Not the whistle this time.
Something worse.
A low, rasping breath.
From inside the apartment.
I spin.
Back toward the room.
I didn’t hear the door close.
But it’s shut now.
And someone’s standing behind it.
The shadow moves.
Slow.
I step back.
One. Two. Three?—
The whistle starts again.
But this time…
It’s coming from inside the walls.
The walls are breathing.
Not literally. I know that.
But it feels like they are.
The slow whistle circles me, sliding through cracks in the drywall, curling under the door, above the floorboards. I clutch Damien’s knife tighter, knuckles white, sweat running cold down my spine.
“Come out,” I whisper.
My voice doesn’t sound like mine.
It sounds like hers.
The version of me who stopped talking at fifteen.
The one who drew wasps with ink-stained fingers and whispered to the girl in the mirror that she wasn’t alone, even when no one believed her.
Because she wasn’t.
She never was.
A soft click echoes from the bedroom.
Not a door.
Not a light.
