight.
"It's working," I admitted.
We spent the rest of the night in uneasy silence, the envelope lying on the table like a ticking time bomb.
As dawn broke, casting pale light through the windows, I knew one thing for certain:
The shadows of the past were no longer content to remain hidden.
They were reaching out, clawing their way into the present.
And we were running out of time.
I knew this wasn’t over.
The memory of Jenna’s eyes haunted me. Her pain. Her fury.
But now, there was something else pressing in on all sides.
Not just regret.
Not just guilt.
But a new question pulsing in my chest:
What if Caleb wasn’t acting alone?
And what if whoever was still out there…
Wasn’t finished yet?
CHAPTER 9
The sun was barely up. My curtains hung still, but the air in my apartment vibrated like a struck tuning fork, something invisible, something wrong.
Blake hadn’t gone home.
He sat curled into the far end of the couch, eyes bloodshot but alert, like he hadn't truly let himself blink since the second envelope arrived. I sat cross legged on the rug, my back to the cold wall, arms wrapped around myself, the weight of sleep too heavy to chase but too jagged to welcome.
“I’m not okay,” I said finally.
Blake looked up. He didn’t move closer. Didn’t offer advice. Just met my eyes and waited.
The silence between us cracked open, and something inside me split with it.
I couldn’t stop shaking.
Tears slipped down my cheeks without sound. It wasn’t sobbing. It wasn’t breaking down. It was unraveling, piece by piece, breath by breath. My chest caved with every inhale, and the room felt like it was collapsing in slow motion.
“I can’t breathe,” I whispered. “I can’t, I feel like I’m disappearing.”
Blake still didn’t speak.
But he moved.
He sat beside me, close but not touching, grounding without smothering. He drew in a slow breath, deep and steady, loud enough for me to hear it.
Then another.
And another.
I tried to match him, but my lungs rebelled. Still, he didn’t flinch.
He just stayed.
Present.
Solid.
The air between us thickened with something wordless and sacred. Not pity. Not sympathy. Just... presence.
That’s what saved me.
Not speeches. Not logic.
Just him.
Breathing beside me until I could find my own rhythm again.
Eventually, I laid my head on his shoulder.
Eventually, I stopped shaking.
And eventually, I fell asleep.
By the time I woke, it was late afternoon. The sky outside had turned an indifferent grey. I sat up slowly, head heavy and sore, and blinked away the blur.
Blake was gone from the floor. I found him standing by my bookshelf, one hand running along the spines like they were memories he hadn’t touched in years.
“You okay?” he asked, not turning around.
I wasn’t. But I nodded anyway.
He turned then, eyes scanning mine like he could still see the panic lingering in my blood.
“You didn’t ask what I found last night,” he said.
“I wasn’t ready.”
He nodded. “You might not be ready for this either.”
“What is it?”
Blake reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a thin, cracked folder. Something about the way he held it — like it might shatter — made my stomach twist.
“I was digging through some old files at the community center,” he said. “The ones they haven’t digitized yet. Half of it was water damaged, useless. But this one… I don’t think anyone was supposed to see it.”
He handed it to me.
I flipped it open slowly, scanning through faded names typed in neat rows, a list of children enrolled in Caleb’s so-called “outreach program.” I didn’t recognize most of them.
Until I saw it.
Blake Carter.
His name.
On the same list Jenna’s name had been on. On the same list as mine.
I looked up at him, heart caught in my throat.
“You were there.”
He didn’t answer.
He didn’t have to.
Something inside his eyes shifted. That quiet light he always carried dimmed, pulled inward. Like a shutter falling behind a window.
“What did he do to you?” I asked.
Blake looked away.
“Don’t,” he said quietly. “Don’t ask me that.”
I felt like the air had thickened, like I was suddenly trespassing into something I had no right to touch.
“I just,” I started, but stopped when I saw it.
The darkness.
Not just sadness. Not even rage.
But something deeper.
A bottomless place. The kind only built by real pain. A place I recognized from my own mirror but never wanted to see in someone else.
I dropped my gaze.
“I’m sorry.”
He didn’t say it was okay.
Because it wasn’t.
Later that evening, I found myself outside his apartment. The air smelled like wet cement and winter. Blake unlocked the door with quiet fingers and let me in without a word.
It was sparse. Clean. Impersonal.
Not like him.
“Make yourself at home,” he said, voice neutral.
I nodded. “I won’t be long.”
“You can stay,” he said. “Sleep. I’ll keep watch.”
I hesitated, then walked into the small bedroom. The sheets smelled like laundry detergent and something vaguely familiar, like pine or safety. I didn’t ask questions. I didn’t want to break the fragile peace we had somehow built between broken things.
He stayed in the living room.
I curled under the blanket.
And I slept.
But of course, the nightmares came.
This time, I saw him.
Not Caleb.
Blake.
He was younger. Smaller. Terrified.
Strapped to the same chair I’d drawn Jenna in.
His lip was split. His wrists bound. His eyes wide with a kind of horror no child should know.
And I was there.
Again.
Watching.
Again.
Frozen.
Again.
But this time, it was worse — because Caleb made me watch. He dragged me into the room and forced my eyes open. He whispered things I didn’t understand, but that made me feel sick all the same. Things about obedience. About loyalty.
About secrets.
And then…
He hurt Blake.
And I screamed.
In the dream, finally, I screamed.
But no one came.
I woke up sobbing. Gasping. Disoriented.
