The call came on a Tuesday morning, just after I poured my first coffee.

It was an unknown number with the rural area code.

I didn't recognize.

I almost let it ring out.

Nothing good, it ever comes from a stranger calling before nine a m.

But something in me picked up.

Anyway, who's this, ethan, A man asked.

His voice was steady and official.

Yea, I said, who is this?

Missus, Sheriff Talbot, Redwood County.

I'm sorry to contact you like this, Sun.

We've recovered a woman's body in the state forest.

Your sister.

You're listed as the closest next of kin.

I actually laughed one short, confused breath.

You've got the wrong guy.

A pause, then pages rustling.

Her name was Sarah Morecraft, my last name.

I sat down a little too quickly.

My coffee sloshed over the rim o.

K.

Well, that's definitely not me, I said, I don't have a sister.

I've never had a sister.

He paused for a moment.

Your mother was Angela Morecraft corrects, I said she died three years ago, and your father alive, but he lives in Nevada.

Now we don't talk much.

Talbot cleared his throat well, sir, I understand this is difficult, but our office already ran a preliminary DNA test.

The State Lab sent the results thirty minutes ago.

The deceased woman is a full biological sibling match ninety nine point nine nine percent.

The room tilted for a second.

I thought the sheriff might have misread something, mixed up files, contaminated samples, or maybe there's a glitch in whatever software they used.

Look, I began trying to keep any panic from my voice.

I'm an only child, always have been.

My dad would have mentioned something like this, like a dead daughter, my mom.

I cut myself off.

She wasn't here to clarify anything.

I understand.

Talbot said, but the state doesn't normally get these things wrong.

I'm afraid will need you to come down and formally identify the next of kin.

My brain snagged on the phrase like it was written in another language.

Formerly identify the next of kin?

How was I supposed to identify some one I didn't even know existed?

Identify her how?

I asked quietly in person.

He said, when you see her yourself, we'll know more.

His words stuck with me long after the call ended.

When you see yourself, we'll know more.

The implication wasn't subtle.

Whoever she was, whoever I apparently shared blood with, they thought I would recognize her.

I drove six hours to Redwood County.

It was a nowhere town that didn't even bother with a welcome sign.

It was surrounded by forests, littered with gas stations, and a stretch of road that looked like they'd been forgotten by time and funding.

The sheriff met me outside the building.

It was an older guy with a drooping mustache and a wrinkled face that looked like it had been whittled out of pine bark.

He nodded and led me through a side entrance into the coroner's suite.

I'd expect it to be like what you see on TV, with high tick equipment and bright white tiles, but instead I was greeted with a concrete floor, lilonium walls, and the smell of preserved meat and bleach that has salted my nose.

She isn't draw six, the coroner said quietly.

A woman mid fifties.

Maybe her badge read Dr Elkins.

I followed her to the wall of refrigerated units.

She glanced at me, like she was waiting for me to give her a reason now to do this.

I didn't.

She pulled open the drawer.

The moment I saw the body, my stomach turned cold.

She was about thirty maybe thirty five, skin, pale, lips drawn back, dark hair, brittle and sunken around a jaw.

There was something about her face that it wasn't quite alien.

If anything, it was worse than that.

She looked like my mother, close enough that I instinctively took a step back.

Same nose, same curve of the cheekbones, same slightly offcenter parting of her hair.

But there was something wrong beneath the familiarity.

Her frame was frail, like she gone years without proper food.

Her ribs rose like piano keys beneath her skin, fingers bone thin and curved, like they've been clenched for too long, and a skin grayish waxy, was marred by little patches of what looked like hardened scarring around the nose and mouth.

Elkins noticed me staring calcified scar tissue in the lungs.

Probably longtime exposure to mineral heavy dust could be a fungal build up.

Honestly, we haven't seen anything like it outside of old mining accidents, She paused, Do you have any idea how this happened?

I shook my head.

I hadn't even known she existed a few days ago.

Sorry, she said gently, didn't mean to push.

The sheriff stepped closer and handed me a sealed evidence bag.

Inside was a small, water damaged polaroid.

It looked like it had been clutched tight for years, creased, torn in one corner, yellowed at the edges.

I turned it over.

It was me, five years old, bowl cut, missing front teeth, standing in the grass somewhere with a toy plane in my hand.

Next to me was a girl about my age, smiling, holding my hand like we'd done it a hundred times.

The background was a blur of summer the corner of the house I barely recognized.

I didn't remember taking that photo.

I didn't remember her, but there we were, like siblings, like we belonged together.

I told myself a hundred times I was going to sell the house after Mom died.

I even had a reel to and stand by keys and a manilla envelope business card paper clip to the top, but I never followed through.

Every time I tried.

Something in me locked up.

My chest became heavy, and it was like I was abandoning my parents, my childhood, everything that used to feel solid.

