I live alone. Not because I want to, but because I have to. After what happened three years ago, I moved out of the city to a quiet, rural town where nobody asks questions and everyone minds their business. It’s peaceful. Safe. Predictable.
Or at least, it was.
Last night, at exactly 3:17 AM, someone knocked on my door.
The knock wasn’t frantic or aggressive, it was slow, measured, and patient. Three soft taps. Then silence. I sat up in bed, heart pounding.
I live ten miles from the nearest neighbor.
No one should be knocking on my door at that hour.
I didn’t move at first. I just listened. Nothing. No footsteps. No car engine. Just the howling wind outside. Then the knock came again. Three times. Louder.
I grabbed the gun from my nightstand. I didn’t bother turning on the lights. I crept down the hallway, stepping over the squeaky floorboard I knew too well. I peeked through the peephole.
No one was there.
But the porch light flickered. Once. Twice. Then died.
I should have called the police. But I didn’t. Something told me they wouldn’t get here in time.
Instead, I opened the door.
And there she was.
A little girl.
She couldn’t have been more than six. Pale skin. Long, tangled hair. A torn dress soaked from the rain. Her lips trembled, and she clutched a stuffed rabbit missing one eye.
"I’m lost," she whispered. "Can I come in?"
My gut screamed no. But she looked… harmless. Afraid. Cold. Alone.
I stepped aside.
She walked in silently. No sound from her feet. Just dripping water from her clothes. I closed the door, bolted it, and turned around.
She was gone.
I checked the living room. Kitchen. Bathroom. Empty.
Then I heard it—footsteps upstairs.
I followed the sound up to the guest bedroom.
The door was slightly open.
Inside, she sat on the bed, holding the stuffed rabbit, humming a lullaby I hadn’t heard in years.
My sister used to hum it.
Before she disappeared.
"Who taught you that song?" I asked.
She didn’t answer.
Instead, she looked up at me with eyes that weren’t a child’s. They were old. Hollow. Familiar.
And then she said my name.
"Emma."
I froze.
"How do you know my name?"
She tilted her head. "You left me."
My blood ran cold. "What did you say?"
"You left me to die. In the fire."
I stepped back.
"No. That’s not possible. You’re not—"
"I waited," she said, voice deeper now. "But you never came back."
My hand shook on the doorknob. "You’re not real."
She smiled.
The lights flickered. Then exploded.
Everything went dark.
And then, silence.
I reached for my phone. Dead.
I turned back to the bed. Empty again.
Only the rabbit remained.
Soaked in blood.
I left the house at dawn. Drove straight to town. I told the sheriff everything.
He stared at me for a long time before finally saying: "Emma, your sister’s body was never found. We assumed she died in the fire. But… if someone else was there that night—"
"It wasn’t someone else," I said. "It was her."
He looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
"I need you to see something," he finally said.
He took me to the back room of the station. Opened an evidence locker.
Inside was the stuffed rabbit.
"A man found it in the woods last week. Near the old cabin you burned down. We traced it back to your family."
I didn’t speak.
"Emma," the sheriff said slowly, "is there anything you haven’t told us?"
I looked at the rabbit.
Then I said the truth.
"She didn’t die in the fire. I did."
"At 3:17 am."
The sheriff didn’t speak for a long time after I said those words. His expression was one of both confusion and fear, like he was staring at a ghost. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure what I meant. How could I be dead? How could I be here? Was I even alive? My mind raced with questions I couldn’t answer.
"Emma," the sheriff finally whispered, his tone careful. "What are you saying? You’re standing right here."
I looked at my own hands, trembling and pale. I touched my face, felt my pulse. I was here. Real. Alive.
But the girl. The fire. My sister. The rabbit. How could all of this make sense?
The sheriff’s radio crackled, and a dispatcher’s voice broke the tense silence. "Sheriff, we’ve got a report of strange activity near the old cabin—lights flickering, people hearing voices. Should we send someone to check it out?"
The sheriff glanced at me. "I’ll handle it."
He gestured for me to follow, and despite every instinct telling me to run, I got into his cruiser.
The drive to the cabin was tense. The trees seemed too close in on us as we navigated the winding dirt road. Neither of us spoke. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something terrible awaited us.
As we approached the clearing, we saw it—the cabin, or what was left of it. Charred, collapsed, but unmistakably there. And on the porch, the little girl stood, holding the rabbit, humming the same old lullaby my sister used to hum.
She looked at us, eyes hollow, as the air grew colder. I looked at the sheriff, who was now pale as a ghost. Before I could speak, she whispered something, so soft I barely heard it.
"You never came back."
The cabin door creaked open by itself.
The sheriff took a step back, but I moved forward, drawn to the darkness inside.
Suddenly, the sheriff grabbed my arm and took me outside.
"Emma," he whispered, "if you died in that fire... then who the hell am I talking to?"
I looked at him, confused. Then, in the car’s side mirror, I saw it—no reflection of me. Only the sheriff, alone.
And behind him, the girl, smiling.
I look closely, I realised that the little girl was not my sister.
That was me.
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