•Whispers in the Walls

Sana stared down at the box in her hands, the weight of it pressing into her like a stone laid upon her chest. The ribbon, still green despite the passage of decades, coiled softly like a whisper that had learned to lie still. And the name—her name—carved into the matching locket with deliberate slowness, not written in haste but with intention.

A message, not a coincidence.

A warning.

She didn't remember kneeling. She didn't remember the dirt under her nails or the cold seeping through the knees of her jeans. But she remembered the moment she opened the box and saw herself looking back through time.

The girl in the garden was no longer just a shadow. She had a name.

And somehow, impossibly, it was Sana's.

From the far edge of the wall, the trees rustled—not from wind, but as if something moved through them, unseen.

The moon had vanished. The stars blinked out like blown candles.

And from behind her, the house groaned.

---

Sana stood, holding the box close to her chest as if it might vanish if she let it go. The black stone she had pried loose from the fountain's base now lay on the cracked garden path, damp with soil. Her breath came in short, visible gasps.

The path leading back to the house felt longer than before. Thicker with air. As she walked, the garden walls rose higher, the ivy curling like fingers.

The iron gate was open—but only for her.

The moment she stepped through, it closed slowly behind her.

With no one touching it.

She reached the back hall, her boots thudding softly on the floorboards. No voices. No light. The lamps had all gone out.

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she paused.

At the top stood Christopher.

Barefoot. Pajamas. Pale.

"Did you find her?" he asked.

Sana's mouth opened, but no sound came.

Christopher nodded slowly, as if he already knew.

"She's under the stairs now."

And with that, he turned and vanished down the second-floor hallway.

---

Sana waited until morning to open the box again.

She waited until the house was noisy—Mary in the kitchen, the twins arguing over spoons, Catherine mumbling through a mouthful of toast—and then slipped away into the library.

The library was her quiet place, even when the house wasn't.

She cleared a space on one of the long reading tables and opened the lid. Slowly. Carefully.

The ribbon lay coiled just as she had left it. The matching locket glinted in the weak light.

But now, there was something else inside the box.

A folded page.

Trembling, she unfolded it.

The paper was aged, browned at the corners, with neat cursive ink:

"To remember what has been forgotten, one must walk the path backward.

Begin where the blood was spilled,

Speak where no voice can echo,

Turn where the house breathes,

Dig where the child weeps."

There was no signature.

---

That afternoon, she told Catherine.

They sat on the windowsill in their room, legs curled up beneath them, while Catherine stared at the note with furrowed brows.

"So... someone slipped this into the box after you opened it?"

"I don't know. I didn't leave it alone."

"Unless the box wrote it back."

Sana didn't answer.

"You think the house is… what, alive?"

"No. Not alive."

"Haunted?"

"Occupied."

Catherine set the paper down. "What do we do?"

Sana stared out the window.

"We walk the path backward."

---

They started with the basement.

The place where the floor had once been stained red, where Jacob had told them not to go unless he was with them.

Catherine picked the lock with a hairpin. It took her five minutes.

The door groaned open.

Inside, the air was damp and smelled of iron and old firewood.

The lightbulbs down there never worked. They brought candles.

Walls of stone. Old shelves stacked with forgotten jars. Rusted tools. Buckets. Empty crates. Everything the house didn't want them to find in daylight.

Sana paused by the far wall.

The stone there was cleaner. Newer.

She tapped it.

Hollow.

Catherine touched it gently. "This wasn't part of the original house. Someone walled something off."

Sana pressed her ear against it.

From the other side came a soft, steady sound.

Like breathing.

---

They returned the next night.

Catherine brought a hammer. Sana brought the ribbon.

Each strike echoed strangely. Not like hitting stone, but like striking something just beneath it—something waiting.

The wall cracked.

Behind it: a narrow space.

A child's bed. A small stool. A rag doll with one missing button eye.

And on the wall, written in red chalk:

"I am not her. But she is me."

Sana stepped into the space. The air was heavier, like water. Her skin tingled. Her ears rang.

She turned.

Catherine was no longer at the entrance.

The wall was whole again.