It wasn't logical.

I knew she was gone.

I knew the house couldn't hold on to them, not really, but some part of me I still believed that as long as I had the keys, as long as the furniture stayed where they left it, I hadn't lost everything.

So when I got back from Redwood County, that's where I went.

The house was still how I'd left it.

Sheets over the furniture, A faint trace of Mom's perfumed still lingered on the carpet.

Every room carried a memory, like wallpaper, but now that wallpaper felt thinner, brittle, like if I peeled back the right corner, something else might be underneath.

I started in the living room.

Her storage stops were still stacked behind the couch, labeled in neat cursive X mess important papers, Ethan's school and photos.

That was the one I grabbed first.

I sat cross legged on the floor, a plastic tub between my knees, and flipped through album after album, baby pictures, birthday parties, school photos, smiles, and crown drawings aneast the basket, But somewhere around age three, the timeline blurred.

Photos were missing, Whole pages had been ripped out, slices of times gone without explanation, No photos between Halloween of ninety three and the summer of ninety seven, just blank spots, torn stops where glue once held something real.

I checked three more albums, same thing, age three to seven erased gone.

I had to wonder had my mom done this?

Was she trying to hide something?

Or had it been Dad?

I could almost hear his voice my head, annoyed, impatient.

Why I tick up the past?

Nothing good comes from there.

The thing is I wasn't digging, I was remembering, or trying to.

It was nearly midnight by the time I finished tearing through the boxes and albums.

I didn't want to stay the night.

The house didn't feel like mine anymore.

It was still the same layout.

I grew up in the same walls and corners, but without them there it felt hollow.

But I hadn't slept much since the morgue, and the highway back to the city was all curves and blind turns.

I didn't want to risk it, not with the rain starting to spit and streak the windows, so I stayed.

The air mattress I kept rolled in the trunk was still there, along with the sleeping bag and a half dead flashlight.

I inflated it in what used to be the den, hardwood floor, high ceilings, and the dusty ghost of where the couch used to be.

The smell in the house had turned damp, like wet cardboard and neglected drains.

I had to wipe the floor down with a dish towel just to make room.

The silence pressed in.

Once I lay down, I left the hallway light on, just in case.

I don't know when I fell asleep.

I just remember waking to a voice.

It whispered my name, faintly, softly, almost playful, coming from somewhere down the hall.

I froze for a moment, holding my breath to listen out, but there was only silence.

I sat up, reached for my phone to trick the time.

It was three a m.

That was when I saw them.

There were bare, muddy footprints tracking across the wood floor from the kitchen, leading from the back door.

They were small, too small to be mine, too wide apart to be a child crawling.

They ended at the edge of my air mattress, right at the corner where my head had been moments earlier, and there were no prints going back.

I stood slowly, not breathing hard, smashing my ribs, and backed into the kitchen.

I flicked on the overhead light.

The back door was locked, dead, bolt in place, no windows broken, no wind, no creaking.

I pulled out my phone and opened the app for the old security cameras.

I had installed them right after month passed.

They were cheap, motion sensitive ones, just enough to spook off any squatters or drifters.

The house had sat vacant too long, and I didn't trust people not to take advantage.

The feed from the backyard loaded first at two point fifty am.

The camera glitched for just a frame.

Then the back door opened slowly, no one in sight.

Then something entered, small, crouched low like an animal.

Its outline shimmered like heat on pavement, and then the feed glitched again, static blooming across the screen, and the door was closed.

Nothing else.

I screwked back and forth, pausing at the exact frame where the things stepped through.

There was no shape to it, but there was a shadow and the shadow reached out to touch the door frame like it was routine.

I turned half, expecting something to be standing in the room behind me, empty, except the footprints were try now crackling like they'd been there for hours.

I went still.

The whisper came again, closer, this time you forgot me.

I spent most of the morning sitting in the same chair I used to eat cereal in as a kid, staring out the window like I expected the trees to spell something out for me.

When I finally dialed, I already knew what he'd say, but I needed to hear it.

He picked up on the third ring.

Yeah, Dad, I said, it's me.

I pause.

So everything okay?

No, I said, not even close.

I could already hear the defensiveness loading behind his silence.

I need to ask you something, and I need you to tell me the truth.

No nonsense, he sighed heavy through the receiver.

It's about your mother's house again, No, I said, it's about my sister.

That word landed hard.

I heard it hit him.

Something shifted in the way he breathed, but his voice didn't break when he replied, you don't have a sister.

There was a body found in Redwood County.

A woman I was listed as the closest next of kin.

The state ran a DNA test.

She was a ninety nine point nine nine percent sibling match.

That's not possible, he said, instantly, too quick.

It's a mistake.

They mix things up all the time, you know they don't, and you're dodging.

I'm not dodging anything, he snapped.

There was no sister, There was no other kid.