And in that moment, it hit me.
The boy I used to watch from across the playground.
The one who shared his markers and always tied his shoelaces in double knots.
The one I used to write fake love notes to and hide in my backpack because I was too shy to give them.
Blake.
He was him.
He’d been there.
And after what Caleb did to him — what I’d watched happen, how could I ever tell him?
How could I admit I had a crush on him back then? That I still did?
That my heart still stuttered whenever he looked at me like he really saw me?
I slipped out of the room and found him still on the couch, staring at nothing.
He turned as I approached, but before I could stop myself, the question fell from my lips like a wound opening mid-sentence.
“Why don’t you hate me?”
He blinked.
“What?”
“You were there,” I whispered. “And I didn’t help you. I was just like I was with Jenna. I froze. I let him, I let him do that to you. Why aren’t you angry at me?”
His jaw tensed, eyes flickering with something unreadable.
“I was angry,” he said after a long pause. “Not at you. At everything. At myself. At Caleb. At the system that let it happen.”
He looked at me then, really looked.
“I didn’t blame you because you were just a kid. Like me. Like Jenna. We were scared. And no one saved us.”
“But I could’ve,”
“No. You couldn’t have, Maya.”
Silence stretched again.
“You remember what he did to Jenna,” Blake said. “Now you remember what he did to me. But none of it was your fault. The only monster in that room was Caleb.”
I sat down beside him, trembling.
“You survived,” he said, his voice softening. “You survived and you’re still here. That means something.”
I didn’t reply.
I couldn’t.
Because for the first time in a long time, I believed him.
And that was the scariest part of all.
The silence was loud between us again. The kind of silence that wasn’t empty, the kind that carried weight. Memories. Pain.
“Do you…” Blake’s voice cracked. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Do you remember what Caleb did to you?”
I froze.
My fingers curled into the blanket on my lap.
“I see pieces,” I whispered. “Glimpses. Like broken glass at the bottom of a dark pool. I remember the feelings more than anything else. The fear. The shame. The… the emptiness.”
Blake nodded slowly, his jaw tight.
“I remember everything,” he said quietly. “Everything that happened to you.”
I turned to him, confused. “What? How?”
He looked away, eyes tracing the edges of the floor like they could give him an escape route.
“One day, after school…” he began, voice hollow. “I was going to tell you I liked you. That I had liked you for a long time. I was scared, but I thought… maybe you’d smile, the way you always did when someone shared their crayons or told a bad joke.”
I tried to speak, but the lump in my throat was too thick.
“You were already gone when I got there,” he said. “I saw Caleb pick you up. Something about it didn’t feel right. I don’t know why. So I followed. Just… walked behind, quiet. You both went into his house.”
His breathing shifted. Like it hurt to keep talking.
“I was about to leave. Thought maybe I was just being paranoid. But then I heard something. From the basement. So I walked around the back and looked through that small window.”
He paused. His hands trembled.
“I saw everything.”
The words hit like a blow. My stomach turned to stone.
“I got scared and ran,” he continued. “I wanted to tell someone. I wanted to make him pay. But I had no proof. Nothing. Just my word. And I was a kid, just another ‘troubled boy’ in the system.”
He glanced at me then, guilt swimming in his eyes.
“So I went back. A few days later. With this old video camera my grandfather gave me. I was shaking so bad I almost dropped it, but… I just needed proof. Something real.”
I didn’t move.
Didn’t breathe.
“And I heard it again,” he whispered. “Down in the basement. I crept around, looked through the window. He was there. With you. The things he made you do. The things he did to you…”
His voice broke. He looked away.
“I started recording. But I never saw him coming.”
My breath caught.
“I felt a hard knock at the back of my head. Then nothing. When I woke up, I was down there. With you.”
I covered my mouth.
“He punished me,” Blake said, voice trembling. “Broke the camera. Beat me. Said I was going to learn what it meant to betray his trust.”
He swallowed hard. His eyes shone with unshed tears.
“And then he…” His voice cracked. “He made me… do things.”
A pause.
My heart thundered in my chest.
“Not just to him,” Blake whispered. “To you.”
I felt the world stop.
“He laughed,” Blake said, his hands clenched so tight they turned white. “Said it was his ‘little show.’ That he liked when his toys performed.”
Tears poured down my cheeks.
But not for me.
For him.
For the boy who had only wanted to say he liked me.
“I’m sorry,” Blake said. “God, Maya. I’m so sorry.”
I shook my head, lips quivering. “No. No, Blake… you,”
“I should’ve stopped it,”
“You were a kid!” I choked out. “You followed me because you cared. And you were punished for it. Don’t you dare say sorry.”
He looked up at me, eyes broken open.
“But I hurt you,” he whispered. “I never wanted to. I,”
“You didn’t hurt me,” I said through tears. “He did. All of it, every piece of it, was him. Not you.”
We were both crying now.
Ugly, broken crying.
But there was something clean about it. Like ripping the rot out of an old wound.
“I thought I was alone in that room,” I said. “But you were there.”
He nodded.
“And I thought you were just a dream.”
We leaned into each other then, like gravity had finally let go of its grip. His arms wrapped around me, and mine around him, and we sobbed until the air ran out of tears.
The pain didn’t leave.
But it quieted.
For a while.
He pulled back slightly, eyes red and raw, and looked at me like he was afraid I’d disappear.
I wasn’t going anywhere.
And maybe, neither was he.
