Mara didn't go back to the couch. After the unsettling discovery at the kitchen window, sleep felt like a distant luxury she couldn't afford—not tonight, not with the weight of everything pressing down on her. She moved instead to the dining table, dragging a chair across the scratched hardwood floor with a faint screech that echoed in the stillness. The flashlight she'd been clutching since dusk was propped up against a stack of old coasters, its weak beam casting a frail circle of light across the room. Shadows clung to the edges, pooling in the corners where the glow couldn't reach, and she found herself glancing at them too often, as if they might shift when she wasn't looking.
The house was still, but it wasn't quiet—not anymore. Every groan of the floorboards beneath her feet, every faint tap of a branch against the roof in the restless wind outside, made her flinch. Each sound was a needle pricking at her nerves, sharpening her senses until the air itself seemed to hum with tension. She kept her eyes fixed on the stairs that led up to the attic, their dark silhouette looming in the dimness like a gateway she couldn't ignore. She was waiting—waiting for that damn phone to ring again, for the shrill sound to slice through the night and drag her back into whatever this was.
Ellie. The name scratched at the edges of her thoughts, unfamiliar yet heavy, like a stone lodged in the soft tissue of her memory. She didn't know an Ellie—not now, not ever, as far as she could recall. And yet, the name carried a weight, a gravity that tugged at her, refusing to let go. Mara rubbed her temples with the heels of her hands, pressing hard as if she could force the pieces to align. Her mind drifted back to 1999, the year she'd lived in this creaking, drafty house. She'd been sixteen then, sullen and restless, trapped here after her mother's car accident had upended their lives. Her grandmother had taken her in, a kind but distant woman whose presence was more like a shadow than a comfort. Her father, meanwhile, had been a ghost even before he died the following year—absent in every way that mattered, his memory a faint outline she could barely trace.
There had been no Ellie in that time, no masked men lurking in the periphery of her days. Just a blur of lonely afternoons spent wandering the property, quiet nights filled with the drone of the television her grandmother kept on too loud, and the occasional argument that fizzled out before it could mean anything. So why did that voice on the phone, trembling and desperate, feel like it belonged to her? Why did it feel like a thread stitched into the fabric of her past, pulling tight against something she couldn't see?
She stood abruptly, the chair scraping back as she began to pace, her bare feet cold against the floor. The motion was meant to shake off the fog clouding her head, to dislodge the unease that had settled in her chest like damp rot. The mud on the kitchen window gnawed at her, a stubborn detail that wouldn't let her rest. She'd wiped it clean with a rag earlier, scrubbing until the glass gleamed under the flashlight's beam, but her fingers still felt dirty, gritty with something she couldn't wash away. It was nothing, she told herself firmly—a stray mark carried by the wind, a trick of the light playing on her frayed nerves. But the latch had been loose, just as Ellie had said over the phone, its metal wobbling under her touch when she'd checked it. And that crash she'd heard through the receiver—too loud, too close—echoed in her mind, a sound she couldn't dismiss as imagination.
Needing a distraction, something to anchor her spiraling thoughts, Mara crossed into the living room and grabbed a cardboard box she'd left on the coffee table earlier that day. It was one of many she'd brought to sort through the house, a task she'd put off for years until the weight of her grandmother's passing had forced her hand. She decided she'd search the place, dig through its dusty corners for something concrete—proof that this was all in her head, that the voice and the fear and the mud were nothing more than a tired mind playing tricks. She carried the box back to the dining table, setting it down with a soft thud, and then turned to the hall closet nearby.
The door creaked as she pulled it open, releasing a faint whiff of mothballs and stale wool. She reached inside, her hands brushing against the coarse fabric of old coats—moth-eaten relics her grandmother had never thrown out. Beneath them, tucked against the back wall, was a stack of photo albums, their leather covers cracked and peeling at the edges. She pulled the top one free, dust rising in a faint cloud as she carried it to the table and sat down. The flashlight's beam illuminated the faded label on the spine: 1999. Her fingers hesitated over the cover before flipping it open, revealing a grid of snapshots frozen in time.
There she was, her younger self staring back from the glossy pages: scowling in a too-big sweater that swallowed her frame, leaning against the porch rail with her arms crossed, gazing off into the trees that bordered the property. Her hair was a mess, dark strands falling into her face, and her eyes—God, her eyes looked hollow, older than sixteen, carrying a weariness she hadn't recognized at the time. She flipped through the pages slowly, unease prickling along her spine like static. There was no Ellie in these pictures, no hint of anything amiss—just a teenage girl caught in the mundane ache of adolescence. The photos should have reassured her, grounded her in the reality of what she knew, but instead they only deepened the disquiet gnawing at her gut.
The phone rang.