If this is some scam or some prank, I don't want anything to do with it.

I forced myself to stay calm.

Then explain the photo, I said, the one she was holding, it's me five years old with her and all the photo albums in the house of the same years.

Ripped out like someone wanted to eraise her silence longer this time.

Then, jeez, you sound like your mother, he muttered, digging into things.

I don't matter.

She was always like that, making stories out of shadows.

He was unraveling.

Dad.

I said, just tell me the truth.

I am telling you, he said louder.

Now, there was never a daughter, just you.

That's it.

You understand me.

I opened my mouth, but the line went dead.

He hung up.

I stared at the phone in shock, pardon me.

Hoped he would call back, but he didn't.

I opened my laptop and started digging.

The county clerk's website was a mess, but with the right filters and an address I'd memorized decades ago, I found what I was looking for.

It was a public record, dated twenty seven years ago, filed under Angela Morecraft report type missing person minor name redacted, juvenile protection relation daughter age five.

Case status closed withdrawn by father, child's safety accounted for, signed Richard Morecraft.

Time elapsed forty eight hours.

She tried to report it.

He made it disappear, just like her.

Around sunset, I heard a small, sharp tap from the back hallway, then another, then a third, closer, like some one drumming their finger nails along the wall while they walked.

I rose and listened, but there was nothing.

Then there was a whisper, so faint.

I wasn't sure if it was my imagination, hey soft, Curious as if testing the air, I grabbed my keys and went straight to the front door.

Twisted the knob, but it didn't budge.

I threw my shoulder into it.

Nothing, not even a rattle.

Cold crept up my back.

I tried the back door, then the windows.

I even hauled a dining chair and smashed it against the largest pane.

The chair just bounced.

The glass didn't even tremble.

On the final impact, the room exhaled a low, vibrating groan from the walls that felt disappointed.

That's when the house went quiet, a sealed space, quiet, like someone had wrapped the place in cotton.

And then came the second whisper, closer, don't leave yet.

I backed into the living room, chest tight.

The lights dimmed, and that when everything started.

More taps, faster, sharper, scratching, racing along the walls in erratic loops, then pounding, pounding hard, like fists beating from the inside of the walls trying to break out.

The lights flickered with each strike.

I stumbled backwards and something cold wrapped around my ankle.

I screamed and fell, kicking instinctively.

Nothing there but the imprint stayed, a perfect child size handprint, pale against my skin.

I scrambled under the couch, panting, clutching my shirt.

Then the ceiling above me began to weep, water, thick drops falling hard enough to splatter against the floorboards.

Metallic smell hit me instantly.

I gagged through the dripping.

I heard something else beneath the floor, sobbing, her child sobs muffled but unmistakable, shaking the wooden planks beneath my feet.

I didn't want to move, but the house forced me to feel it.

Suddenly, the back door creaked open.

It wasn't forced open by anything, just wide open, like it had been waiting for me to notice.

I didn't think.

I ran.

The yard was still wet with rain, grass slick under my shoes.

As I cut toward the shed.

It was pure instinct, some half formed belief that if I got outside, she couldn't follow, as if ghosts respected thresholds behind me.

I swear I heard her footsteps match mine.

I ran too, She whispered.

The footsteps kept pace, so I changed tact and looked for somewhere to hide.

I remembered my old spot, the place I go to when I was overwhelmed as a kid, the shed.

I threw open the shed door and slammed it shot behind me, latched it.

Even though the wood was soft from water, dammich like that would stop anything inside the air was thick with rust and dust, everything smelled old and sour.

I tried to catch my breath, but she kept speaking.

I hid too, she said, I thought it would keep me safe.

Something in me recoiled.

I was running on pure instinct, but according to her, I was doing everything as planned, following a route she had as a child.

Outside.

The footsteps returned slow, deliberate, circling the shed.

If I was being predictable, then I needed to throw things off.

As a kid, the tool closet was my go to spot, big enough that you could sit in there for hours, and out of the way for anyone not looking too hard.

It was the first place i'd run, so I made sure to dart past it.

He was relentless.

The game would stop if I asked, but this time he was determined to catch me.

The footsteps paused at the door.

I scanned the shed.

There were crates along the wall, old reinforced toolboxes.

I moved toward them, desperate for something, anything that might buy me seconds.

If I was still a kid, i'd fit in with ease, but it took me a few attempts to squeeze in.

I slipped the lid over and held my breath.

I thought I was being smart when I avoided the tool closet.

We always used that spot when we were desperate.

In total black, my heart raised.

I felt like there was nothing I could do to avoid this predetermined path, forced into following her steps before her demise.

He walked in, called my name.

I didn't answer.

The footsteps softened.

I couldn't hear where she was.

Then bang, a strike rang out across the wood.

I felt like my heart would stop from the shock, thinking it was her way of saying I got you.

