Page 4 of Fractured Loyalties

My therapist once told me this kind of ritual was common in survivors. A way to reclaim the narrative. A way to push back against the creeping dread that the past is somehow still breathing in your walls.

But that was before I got a letter.

Before the black car.

Before the look in Alec’s eyes told me I’m not hiding as well as I thought.

I turn off the light. Lie in bed. Eyes open.

Somewhere in the dark, a phone buzzes softly.

Not mine.

I don’t move.

If I don’t move, maybe the world won’t either.

But outside my window, the ocean still roars.

Louder now.

Louder every night.

I shut my eyes. Count backward from fifty. Try to convince my muscles they aren’t coiled springs. But my body doesn’t believe me.

A soft creak splits the silence, above me.

The unit above mine is empty. Mrs. Ketteridge, the old woman who used to live there, moved out weeks ago. I haven't heard a sound from that place since—until now.

I wait. It might be the building settling. It might be the wind shifting wood. It might be nothing.

Another creak. Slower. Closer to where I lie.

I sit up.

My ears reach harder than my eyes do in the dark. Straining.

Then—barely audible—a voice. Just one word, carried like breath against a closed window.

“Mara.”

I freeze.

But it was soft. So soft I could have imagined it. My brain has made worse things up before. Has filled silence with memory more times than I can count.

I hold still. Every part of me is silent, except my heart. That, I can’t control. It pounds too loud, as if trying to signal something—or someone—back.

I don’t move. I don’t call anyone. I just sit there, wrapped in that awful in-between place where you don’t know what’s real.

Eventually, I lay back down.

But I don’t close my eyes.

I don’t sleep.

The sound may have been real. Or it may have been a ghost I carry with me. I’m not sure which one terrifies me more.

The air doesn't change. The silence doesn’t either.