The rain hadn’t stopped for two days. Not the dramatic, thunderstorm kind, but a slow, persistent drizzle that blurred the windows and blurred her thoughts. Athena sat wrapped in a gray throw blanket on the edge of her couch, staring out the living room window where the streetlights looked like they were underwater. The silence inside the house had weight. She hadn’t played music in days. The fridge hummed like it was whispering secrets behind her. She didn’t move.
A half-eaten bowl of cereal had gone soggy on the coffee table. Her phone buzzed again. She ignored it. The screen showed a dozen missed calls from her mother, a few texts from friends she hadn’t replied to, and one message with no sender.
It said: “You remember now?”
She stared at the screen for too long. Her thumb hovered over the reply button, but her muscles didn’t follow through. Instead, she opened her notebook. A single sentence stared back at her: “She is.”
She didn’t know what it meant. But she had written it. And every time she tried to write something else, her hand trembled.
It had started three nights ago. The knocking. The notes. The dreams. Memories she didn’t remember. Shadows that followed her even when the lights were on. She hadn’t told anyone. Because a part of her believed this was exactly what she deserved.
The first night, it had just been the sound—soft knocking at her door around 2:00 AM. She’d assumed it was the wind or the pipes. The second night, she found the envelope. Dry despite the rain, folded with perfect precision, placed at the foot of her bed.
Inside: Morse code.
She hadn’t read Morse since sixth grade. But her mind remembered. Her hands trembled as she typed it into a translator on her laptop.
“You left me.”
She remembered the taste of metal in her mouth when she read it. Like old blood.
On the third night, the dreams started. She was standing at the edge of the river. A boy stood with his back to her, arms wrapped around himself like he was trying to disappear. The water was black, still, endless. When she stepped closer, he turned—his face half-missing, not from decay, but from being forgotten. She woke up gasping. The rain tapping on her window in rhythm. Like code.
And now tonight, everything was louder. Not the weather—but her thoughts. The mirror in the hallway fogged despite no heat. The messages grew stranger. Her phone buzzed again. This time, just one line:
“Attic. Now.”
Her breath caught. Her house didn’t have an attic. At least—not one she ever remembered using.
But when she stood, something pulled her. Not physically. But with memory.
She walked toward the hallway door beside the guest bathroom. One she had never opened. Her hand hovered above the knob.
The doorknob was ice cold.
She turned it.
The door creaked open.
Behind it, a narrow staircase. Dusty. Wooden. Leading upward into pitch black. Her breath shortened. This shouldn’t exist. This space, this staircase—she’d lived in this house for years. But her feet moved forward. Slowly, each step groaned under her weight, like the wood remembered things she didn’t.
At the top was a hatch. She pushed it. It opened with ease.
The attic was quiet. Dry. Covered in dust that shifted like ghosts with every breath she took. Old boxes. A rocking chair. An antique mirror covered in a cloth. And in the center, on the floor, another envelope.
She knelt. Opened it.
Morse code again.
“I watched you.”
She stood, heart hammering.
The cloth over the mirror fluttered. No breeze. Just movement. She stepped forward, lifted it.
Her reflection stared back.
But it wasn’t her.
The girl in the mirror wore the same clothes, had the same face—but her eyes were hollow. Her expression cruel.
Behind her in the reflection—someone else. A boy. Wet. Mud-slicked hair. Lifeless eyes.
She turned.
No one.
The mirror whispered:
“You laughed.”
The memory slammed into her chest. The hallway. A boy stammering. Books falling. Her voice, sharp and echoing: “Can’t even talk right?”
Laughter.
His face flushing.
Tears.
And then the silence that followed.
Until he vanished.
And she forgot.
But now he remembered.
And he wasn’t alone anymore.
Athena stumbled back from the mirror. Her breath came in gasps. She clutched the frame of an old dresser to stay upright. Her legs didn’t want to move, but her mind screamed to leave. She turned, rushed down the stairs, heart pounding against her ribs. But the house didn’t feel the same anymore. The walls leaned in. The lights dimmed. Every photo on the hallway wall was tilted. And in each one, the smiling version of her looked a little too sharp, a little too wide-eyed.
In the kitchen, the coffee mug from earlier had shattered on the floor. She didn’t remember hearing it break. Or dropping it. But shards now surrounded a dark puddle she hadn’t seen before. It looked like coffee. Smelled like rust.
She backed away. The fridge buzzed louder now. Like static.
She opened her notebook again.
Page after page had been filled.
“She is me. She is me. She is me.”
Over and over.
