Clara's breath caught as her eyes fixed on the streak near the doorknob. Dark brown, crusted into the grain. Old enough to be dry, but recent enough to raise the hairs on her arms.
The sheriff leaned closer, frowning. "Could be rust," he muttered.
Clara shook her head. "No. Margaret wouldn't let anything in this house rust."
Dalton's jaw tightened. "Then don't go makin' up ghost stories. Folks in this town spook easy enough without you stirrin' the pot."
With that, he turned and left, his boots thumping heavily down the stairs. A moment later, the front door shut, and Clara was alone again.
The silence returned but it didn't feel empty. She could feel the house breathing around her.
Clara reached for the study door. The knob was cold, unnaturally so, as if the metal had been sitting in ice. She pushed, and the door creaked open.
Her aunt's study was as she remembered shelves crammed with books, piles of papers stacked neatly on the desk, and the faint smell of lavender sachets. But something was wrong. The air seemed… heavy. It pressed against her chest, thick and damp, as though she had stepped into another world entirely.
The window was open a crack. The wind whispered through, carrying the sound of the woods inside. Only it wasn't just the wind. Clara froze, straining to listen.
The sound rose and fell in uneven tones, forming almost words. Faint. Distant. Like a chorus of voices murmuring just beyond her understanding. Clara's skin prickled.
On the desk lay an open notebook. Her aunt's handwriting filled the pages messy, frantic, nothing like the neat script Clara remembered.
The last entry read:
The girl is still here. I hear her in the trees. I see her in my dreams. If I go missing, don't believe them when they say it was an accident. The woods take who they want. And now… they want me.
The wind howled suddenly, slamming the window wide. Papers lifted, spinning through the room. Clara grabbed the notebook as the lamp flickered wildly, casting sharp, jerking shadows across the walls.
One shadow moved differently from the others. Her breath hitched. At the corner of the room, tall and still, stood the outline of a girl. She was facing the shelves, her head tilted unnaturally to the side.
Clara blinked, and the figure was gone. Only the shelves remained, lined with dust and books.
But when she turned back toward the desk, a faint imprint had appeared on the notebook's page. A handprint. Small. Thin. Pressed into the paper as though someone invisible had touched it.
The wind died. The room fell silent. And in that silence, from somewhere deep in the woods outside, a girl's laughter echoed soft, high, and terribly wrong.