He leaned forward and kissed me, soft, barely there, like he was asking a question only my heart could answer.
He pulled back quickly, eyes wide. “I...I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“No,” I said, my voice steadier than I expected. “Don’t apologize.”
I cupped his face. “Kiss me again.”
And he did.
This time longer.
This time like he meant it.
When we parted, he rested his forehead against mine, brushing a tear from my cheek.
“I swear to you, Maya,” he said. “Caleb will pay for what he did. All of it.”
I believed him.
Not because he promised.
But because he was Blake.
And Blake never looked away from the truth.
Even when it destroyed him.
Even when it nearly destroyed me.
Chapter 10
The next morning came quietly, without fanfare, no dramatic sunrise, no birdsong chorus, just a sky too heavy with grey to bother pretending.
Blake hadn’t left my side all night. We had fallen asleep still tangled in the pain, in each other, the blanket of raw truth wrapped tight around us. When I woke, his fingers were still laced with mine, like even in sleep, he was holding on.
I sat up slowly, not wanting to disturb the fragile peace that had settled over us. But Blake stirred, eyes fluttering open. He looked tired. Not just from lack of sleep, but like his soul had run a marathon in a storm.
“Maya,” he said, voice still thick with sleep and emotion, “we need to talk.”
I nodded, already knowing what was coming. Something in the weight of his voice told me this wasn’t just a conversation.
He sat up, rubbed the back of his neck, and looked at me in that steady, quiet way of his. “We need to talk to your mom.”
My heart stilled.
He saw the way my face changed, the way the air left my lungs in a single, silent panic.
“I know,” he said gently. “I know you’re scared. But it’s time.”
I looked down at the floor, searching for something to say. A reason. An excuse. But all I found was silence.
“She needs to hear it from you,” Blake added. “She needs to know what happened. What he did.”
“And what?” I asked, voice barely above a whisper. “What if she doesn’t believe me? What if she already knows and did nothing?”
“Then we face that together,” he said. “But you deserve answers. You deserve to be heard.”
I blinked, fighting tears. My throat burned with everything I hadn’t said for years. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough.”
Blake reached for my hand and held it like it was made of something sacred. “Then borrow some of my strength. I’ve got enough for both of us today.”
Maybe it was foolish. Maybe it was impossible. But in that moment, I believed him.
So we got in the car.
The drive was quiet. Not awkward. Just… full. With tension. With breath we forgot to take. With questions we weren’t ready to say out loud.
When we pulled up to the house, her house, my hands shook.
Nothing had changed. Same cracked driveway. Same sagging fence. Same curtain with the little sunflower pattern in the front window. The one I used to peek out of when I was little, hoping to see the ice cream truck or maybe a bird that hadn’t flown away yet.
Blake parked and turned to me. “You okay?”
I shook my head. “No.”
He smiled, sad and soft. “That’s okay.”
We got out. Walked to the door. I stared at it like it might swallow me whole.
He knocked.
We waited.
Nothing.
He knocked again, louder. “Mrs. Rivera?” he called out. “It’s Blake. And Maya. We just… we need to talk.”
Still nothing.
But I saw it. Just for a second, the curtain moved.
Someone was there.
My blood turned to ice.
“She’s pretending not to be home,” I said, voice shaking. “She saw me. She’s hiding.”
Blake stepped back and glanced at me, seeking silent permission.
I didn’t nod.
But I didn’t stop him either.
The next second, his foot slammed against the door with a thunderous CRACK. The old wood splintered inward like it had just been waiting to fall apart. The lock snapped, and the door swung open.
Inside, the air was thick with the stale scent of cigarette smoke and something else. Guilt, maybe.
She was standing at the end of the hallway.
My mother.
Dressed in a robe, hair unkempt, mascara from God-knows-when smudged beneath tired eyes. She looked smaller than I remembered. Not physically, but somehow less.
“Maya…” Her voice was gravel. “Honey…”
She looked between me and Blake, her eyes landing on the broken door before flinching back like we’d struck her.
“What...what are you doing here?” she asked, clutching the edge of her robe.
“I need to talk to you,” I said.
Her lips pressed together. “Now’s not a good time.”
Blake stepped forward. “Now is the time.”
She looked at him like she wanted to scream, then back at me. “Maya, please, I… I don’t want trouble.”
My voice rose without my permission. “You don’t want trouble? You think I wanted it?”
She flinched again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about—”
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t you dare act like you don’t know.”
Her face cracked. Just a little. Enough for me to see something inside her shatter.
“Maya…” she whispered, and suddenly her voice wasn’t defensive, it was defeated.
“I know about Caleb,” I said."I don't remember exactly what he did. But I remember the feeling. And Blake was there. He saw it. He lived it."
She sank into the nearest chair like her bones couldn’t hold her anymore. Her hand went to her mouth, but it wasn’t shock on her face.
It was shame.
“You knew,” I said, trembling. “Didn’t you?”
Her silence screamed yes.
Blake moved to stand beside me, and I felt him there, not in the way you feel furniture or air, but in the way you feel armor.
My mother shook her head, eyes wide, wet. “I, he told me you were lying. That you were troubled. That you made things up. And I… I was so tired, Maya. I was working two jobs. I was—God, I didn’t know how to deal with it.”
“So you didn’t,” I said. “You didn’t deal with it.”
Tears streaked down her cheeks now. “I failed you. I know I did. And not just once.”
Silence again.
But not the safe kind.
