Jenna left her school bag in her locker and walked out through the side entrance without waiting for the dismissal bell.
The rain had settled into a sullen, persistent mist that coated her eyelashes and soaked through the shoulders of her canvas jacket. She did not take the bus. She walked toward the commercial district, her eyes darting to every passing sedan, every pedestrian carrying an umbrella, every storefront reflection.
She ducked into the warm, smelling interior of an old diner two miles from campus, sliding into a corner vinyl booth where her back was protected by the wood partition.
She placed her phone flat on the Formica table and pulled out the charging cable. Her hands would not stop shaking. She opened the details tab on the photos in her gallery, examining the EXIF metadata.
Camera Model: Internal Sensor.
Focal Length: 26mm.
Location: Coordinates unavailable.
She attempted to delete the image of the girl on the roof.
The screen froze.
A high-pitched whining noise began to emit from the speaker grill. The screen flashed violet, went completely black, and then began cycling through images at blinding speed: the dark void beneath the rooftop; the five figures standing on the wet driveway; a room filled with heavy, tube-driven electronic racks; her own reflection in the bathroom mirror; and a hospital bed with leather restraint cuffs hanging from the chrome frame.
The metal casing of the phone grew scalding hot against her palm.
Jenna gasped and dropped it onto the table.
With a sharp crack, the tempered glass screen split down the middle, a spiderweb of hairline fractures radiating from the center.
The screen went black. As the device cooled, a tiny white scrap of paper, dislodged by the thermal expansion of the battery compartment, slipped out from beneath the silicone protective case.
Jenna picked it up. It was a strip torn from an index card.
Written on it in red grease pencil were three numbers:
317
She pulled change from her pocket, walked to the payphone mounted near the diner's restrooms, and dialed her mother's cell phone.
The number you have dialed is currently unavailable or out of the coverage area.
She dialed her father's office line.
It rang seven times before disconnecting with a dry, mechanical click.
A wave of nausea washed over her. She could not go back to that house. The warning on the back of the photograph had been explicit. She would wait in the diner until her parents returned from work, until the windows were lit, until she could demand an explanation with witnesses present.
She ordered a black coffee she had no intention of drinking and stared out through the diner's plate-glass window at the gray street.
Across the road, sheltering beneath the awning of a dry cleaner, stood a woman.
She wore a long, tailored camel-wool coat and dark gloves. Her hair was pulled back into an immaculate knot. Despite the distance and the rain, Jenna recognized the set of her shoulders instantly.
It was the woman from the photograph. Her mother—not as she looked now, exhausted and defeated, but as she had looked fifteen years ago.
Jenna knocked her chair backward as she bolted to her feet. "Wait!" she shouted, pushing past a startled waitress toward the glass door.
The brass bell jingled violently as she burst into the street. "Wait!"
The rain struck her face like needles. She sprinted across the four lanes of traffic, tires hissing on the wet tarmac, a delivery van blasting its horn in protest.
She reached the awning.
The pavement was empty. The dry cleaner's neon sign hummed OPEN, casting a sickly green glare over the puddle at her feet. There was no one in sight.
Jenna turned slowly, catching sight of herself in the darkened display window of an adjacent antique store.
Her reflection looked soaked, feral, her hair plastered to her skull, her skin gray under the streetlamps.
Then, within the glass, her reflection's head tilted slowly to the left. The lips curled into a cold, amused smirk.
Jenna stood rigid, her mouth open in horror. Her own face in the glass was smiling while her physical jaw remained clenched in terror.
She stepped backward into the rain. The reflection mirrored the movement instantly, its expression flattening back into terrified shock.
You're having a nervous breakdown, she thought, pressing the heels of her hands against her temples. The stress. The badminton championship. The fighting at home. You're hallucinating.
Then, without warning, a memory slammed into her consciousness with the physical force of a blow:
A white, tiled room. The sharp, chemical stench of rubbing alcohol and ozone. A circular fluorescent surgical lamp shining down into her retinas, blinding her. Someone leaning over her, wearing a green surgical mask, their voice muffled and distorted:
"Jenna, if you wake up before 3:17… don't open your eyes."
She blinked.
The white tiles vanished. She was standing on the gravel shoulder of the highway, two miles north of town, her feet moving mechanically along the verge.
She looked down at her watch.
3:16.
She had no memory of the two-mile walk. Her legs had carried her on autopilot, moving toward the Victorian house whose black silhouette now rose against the tree line at the crest of the hill.
She tried to stop. She tried to turn her boots around and run toward the highway lights. Her muscles refused to obey. A dreadful, magnetic momentum pulled her up the cracked driveway.
The house was completely dark. Every window was an empty, black socket.
Then, in silent, rhythmic succession, the lights began to turn on.
Click. The ground-floor kitchen flared with yellow light.
Click. The living room lamps flickered on.
Click. The hallway sconces illuminated.
Click. The second-floor guest room glowed.
Every window in the house was blazing with light—except one.
At the end of the second floor, the window of the locked room remained dark. Its sash was thrown wide open to the freezing rain.
And standing inside the frame, her pale hands resting on the sill, looking down into Jenna's upturned face, was the girl.