"The Lilacs Whisper in Black"

The bus dropped Clara at the edge of Hollow's End, its engine sputtering like a dying animal before it lurched back down the fog-choked road. She stood alone, her duffel bag slung over one shoulder, staring at the town that had swallowed her brother whole.

Nothing had changed.

Or everything had.

The air reeked of rotting lilacs—thick and sweetly nauseating, like funeral flowers left too long in the sun. She'd forgotten how the scent clung to everything here. As a child, she'd loved them. Her mother's garden was a riot of purple blooms, their perfume masking the mildew creeping up the porch. Now, the bushes lining the road were skeletal, their petals blackened and curled like burnt paper.

"Come home, Clara. I'm waiting."

The letter sat in her jacket pocket, creased and smudged from weeks of obsessive rereading. Liam's handwriting—loopy and impatient, the i's dotted with tiny stars, just like he'd done since third grade. But Liam had been dead for ten years. Buried in the cemetery behind St. Agnes Church, his coffin lowered into the earth while she'd screamed at her parents to stop, stop, he hates the dark—

She shoved the memory down and walked.

The town greeted her with silence. No birds. No distant chatter. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath. The houses hunched closer here, their windows boarded up, paint peeling like leprous skin. Clara counted the landmarks from her childhood: the shuttered bakery, the rusted swing set in the park, the crooked sign for Hollow's End Mill – Est. 1893.

And the people.

They watched her from behind curtains, their faces pale smudges in the gloom. A woman in a faded floral dress froze mid-sweep on her porch, broom trembling in her hands. A man in overalls stepped into the street, his eyes wide and unblinking, before shuffling backward into an alley. Clara's skin prickled. They're scared of me, she realized. Or for her.

She didn't stop until she reached the cemetery.

The iron gates hung open, hinges screaming as she pushed through. Liam's grave was easy to find—third row, beneath the skeletal arms of an oak tree. But as she knelt, her breath caught.

The dirt was fresh.

Not the settled earth of a decade-old grave, but loose soil, recently turned. And the headstone…

LIAM CARTER

BELOVED SON, BROTHER

1995–2012

…had been vandalized.

Deep, jagged grooves scarred the marble, as if clawed by something furious. Words carved in haste:

I NEVER LEFT.

"Liam?" Her voice cracked.

The wind stirred then, cold and spiteful, carrying a whisper that wasn't a whisper—a chorus of voices layered over each other, too many to count.

Cla-raaa…

She spun, heart hammering. The cemetery was empty. But the whispers coiled around her, slithering into her ears.

You shouldn't have come back.

Her brother's voice.

Clara ran.

The Carter house crouched at the end of Willow Street, its once-white clapboards now gray and spongy with rot. The lilacs here were worst of all—oozing a sticky, tar-like sap that clung to her shoes as she fumbled with the key under the mat.

It's just a letter. A sick joke. Someone messing with you.

But the key turned. The door creaked open.

And the smell hit her.

Not rot. Not mildew. Vanilla. Her mother's candle, the one she'd burned every Sunday while humming hymns. Clara gagged, memories flooding back: Liam's laughter echoing down the stairs, her father's whiskey-rough voice yelling "Quiet!", the click-click-click of her mother's knitting needles.

The house was frozen in time. Furniture still draped in yellowed sheets. Family photos on the walls, their glass cracked. And the mirror—the antique floor mirror from her parents' bedroom—now leaned crookedly in the hall, its surface veined with cracks.

Clara approached it slowly, her reflection splintered into a dozen shards.

Then she saw him.

In the mirror's top left corner: a boy in a red hoodie, his back to her.

Liam.

Her breath fogged the glass. "Liam…?"

He turned.

Black eyes. Liquid and endless, spilling down his cheeks like ink. A smile too wide, too sharp.

"They're hungry, Clara," his voice echoed, not from the mirror but from inside her skull. "And you're already late."

The front door slammed shut.