“Why?” I asked. “Why did you let him stay? Why did you let me stay?”
She covered her face with her hands, sobbing now. “Because I thought he loved me. Because I thought he could change. Because I was afraid to be alone.”
I felt a scream clawing up my throat.
“You weren’t the only one who was afraid,” I said, voice breaking. “I was a child, Mom.”
She looked up, broken.
“I’m sorry.”
The words didn’t fix anything.
But they were something.
“I’m not here for your apology,” I said. “I’m here for the truth. Because I'm tired of not knowing exactly what happened to me.”
She nodded slowly, wiped her face. “What do you need from me?”
Blake stepped forward. “We need a statement. You knew what Caleb did. Even if you didn’t want to believe it then, you know it now. We need you to say it. Officially.”
Her mouth opened. Closed. She stared at the floor like it held her past.
Then she nodded.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
I didn’t feel relief.
Not yet.
But maybe this was what healing looked like, not joy, not peace, not justice.
Just… truth. Spoken out loud. Finally.
"First, you will tell me exactly what he did, to me, and to the others," I said, my voice shaking. Too scared to know the truth… but even more scared not to.
Blake took my hand, and this time, I didn’t just hold it. I clung to it.
The rain didn't fall that day, it lingered, like a breath held too long.
Mist curled around the crooked iron gates of Saint Evermore Cemetery, muffling the sound of soft footsteps and occasional sobs.
The casket was closed.
No one wanted to see Edith Moorcroft’s face, not after what the coroner described.
Marla stood alone at the back, her black dress clinging damply to her legs.
She hadn’t seen her grandmother in years, not since the last fight—the one where Edith screamed something about “feeding the mouths beneath” and slammed the phone down.
The kind of family fight you don’t recover from.
The kind that makes you wonder, afterward, if the silence that followed was a blessing or a curse.
...A priest muttered hollow words while Marla stared at the casket.
She imagined her grandmother inside, pale and still, her lips pulled back over her gums in that horrific grin they mentioned.
“Unnatural,” the mortician had said.
“Like someone carved a smile too wide.
Didn’t look peaceful.
Looked... proud.”
The casket lowered.
Dirt followed.
Then came the awkward silence of everyone pretending not to be glad it was over.
That evening, Marla walked into Edith’s decaying home with the keys still smelling like earth.
The place hadn't changed since she was a child: peeling floral wallpaper, too many porcelain dolls, and the pervasive smell of lavender oil and something much older.
Something sour.
She found the glass box on the mantelpiece, exactly where she remembered it.
Inside sat a pair of gleaming, perfectly preserved porcelain dentures.
They seemed... cleaner than everything else in the house.
Newer.
Despite the dust on the case, the teeth practically sparkled.
She squinted.
There was something etched on the glass.
She wiped it with her sleeve.
“Confession keeps them quiet.”
Marla laughed uneasily.
“Creepy as hell, Gran.”
She took the box anyway.
Later That Night
Her apartment felt colder than usual.
Maybe it was just the storm.
Marla unpacked the box and placed it on the kitchen table.
The teeth sat there, grinning.
At midnight, the whispers began.
She was half-asleep on the couch when she heard them.
Faint, like wind through a keyhole.
Not coming from inside her head—but outside.
From the box.
She turned on every light.
Her heart thundered as she tiptoed to the kitchen.
The box hadn’t moved.
But the lid was open.
The teeth were gone.
Then she heard it, a wet clatter of porcelain on tile.
She turned slowly toward the bathroom.
The door creaked open on its own.
And there, in the dimness, something was smiling.
The bathroom was dark, the lightbulb flickering uselessly like a candle in a storm.
Marla stood frozen in the hallway, staring at the open door.
Her breath slowed until it hurt her chest to hold it.
She stepped forward.
The floor tiles were cold under her bare feet.
Her hand trembled as she reached for the light switch.
It crackled, buzzed—then lit with a low, sickly yellow glow.
The sink was empty.
The mirror was fogged, though she hadn’t used any hot water.
But the dentures,
They were resting gently on the edge of the sink, perfectly positioned, as if someone had set them there with great care.
The gums gleamed pink.
The teeth looked freshly brushed.
She hadn’t touched them since the funeral.
Her throat dried.
"Okay, this is, this is probably a prank," she whispered to herself, her voice cracking.
She picked up the dentures and put them back in the box.
This time, she made sure the lid was closed tight.
And locked it.
2:47 a.m.
She couldn’t sleep.
The whispers came back.
This time, clearer.
“Do you remember the girl in the lake?”
Marla’s eyes flew open.
She sat up, clutching her blanket, her ears straining.
The voice was hushed, but it had direction.
It wasn’t just in her mind—it came from the living room.
From the box.
She hadn’t told anyone about the girl in the lake.
That summer.
That drunken night.
She barely remembered it herself.
Heart racing, she crept toward the box on the kitchen table.
The room was dim, lit only by the refrigerator’s pale hum.
She didn’t open the box.
She didn’t need to.
The whispers slid under the lid like breath through teeth.
“She was alive when you left her.”
“You promised never to tell.”
“We remember.
Do you?”
“No,” Marla said aloud, stepping back.
“No, you’re not real.”
The whispers stopped.
A long silence.Then,
Knock knock knock.
Three soft knocks.
Coming from inside the box.
She screamed.
The Next Morning The box sat unopened.
Silent.
Marla hadn’t slept.
She hadn’t moved.
