5. No way back
Pain.
Something searing, like fire against her skin.
Her own scream, muffled against the walls.
Then—darkness.
A breath hitched.
A streetlight flickered.
Claire snapped back into the present, her pulse hammering like it had never stopped running. The world around her was still the same—the road, the house, the man standing too close. But for a moment, she swore she had felt it again. The cold metal. The suffocating dark.
The whispers returned.
"Find me"
And this time, she wasn't sure if they were calling her back—
Or warning her to run.
"Find me."
It wasn't in her head anymore. It was coming from the house.
The man tensed, his fingers twitching against her wrist.
Claire felt it—the shift in the air, the temperature dropping, the weight of something unseen pressing down on them both.
And then, just beneath the whisper—something else.
A creak.
A rustle of movement.
A presence.
Claire's eyes darted toward the house. The windows were dark, empty. But the front door—was it always open?
Another sound. Closer. More deliberate.
Footsteps!!
Not one.
Many!!
The man let go. His expression twisted, his confidence cracking at the edges. For the first time, Claire saw something she never expected to see in his eyes.
Fear.
He stumbled backward as shadows emerged from the doorway. One after another, slow, relentless.
Hollow-eyed. Whispering. Watching.
Claire's heart slammed against her ribs.
She knew these faces.
She had seen them before.
They were all missing persons.
The realization struck Claire like ice-water in her veins. These were the faces she'd seen on missing posters, flickering on late-night news reports, whispered about in stories that never had an ending.
And now—they were here.
The man stumbled backward, the control in his voice unraveling. "No… this isn't—"
His words cut short as the shadows surged toward him.
Claire didn't move. She couldn't.
The air was thick—too thick. It hummed with something ancient, something neither living nor dead. The figures moved in flickering blurs, their hollow eyes locked onto their prey.
The man thrashed. A desperate, guttural noise clawed its way from his throat.
The man lurched backward, his breath coming in frantic gasps. The whispers swelled, a hundred voices pressing in from all sides, rattling in his skull like insects trapped in glass. His fingers fumbled for the car door, but the shadows were already upon him.
Then—they struck.
A piercing, gurgling scream tore through the night. The kind of sound that didn't just come from pain—it came from realization.
The realization that....
something was dragging him into the dark
And there would be--- no coming
back.
Claire watched, horror and paralysis locking her in place.
She saw the way the figures moved—not human, not entirely solid.
Their hands gripped his arms, his throat, his face.
Fingers too long, nails splitting as they sank into skin.
And then—they ripped.
A wet, sickening.....
SHLKKKKKKKKKK!!
Flesh peeled like damp paper. Blood sprayed in a violent arc across the pavement. The man choked, his scream breaking into gurgles, his eyes wide with terror.
He wasn't dying fast.
They didn't let him.
They tore him apart in sections—slow, deliberate.
A chunk from his shoulder, the meat of his palm, the cords of his neck—pulled like unraveling thread.
His last breath left in a wet, bubbling rasp.
Then—silence.
Claire had squeezed her eyes shut.
When she finally dared to look, the street was empty.
No figures.
No whispers.
No scream.
No trace of the man.
The man was gone.
Just the gaping emptiness where he had stood... the black sedan remained. Its door still ajar, an open mouth frozen mid-scream.
And in the doorway of the house—something else waited.
A mirror.
Tall. Old. Its glass warped like rippling water.
Claire took a step closer, her pulse hammering.
Inside the reflection—stood a woman.
Not a ghost.
Not a vision.
Claire's breath hitched. She lifted a trembling hand.
The reflection did not.
Anna was still trapped.
Still waiting....
Claire took a shaky step forward.
The cold wind curled around her, whispering secrets she wasn't sure she was ready to hear. But none of them were as deafening as the silence between her and the woman in the mirror.
Anna Prescott.
She wasn't just a reflection.
She wasn't a ghost.
She was alive.
Her eyes—Claire's eyes—were wide with something beyond fear.
A hollow, desperate pleading.... Or warning!
She couldn't tell...
A silent scream frozen in time, as if she had spent years screaming for help and had finally run out of sound. Her hands pressed against the glass, fingers trembling, lips parted in a question Claire couldn't hear but felt deep in her bones.
"Why did you forget me?"'
Claire's breath shuddered. Her skin prickled as a nauseating weight pressed against her chest. The wind wasn't the only thing curling around her now—dread slithered up her spine, wrapping tight.
Anna's lips moved. No voice. No sound. But Claire understood.
"Find me."
Claire took another step.
The mirror darkened.
Anna's eyes widened in horror.
A rush of cold air.
And the ground vanished beneath her feet. Claire fell, weightless, into the abyss...
To be continued....