Her hands stilled, the album slipping from her fingers to the floor with a soft thud that barely registered over the sudden pounding of her heart. The sound drilled through the house, sharp and relentless, reverberating off the walls and pulling her gaze upward to the ceiling. She didn't want to answer it. She could ignore it, let it ring itself out until the silence swallowed it whole, pretend she hadn't heard the piercing call cutting through the night. But her feet betrayed her again, moving before her mind could catch up, carrying her to the base of the stairs. She climbed them slowly, each step creaking under her weight, and then reached for the ladder that led to the attic, its rungs cold against her palms.
The attic was a cavern of shadows, the air thick with dust and the faint chill of neglect. She pulled herself up, the flashlight tucked under her arm casting wild beams as she steadied herself on the floorboards. The phone sat there on an old wooden table, its black receiver inexplicably back on the hook—she'd left it dangling earlier, hadn't she? It rang again as she approached, the bell vibrating through the wood with a ferocity that made her skin crawl. She snatched it up, her voice sharper than she intended as it burst from her throat. "Ellie?"
"Mara, thank God," came the reply, breathless but softer this time, laced with a fragile relief. "He's gone—for now. I barricaded the attic door with the trunk. I don't think he saw me come up here."
Mara's flashlight swept the attic, its beam cutting through the gloom to land on the trunk in question. It sat where it always had, half-open and spilling its contents—old quilts and linens—like the innards of some forgotten beast. It hadn't moved an inch, certainly not dragged across the floor to block anything. "Ellie, listen to me," Mara said, her voice steady despite the tremor in her chest. "I'm here, right where you say you are, and there's no one. No barricade. It's just me."
"You don't get it," Ellie replied, her tone edging toward panic, rising like a tide about to break. "It's not now for me—it's then. 1999. He's downstairs, I can hear him walking. His boots—they're loud, like he wants me to know he's there."
Mara's throat tightened, a lump forming that she couldn't swallow down. "Who is he? Why's he after you?" she asked, gripping the receiver until her knuckles ached.
"I don't know!" Ellie's voice cracked, splintering into a sob. "He just… he's always been outside, watching. Tonight he got closer. I saw his mask through the window—stitched up, ugly. He didn't say anything, just stared." A pause stretched between them, taut and brittle, before Ellie's whispered confession slipped through. "Mara, I'm scared."
The flashlight trembled in Mara's hand, its light jittering across the attic's slanted walls. She wanted to tell Ellie she was safe, that this was some twisted game her mind had conjured, but the words stuck in her throat, heavy and useless. "Okay," she said instead, forcing her voice to hold steady. "Just… stay hidden. I'll figure this out."
"Hurry," Ellie breathed, her voice barely audible. "He's—" A thud cut her off, dull but heavy, like something solid striking wood. Mara's head snapped up, her flashlight beam darting across the attic's rafters. It came again—thud, thud—faint and muffled, reverberating from above the ceiling. Dust sifted down in a fine veil, settling on her shoulders and catching in the light. She held her breath, straining to hear over the roar of her own pulse. The phone hummed in her ear, Ellie silent on the other end, the line alive with faint static but devoid of her voice.
"Ellie?" Mara whispered, the word barely a breath. No answer. The connection hadn't dropped—she could still hear the crackle—but the girl was gone, swallowed by whatever lay beyond the receiver.
The thuds stopped as abruptly as they'd begun. Mara lowered the phone slowly, her pulse a deafening drumbeat in her ears. She backed toward the ladder, her eyes locked on the ceiling where the sounds had originated. Nothing moved, no shadows shifted in the corners, but the air felt thicker now, charged with an electric tension she couldn't name or shake. Her descent was clumsy, her legs shaky as they carried her down the rungs, and she shut the attic hatch behind her with a decisive snap, sliding the bolt into place with a trembling hand that refused to steady.
Back in the dining room, she sank into the chair she'd abandoned, her breath coming in shallow bursts. The photo album lay splayed on the floor where it had fallen, its pages open to that same snapshot of her younger self. Those dark, unreadable eyes stared up at her, a silent accusation she couldn't decipher. Mara reached for it, her fingers brushing the edge of the page, then froze.
The porch rail in the picture—there, in the background, barely visible through the grainy haze—was a smudge. A shape. Too tall to be a bush, too still to be a trick of the shutter's fleeting capture. It could've been anything—a tree trunk, a shadow cast by the afternoon sun, a flaw in the film itself. But in the pit of her stomach, a cold certainty coiled tight, whispering that it wasn't. It was him—the figure Ellie had seen, the one with the stitched-up mask and the heavy boots, standing just beyond the frame of her memory, waiting.
She sat there, the flashlight's beam flickering as its battery began to fade, and the house settled around her, its groans and creaks blending into a chorus she could no longer ignore. The night stretched on, endless and unyielding, and Mara knew she wouldn't sleep—not now, not with that shape burned into her mind, lurking just out of reach.