She watched the sun rise from the same spot on her couch, hugging her knees and rocking slightly.
She picked up her phone and called her childhood friend, Craig—the only one who’d been at the lake that night.
No answer.
She tried again.
Voicemail.
She tried one more time.
This time, it connected.
But there was no voice.
Just a sound.
Like something chewing.
Slowly.
Wetly.
She hung up.
The phone rang back instantly.
Caller ID: Craig
Except the letters on the screen were wrong.
Twisted.
It didn’t say Craig.
It said:
“Confess.”
Marla dropped the phone.
Behind her, from the kitchen table, came a voice she hadn’t heard in ten years.
A girl's voice.
"Why did you leave me?"
Marla didn’t remember picking the box up, only that one moment she was cowering on the couch and the next she was standing over her kitchen sink, heart hammering, holding the glass case with both hands.
Her breath came in shallow gasps.
“Say it again,” she whispered.
The teeth inside didn’t move.
The box was closed.
Silent.
Innocent.
She waited.
One minute.
Then two.
Nothing.
“Not real,” she muttered, setting it down.
“Not real.
Just grief and no sleep.
I’m losing it.”
She turned to leave, and the box rattled.
Once.
Just enough to make the glass hum.
She stared.
The lid hadn’t moved.
But the teeth... were no longer in the same position.
They were now tilted slightly, as if they'd turned toward her.
As if they were listening.
Later That Day
She wrapped the box in three scarves, stuffed it inside a backpack, zipped it, and shoved it into the hallway closet under a pile of old shoes.
She took two sleeping pills and climbed into bed.
She dreamt of water.
Dark, still water.
A lake that shimmered without wind.
And a girl standing waist-deep in the center, smiling with too many teeth.
"Tell them what you did," the girl said.
Marla woke up screaming.
The Second Night, The whispers returned.
But now they came from outside her apartment.
She stood with her ear pressed to the door.
Voices slithered down the hallway like smoke.
Low, dragging voices.
One was her grandmother’s.
“I never told anyone about the cellar.”
Another was Craig’s.
“She begged us not to go back inside.
We left her anyway.”
Another was her own voice.
“It was just a dare.”
She opened the door.
Nothing there.
Except a smear of something pale and wet leading from her doorstep to the stairwell.
It looked like saliva.
2:14 a.m.
The whispers moved into her walls.
Marla pressed her palms flat against the plaster.
The voices came in pulses, like blood through a vein.
They weren’t threatening.
They were begging.
"Tell me the truth."
"I can’t sleep until you say it."
"Your silence is killing us."
She snapped.
She stormed to the closet, tore through the shoes, grabbed the backpack and yanked the box out.
She slammed it on the kitchen table and screamed, “FINE!”
The teeth grinned.
Her chest rose and fell with ragged breath.
“I didn’t know she’d drown,” she whispered.
“We were just playing.”
The teeth clicked.
“Craig told me not to go back, and I didn’t argue.
I didn’t try to help her.”
Her voice cracked.
“I was scared.”
The teeth clicked again, more urgently.
“I left her,” she said.
“We left her there.”
Silence.
The room was still.
Then,
The teeth began to chatter.
Softly at first.
Then louder.
Then violently.
The whole box vibrated as the dentures slammed together over and over in a grotesque applause.
Then they stopped.
And the box whispered:
"One down."
Marla stumbled back.
“One...?”
The box began to smile wider.
"Nine to go."
The next morning, the box was quiet.
Too quiet.
The teeth sat motionless, no longer chattering or whispering, but Marla could feel something.
Like the air around them had thickened.
Like the teeth were waiting.
She didn’t speak to them.
Not today.
Instead, she went back to her grandmother’s house.
It hadn’t even been a week since the funeral, but the place felt like it had aged a decade overnight.
Ivy crept in through a cracked window.
The smell of dust and time gnawed at her throat.
She went straight to the study.
Her grandmother’s journals were kept in a locked cabinet.
The key was taped under the drawer, exactly where it had been when Marla was a teenager, snooping for secrets.
She opened the cabinet.
Inside were seven leather-bound journals.
The covers were worn soft with age, each one marked with a Roman numeral.
I through VII.
She opened the first.
“March 2nd, 1961
The boy spoke again last night.
He confessed to pushing his brother down the stairs.
He swore he’d never told a soul.
He says he feels lighter now.
I feel stronger.”
Marla flipped the page.
“April 11th
They’re hungry again.
I tried ignoring them but now they whisper to the dog.
It howls all night unless I let the teeth feed.
I found a woman on the bus who stole from her dying mother.
She wept when I asked.
That was enough.
For now.”
Page after page, her grandmother had documented confessions.
Dozens of them.
Some small cheating at cards, stealing groceries.
Others darker.
Much darker.
Marla’s fingers shook as she turned to the final entry in Book VII:
“September 12th, 2002
I thought they were finally quiet.
I was wrong.
The whispers have returned, but now they ask for blood.
Not just words.
Not just guilt.
The teeth want something else.
I’m too old to stop them.
It must be her now.
Marla.
I’m sorry.”**
Marla slammed the journal shut, her hands clammy.
She stared at her reflection in the dusty mirror above the desk.
For a second, she could’ve sworn her smile twitched without her permission.
That Evening, She brought the journals home.
Set them down.
Paced.
The box sat untouched on the table.
She couldn’t bear to open it again.
But then she noticed something new.
Another tooth.
There was only one set before, but now, beside the original dentures, was a single human molar.