Her hands shook. This wasn’t schizophrenia. This wasn’t imagination. It was memory bleeding back in. And maybe madness. But the terrifying kind—where you realize you were never sane to begin with.
Her phone buzzed again. This time, a voice note.
She hesitated, then pressed play.
The voice was her own. But not quite.
It said, “I told you. I never left.”
She dropped the phone.
A knock at the window.
She turned.
Nothing.
Except her reflection in the glass.
Smiling.
Athena didn’t sleep that night. She sat in the living room, knees to her chest, eyes fixed on the doorway. The rain hadn’t let up. The light outside the window was pale and sickly. At some point, dawn arrived. But the house never brightened.
She tried calling her mom.
No signal.
She tried the internet.
Nothing loaded.
She wasn’t surprised.
The house had disconnected from the world. Or maybe she had.
Around noon, she found the old scrapbook tucked between cookbooks in the kitchen cabinet. It was from high school. A class project on “people who inspired us.” Her page was next to Cameron Ellis’s.
He’d chosen a poet. She’d chosen herself.
Literally. A mirror selfie pasted on the page. The caption: “Be your own hero.”
It was supposed to be a joke. She remembered laughing so hard in class, surrounded by friends.
Cameron had left school a week later.
No one made the connection.
Or if they did, they ignored it.
She closed the scrapbook.
Her phone vibrated violently on the floor.
She picked it up.
Another message.
“The attic again.”
“No,” she whispered. “I’m done.”
But the air changed. Like the house disagreed.
The mirror in the hallway fogged again.
This time, not a word.
A symbol.
Two eyes.
And a tear.
She ran to the attic.
Because running away never worked.
She knew that now.
She didn’t even hesitate this time. The attic door opened like it was waiting. The ladder unfolded itself without a sound. As she climbed, each rung felt colder, like it had stored a memory in the woodgrain.
At the top, the mirror was uncovered again. This time, she saw not just herself, but every version of her. The girl who laughed too loud. The one who lied to fit in. The one who pushed a boy into silence. The one who buried it all beneath a shiny, perfect smile.
Behind her reflection, Cameron stood.
Not broken.
Not bleeding.
Just… watching.
She turned. No one there.
But in the reflection, he reached out.
And so did she.
Their hands touched in the glass.
The attic filled with sound—not music, not whispers. Just breath.
And then came the memory she had never dared to hold.
After the day she mocked him—after the last straw—he’d sent her a note.
She never opened it.
She had thrown it into the river behind the school. Laughed as it floated away.
The note was in the attic now.
Dry. Preserved.
She unfolded it.
“I don’t hate you. I hope someday you see me.”
She fell to her knees.
Tears poured.
And for the first time, the weight of it all crushed her.
Because she did see him.
Now.
When it was too late.
She stayed in the attic until evening, the journal beside her, the mirror still whispering her name. Her fingers traced the lines Cameron had written, the corners of the paper soft from being unfolded and reread too many times.
When she descended, the house felt different.
Not lighter.
Not darker.
Just… aware.
Every step she took echoed longer than it should. She passed the hallway photos again, and in one, the edges of a face had blurred. Not hers. His.
She sat on the couch. Picked up her notebook.
The sentence had changed.
Not “She is.”
But “I am.”
Her pen moved without instruction.
“I am what I left behind.”
She didn’t cry.
She understood now.
This wasn’t about Cameron haunting her.
It was about Cameron living inside the version of her she refused to acknowledge.
The cruel girl. The liar. The bully. The one who smiled after breaking someone and called it a joke.
That part of her never died.
She just buried it in poetry and silence.
But now, it had a name again.
The phone buzzed.
Last message. No sender.
“Look in the mirror.”
She stood.
Walked to the hallway.
Wiped the fogged glass.
And saw herself.
And behind her?
Nothing.
No ghost.
No boy.
Just her own smile.
Unfamiliar.
Sharp.
Real.
She whispered, “She is me.”
And the mirror whispered back, “She always was.”
Before bed, she passed the mirror one last time.
It didn’t fog.
It didn’t speak.
It just reflected.
And she knew that was enough.
Because she had seen the monster.
And it wasn’t under her bed.
It wasn’t in the attic.
It wasn’t in the mirror.
It was in her memory. In her mouth. In the silence after laughter.
And now?
It was also in her healing.
Some nights would still be loud.
Some mirrors would still feel too sharp.
But the story she was living now?
It was hers.
She is.
She was.
And finally—she becomes.
And somewhere, buried in the sound of rain, a little girl whispered back, “I forgive you.”
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