2. Echoes in the dark

Claire didn't sleep for days after unearthing Adam Lorne's body. The police ruled it a homicide—kidnapped, buried alive, left to die in the dark.

But the case withered before it could bloom. No suspects. No motives. Just a nameless crime sealed beneath dust and time. And a woman who "hallucinated" his ghost.

She should have felt relief. The visions had stopped. But something else took their place.

The silence in her apartment ... It no longer felt empty.

It breathed.

It had weight... A presence.

And then, on the first night, it spoke.

"Find me."

A whisper, soft as a sigh, coiled in the darkness. Claire bolted upright, her breath sharp, skin-- cold... despite the thick blankets tangled around her.

Her eyes darted across the room—moonlight pooling on the wooden floor, the shadow of her dresser stretching long across the wall.

Nothing.

She told herself .... she must have imagined it. That exhaustion was pressing its fingers into the senses of her mind.

But then came the second night.

She lay awake for hours, staring at the ceiling, her heartbeat a relentless drum against her ribs. The air in her bedroom felt thick, charged, as if something unseen lingered just beyond her vision.

And then—

"Find me."

Her breath hitched. This time, it wasn't distant. It was near. Close. Pressed against her ear.

The cold bloomed at the base of her spine, crawling upward. She flung off the blankets, staggered to her feet. Her hands trembled as she checked every door, every window, pressing her palms against the locks to feel their solidity. But it didn't help. The walls of her apartment no longer felt like walls. They felt like something fragile. Something that could bend.

The third night, she didn't just hear it.

She felt it.

The whisper wasn't just sound—it was breath against her skin. A presence behind her, unseen but there.

Claire clutched the sheets, her fingers aching from how tightly she gripped them. Her chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven gasps. The air smelled... different. A faint trace of something old, something decayed, like damp wood and wilted flowers.

Her phone. She needed her phone.

She snatched it from the nightstand, the glow of the screen a lifeline in the suffocating dark. She scrolled, searching for something—anything—to pull her mind away from the growing dread in her stomach.

Then her fingers froze.

Her breath left her in a shuddering exhale.

Because staring back at her from the screen...

Was her own face.

A missing persons report.

Filed weeks ago.

A name she didn't recognize.

But the picture—

The picture was her.

Claire's fingers hovered over the screen, her breath uneven. The glow of her phone cast a faint halo over her trembling hands. The name beneath the picture blurred as her vision swam, but she forced herself to focus.

Anna Prescott.

That wasn't her name.

But the woman in the photo—she had Claire's hair.

Claire's eyes.

Claire's face.

Claire swallowed hard, her throat dry, her pulse a relentless drum against her ribs. It had to be a coincidence.

Some eerie resemblance, nothing more. But then her gaze dropped to the details beneath the image.

Born in Chicago.

Moved to New York at 25.

Worked as a freelance writer.

A slow, creeping numbness settled into Claire's limbs. Each line felt like a fingerprint pressed into her own skin.

Last seen entering a black sedan outside a coffee shop.

The room felt colder, the air pressing down like an unseen weight. She scrolled further, her fingertip unsteady against the glass.

Case never solved.

Anna... was never found.

A sharp inhale, shallow and unsteady.

Then—

"Find me."

The whisper slithered through the silence, curling around her like unseen hands. Claire flinched, her body stiffening as icy dread pooled at the base of her spine. She knew that voice. She had been hearing it for days.

Her breath came faster now, quick, uneven. The walls of her apartment felt too close, the shadows stretching longer than they should. She needed to breathe. She needed to move.

Her legs felt unsteady as she stumbled toward the bathroom, her fingers fumbling for the light switch. The bulbs flickered, the brief stutter of darkness making her stomach twist.

Claire caught her own reflection in the mirror.

Pale.

Eyes wide.

Lips slightly parted... as if she were about to speak but had forgotten the words.

She exhaled slowly, willing her pulse to slow.

It was just paranoia.

A bizarre case of mistaken identity playing tricks on her mind.

But then—

Her reflection blinked.

Claire didn't.

A sharp, electric stillness gripped her. She could feel her own breath, shallow and uneven. Could feel the weight of her body, frozen in place.

But the woman in the mirror?

She was moving.

Slowly, deliberately, she leaned forward. Her lips parted, but no breath fogged the glass.

Claire's stomach turned to ice.

The whisper came again, softer now, more intimate—like a secret bleeding through the thin veil of reality.

"You're next."

The lights flickered. The shadows in the room seemed to shift.

Claire spun around, heart hammering.

Nothing.

The washroom was empty.

A breath. A pause.

The silence hummed in her ears.

She turned back—

The reflection was gone.

The mirror stared back, empty.

And the whispers?

They were just getting started....

To be continued...