Old.
Yellowed.
She opened her mouth slowly and counted with her tongue.
She was missing one.
She hadn’t noticed.
She hadn't even felt it go.
Her stomach turned.
3:13 a.m.
The whispers returned.
Not pleading.
Not threatening.
Laughing.
A dozen voices at once.
One whispered directly into her ear, so close she could feel its wet breath:
“You’re part of us now.”
Another spoke from the kitchen drain.
“You took the box.
You fed us.
That’s enough.”
And the loudest voice came from the box itself, clear and bold and feminine.
Her grandmother’s voice.
“You can’t undo what’s been fed, Marla.
But you can stop it from starving.”
Marla stared at the box, her mouth dry, her skin crawling.
And the teeth smiled wider.
Three days passed.
Three days of no sleep, no appetite, and no more confessions.
The box had gone silent again, but the molars were multiplying.
By the fourth morning, there were three new teeth inside the glass case.
All hers.
She could feel the absences in her mouth now: subtle gaps in her back teeth.
No bleeding.
No pain.
Just... gone.
As if the teeth had never been hers.
She called a dentist.
They confirmed the worst: her records showed no missing teeth.
They thought she was delusional.
So did she.
Later That Day There was a knock at the door.
Marla hesitated before opening it.
The man standing outside was tall, dressed in a long black coat despite the summer heat.
A strange, wide-brimmed hat cast shadows across his eyes, but his teeth were startling, perfect rows of white, far too perfect.
His mouth looked like it could cut glass.
He didn’t introduce himself by name.
He simply said, “I’m here for the box.”
Marla blinked.
“What?”
“The box with the teeth,” he said calmly.
“You’ve heard them, haven’t you?
The whispers.
The truths.
The hunger.”
She opened her mouth to lie, but stopped.
Something about him made lying feel... painful.
“You know about it?” she said instead.
He nodded.
“More than you can imagine.
I’ve collected twenty seven so far.
You’ve got the twenty eighth.”
Marla stared.
“Collected?
You mean there are more?”
“Oh yes,” he smiled.
“They’ve been scattered all over the world.
Each one hungrier than the last.
Your grandmother was a remarkable keeper, you know.
Kept it quiet for years.
Fed it secrets like warm milk.”
“What are they?” she asked.
T
he man tilted his head slightly.
“They were mouths once.
Worshippers of something ancient—The Eater of Regrets.
They made a pact to carry confessions across generations.
But mouths don’t stay flesh forever.
So they became... teeth.”
He leaned in slightly.
“The teeth never forget.”
Marla backed away.
“Take it.
Take the box.
I don’t want it.”
But the man only chuckled.
“I can’t take it,” he said.
“Not unless it wants to leave.
And it doesn’t.
Not yet.”
Marla looked toward the table.
The box was vibrating softly, like it was... purring.
The man turned to leave.
But just before he stepped out, he said:
“Be careful what you confess to it.
Not all guilt belongs to you.
And not all truths set you free.”
Then he was gone.
That Night
The teeth began whispering again—but this time, they spoke names.
Marla’s coworkers.
Her ex-boyfriend.
Her dead father.
Each name followed by a sin.
“Ryan James, stole insulin from his sister’s bag.”
“Melanie Hope, lied about the baby being his.”
“Mark Elson, watched her drown.”
That last one made Marla freeze.
“Who?” she asked.
The box replied:
“You weren’t the only one at the lake.”
Marla’s hands trembled.
“Mark Elson is dead,” she whispered.
The teeth chattered once.
Not in agreement.
In laughter.
The Final Whisper That Night
“Bring us another.”
The box didn’t sleep anymore.
Neither did Marla.
She’d shoved it into the cupboard, wrapped it in three towels, sealed it in a trash bag, and buried it under two sacks of rice in her kitchen.
It didn’t matter.
The teeth didn’t need the box now.
They had her.
It started with the mirror.
Marla stood brushing her hair, trying to convince herself that she still looked human.
Her face was gaunt.
Her eyes were red.
And when she smiled, the reflection didn’t smile back.
It just watched her.
And whispered:
“He screamed when you ran.
You just didn’t hear it.”
She smashed the mirror.
Then came the drain.
While rinsing her coffee mug, a voice rose up through the pipes gurgling, whispering, like breath behind running water.
“Feed us.”
“One more.”
“We are so close to full.”
She turned off the tap.
Silence.
She turned it back on.
“Craig has something to tell us.”
She dropped the mug.
It shattered.
Later That Day
Marla called Craig again.
He answered this time.
His voice was dry, like he hadn’t spoken to anyone in days.
“Have they started talking to you too?” he asked, without greeting.
Marla’s blood ran cold.
“You hear them?”
Craig laughed—a hollow, broken laugh.
“I moved three times.
Burned the house.
Teeth came back.
They always come back.”
“Why now?” Marla asked.
“Why after all these years?”
His voice dropped to a whisper.
“Because we never told the truth.”
A long pause.
Then, a clicking noise over the line.
Faint.
Steady.
Chattering teeth.
Marla ended the call.
That Night
The voices changed.
They weren’t just whispers now—they spoke through things.
Her TV turned on by itself, flickering between static and talk shows, all of them mouthing the same sentence:
“Bring us another.”
The radio turned on next.
Every station, the same chant.
“Bring us another.”
Even the wind through the broken mirror whispered it.
“Another.
Another.
Another.”
And when she finally looked at her reflection in the dark window, it wasn’t her standing there anymore.
It was a little girl.
Dripping wet.
Her mouth full of teeth that weren’t hers.
She said one word:
“Liar.”
3:33 a.m.
Marla sat on the kitchen floor, shaking, her arms wrapped around her knees.
The box lay on the table, uncovered, wide open.
Inside were now five extra teeth.
She checked her mouth again.
Nothing new was missing.
But her gums ached.
Deep down.
As if something else was growing inside.
A second set.
Then her phone buzzed.
A message.
Unknown number.
"Craig is dead."
Below that, a photo.
It was his face twisted in a grin too wide, eyes bleeding, mouth filled with a set of teeth that didn’t belong.
Her phone buzzed again.
Another message.
“You waited too long.”
And then,
“Now it’s your turn to bring the next one.”
It started with the mailman.
Marla had watched him through the peephole every morning for a year.
He was always cheerful, always humming.
But this morning, he wasn’t humming.
He was grinning.
Too wide.
His lips pulled back almost to the ears.
His teeth looked... wrong.
Like they had multiplied, crowding inside his mouth, overlapping like shark teeth.
And when he looked up, right at her peephole, his pupils were gone.
Just a sea of white.
Then he said it:
“We know what you did.”
And he walked away, dropping no mail.
Two Hours Later
Marla ventured outside for the first time in days.
She wore a hoodie, kept her head down.
The streets were too quiet.
Until she looked closer.
A woman waiting at the bus stop was smiling to herself, mouthing silent words.
Her lips moved like she was whispering, but no sound came out.
At the grocery store, a cashier bled from the gums and didn’t seem to notice.
He scanned items one by one, grinning through cracked teeth.
Everyone else?
They pretended nothing was wrong.
But Marla could see it.
The infection had begun.
She went to the library.
Desperate for answers.
For escape.
The building was empty, except for a man hunched over a newspaper at the back.
He turned to her slowly.
His face was wrapped in duct tape.
There was a note on his chest, written in trembling black ink:
“I WILL NOT CONFESS.”
His eyes wept blood.
And behind the duct tape, his jaw moved.
Click.
Click.
Click.
Marla ran.
Back Home
The box was open again.
A sixth tooth had appeared.
She didn’t need to count anymore.
She could feel the teeth moving beneath her skin.
Nesting in her gums.
Replacing her real ones slowly, like termites in a house no longer lived in.
They didn’t want her to die.
They wanted her to become the new box.
That night, the whispers didn’t come from the walls.
They came from her own throat.
She caught herself whispering as she made tea:
“Bring us another.”
She hadn’t meant to say it.
She hadn’t even known she’d spoken at all until she tasted blood in her mouth and saw the reflection of her own smiling face in the kettle, her lips still moving.
Marla knew what she had to do.
She had to give them someone else.
She pulled out her phone and scrolled through her contacts.
Melanie Hope.
The girl who’d lied about her child’s paternity.
The teeth had whispered her name before.
Maybe it would be enough.
She hesitated.
Her thumb hovered over the call button.
Then the phone rang on its own.
Caller ID: Melanie Hope
She answered, terrified.
Melanie’s voice was trembling.
“They’re coming into my mirrors,” she whispered.
“My son’s mouth is full of extra teeth.
I can’t stop smiling.
Marla, what did you do?”
Marla tried to speak, but her tongue was heavy.
Something inside her mouth was moving.
Melanie whispered one last thing before the call cut off:
“They said you chose me.”
Marla didn’t sleep anymore.
She didn’t need to.
Something inside her was awake all the time now.
She stared at the box across from her, her mouth sore and dry.
The seventh tooth had appeared last night.
Her smile felt... unfamiliar.
Like it belonged to someone else wearing her face.
She no longer spoke aloud.
Not because she didn’t want to, but because her voice was changing.
There was an echo in it now, like there were other mouths inside her, speaking with her.
Or through her.
She’d seen Melanie again.
Not in person, on the news.
"Local Woman Missing After Breaking Every Mirror In Her House."
They showed footage of her front yard.
Her child was outside, crying, but grinning.
Unblinking.
When the camera zoomed in, the boy looked directly at it and whispered:
“Thank you, Marla.”
Then he bit the cameraman.
Marla stood in front of her bathroom mirror.
She opened her mouth slowly.
Something shifted under her tongue.
A bulge.
A second row.
She gagged and covered her face.
She couldn’t run anymore.
Couldn’t hide.
The teeth wouldn’t let her.
So she asked them, quietly:
“What do you want from me?”
And the answer came in her own voice:
“An offering.”
The Next Night
Marla knocked on her neighbor’s door.
Mrs. Raines, 73, with stiff curls and pink slippers, opened it with a tired smile.
“Everything alright, sweetie?” the old woman asked.
Marla nodded slowly.
“Can I talk to you?
Just... for a minute.”
The teeth buzzed in her gums.
Mrs. Raines hesitated, then stepped aside.
Inside the apartment, the air was thick with lavender oil and slow jazz.
The kind of peace Marla used to long for.
She sat on the couch and smiled at Mrs. Raines.
“You ever done something really bad?” Marla asked gently.
Mrs. Raines chuckled.
“Honey, I’ve lived a long life.
I’m sure I have.”
Marla leaned forward.
The box wasn’t with her.
She was the box now.
“Tell me.”
Mrs. Raines blinked.
“Tell you what?”
“The worst thing.
The thing you’ve never said out loud.”
The air turned cold.
Mrs. Raines frowned.
“Why?”
Marla’s voice changed, deeper now, layered with something else.
“Because they’re hungry.”
Mrs. Raines cried as she spoke.
She talked about a baby in 1964.
A secret.
A decision made in silence, buried and never spoken of again.
Her hands trembled.
She kept whispering, I’m sorry, over and over.
When she finished, her mouth hung open like a broken door.
And then her face began to change.
Her smile widened.
Her eyes rolled back.
Her jaw cracked, and a new set of teeth bloomed in her mouth like a flowering wound.
She slumped over, smiling in death.
And Marla stood in the silence, her own body vibrating with a sick kind of satisfaction.
Back in her apartment, she checked the mirror.
The second row of teeth was gone.
The ache had stopped.
And the box?
It was empty.
No teeth inside.
Just a single note, scrawled in her grandmother’s handwriting:
“Only two left.”
It didn’t last.
The silence.
The stillness.
The illusion of peace.
For two nights after Mrs. Raines’ death, the box remained quiet.
No whispers.
No blood.
No extra teeth in her mouth.
Marla slept for the first time in weeks.
But peace is just the air holding its breath before the scream.
And the scream was coming.
On the third morning, Marla woke to a sound she'd almost forgotten.
Children laughing.
She sat up, groggy, confused.
The laughter echoed from the hallway outside her apartment.
Not joyful mocking.
She opened the door slowly.
The hallway was empty… except for a single baby tooth, lying in front of her welcome mat.
She picked it up.
It was warm.
From behind her, the box creaked open.
Inside the box:
There was only one item.
A folded newspaper clipping.
The headline read:
"Local Boy Drowns in Lake, Foul Play Suspected"
Dated August 2009.
She already knew the story.
But her eyes were drawn to the photo of the boy: Mark Elson.
He had been twelve.
He had gone under and never come back up.
Everyone said it was an accident.
But he had been there that night.
So had she.
So had Craig.
But Mark... Mark had a secret.
That Night
The voices returned.
Fierce.
Demanding.
They screamed from the walls.
From her throat.
From the silence between her thoughts.
“You fed us a lie.”
“You made her confess, but you spared him.”
“Bring him.”
“Bring the boy who never drowned.”
Marla fell to her knees.
“No,” she rasped.
“Mark’s dead.”
The box rattled.
“Dead men talk.
Dig him up.”
The Cemetery
She couldn’t believe she was doing it.
Hands shaking, shovel clanking against a stone she couldn’t read anymore, Marla dug.
She reached the coffin by dawn.
It smelled like rot and dust and the end of something.
When she pried it open, her breath caught.
Mark Elson’s body was there.
Still grinning.
But his mouth… was empty.
No teeth.
Only a deep, gaping hole where his jaw had once been.
Marla reeled back, bile rising.
Inside the coffin, beneath his brittle fingers, lay a small leather bound notebook.
She opened it.
Each page was a confession.
Mark’s confession.
He hadn’t drowned.
Craig and Marla had held him down.
“It was a game,” he wrote.
“I lost.”
Marla screamed.
It wasn’t just guilt anymore.
The teeth weren’t feeding on secrets.
They were remembering.
Her mind splintered under the truth:
the teeth were once human, not just the mouths of the guilty, but the souls of the silenced.
Every time she confessed, she fed them pieces of her past.
Every time she made someone else confess, she added another whisperer to the hive.
Mark had never been silenced.
He had been claimed.
When she returned home, the box was gone.
It now sat in the center of her living room.
Open.
Waiting.
Two items inside:
A mirror.
And a note.
The note read:
“Only you remain.”
The mirror was black as midnight, reflecting nothing but a void where Marla’s trembling face should have been.
She reached toward it, fingers grazing the cold surface.
The teeth whispered, louder than ever.
“You are the last.”
“Feed us your truth.”
Marla’s heart pounded, but she knew the truth had already been fed.
It had fed on her, and everyone she had loved.
She looked away, only to find the room bending.
Walls stretched like jaws.
The floor rippled beneath her feet.
Her reflection smiled back, wider than humanly possible.
A terrible realization crashed through her.
The box wasn’t a box.
It was a door.
A doorway into the Mouth Beneath the World.
The god of secrets, guilt, and confessions.
Suddenly, she was falling.
Falling through darkness so thick it swallowed sound and light.
The whispers became screams.
Teeth cracked and snapped around her, circling like sharks.
A great maw opened beneath her, filled with rows of shifting teeth that sang her sins.
“You called us. You fed us. Now you belong.”
Marla tried to scream, but no sound came.
She landed on a cold, hard tongue.
The Mouth Beneath the World closed.
The teeth began to chatter in celebration.
Outside her apartment, the town woke.
Windows shattered spontaneously.
Mirrors cracked into spiderwebs.
People looked in the street, their mouths stretching impossibly wide.
Teeth spilled from their gums, growing like vines.
A terrible smile spread across every face.
The Smile Plague had begun.
Inside the Mouth Beneath the World, Marla saw the others.
Whisperers like her, trapped in teeth and shadows.
Eyes begging for release.
But the Mouth was hungry.
And Marla was its queen now.
She understood then.
The teeth didn’t want silence.
They wanted confession.
Not for freedom.
For feeding.
And they had fed.
And they would feed.
Forever.
The last thing Marla heard was a whisper behind her ear:
“Welcome home.”
.