But then another bang sounded on the crate, then another.

I didn't know what was happening until she carried on her tail.

He said, that's better, she murmured and started sealing me in the reality of what she was doing.

Kicked in.

When I felt the tip of a poorly placed nail dig into my side.

I screamed and threw my shoulder against the lid.

It didn't move.

I kicked, pushed.

The crate wouldn't budge, no give, like the walls were holding me down, not that I could get much perch with how cramped the crate was.

I begged, She whispered.

I told him I'd be good.

I told him I'd be quiet.

He didn't listen.

The crate shifted, tilted, then lifted.

I was moving, jolted across the shed floor, the world tilting.

He drove me far, she said, I don't know how long.

I couldn't scream any more.

My voice was gone, tears blurred, everything scraping from inside the crate, something that wasn't me, something with too many fingers.

I felt the little space I had in the crate fill impossibly with some thing that felt like skin, ice cold against my face, and the voice that I had only been hearing muffled from outside the crate spoke clearly from inside, so that I could feel the cold breath of my nose.

When I couldn't scream, I started dreaming, and when I dreamed, they heard me.

It's hard to say how long I was in the crate.

Time didn't pass normally.

In their second stretched hours collapsed.

I started counting breaths just to keep my mind from breaking, but I lost track somewhere around five hundred.

The air went stale, my knees ached from being folded too long, Sweat soaked through my shirt, and every few minutes, something inside the wood would twitch or creak, not like old wood, settling, but like it was breathing with me.

Please stop, I begged.

The voice that came back wasn't sympathetic.

That's what I said too.

Before I was buried.

Her voice croaked, speaking low, an inch from my ear.

The weight above me got heavier.

I could hear the shifting of packed soil, the sound of roots pushing in through cracks.

I started to cry, quietly, bitterly, and somewhere in the grief, the truth settled in.

My sister was buried alive by her father, and no one had come for her.

I had lived a normal life, birthday parties, road trips and a decent college.

She had died in a box, forgotten by everyone.

And now I was in her place.

And the worst part, I couldn't even say.

She was wrong to put me here.

That's what gutted me the most.

You didn't deserve this, I whispered, none of it.

The great creaked.

You're just the kid.

I should have known, I should have remembered.

I paused, tried to swallow the lump in my throat.

My chest was shaking.

But it wasn't me who did this to you.

It was him silence, but I could feel her listening.

It should have been him inside this box, not you, not me.

The darkness held his breath.

You want someone to suffer for what happened, Fine, so do I, I pleaded.

I waited.

A long silence passed his He's still alive.

The voice came from just above my head.

Clear.

I hesitated, Yes, another silence, and then the weight started to lift.

The pressure above me eased.

Her presence dissipated from the crate.

I could feel the top of the crate were just blowing inward from the pressure easing.

Then I'll make you a promise, she said, I'll let you live if you give me him.

I paused.

Even with everything I'd been through, some small part of me still clung to the idea that I was betraying my father.

But then I remembered the missing child report, the photo albums, the sound of nails being driven in, and the silence that followed.

He's in Nevada, I said, desert Ridge, using the name Edward Fox.

I'll even give you the address.

The crate split open, just opened.

Cool night air hit my face like a slap.

I gasped, crawling out into the damp grass under a sky I hadn't seen in what felt like days.

No one was around, but I knew she'd heard me.

When I pulled myself out, I expected to see the backyard.

I didn't.

I was in the woods, deep enough that the trees blocked most of the sky.

Wet leaves clung to my shirt.

My knees buckled as I stood, legs stiff and shaking from being culled up so long.

For a minute, I just stood there, breathing, was alive.

I turned slowly, taking in my surroundings.

That's when I saw the yellow police tape, fresh still tied to the trunks.

It sagged between two trees like a cautionary whisper.

There was a shallow pit nearby, half filled with disturbed earth.

This was it where they found her.

She hadn't taken me to some memory or symbolic grave.

She'd brought me to the exact place her body had been unearthed, and somehow she'd made the journey feel like a memory instead of miles.

She'd retrace the path.

It took me hours the hike back to the road longer still to find someone willing to give me a ride into town.

Every step I took I thought about him, My father, part of me hoped she was already there, that it was done that the next time I checked the news, i'd see a report about a man found dead in his trailer in Nevada, cause unknown.

But part of me didn't because he was still my father, and even if he deserved it, I needed to understand why her, Why bury her?

Why make me forget?

I borrowed a phone from the gas station clerk.

It took me three tries to dial the number.

He answered on the second ring.

His voice was groggy, probably drinking, maybe sleeping.

I didn't care.

Hello.

I said nothing at first, not knowing what to say.

Then I simply decided to be blunt.

She's coming, silent, What the hell are you talking about?

He snapped, Who is this?

You know who?

This is?

Another pause and rustle of movement, like he was sitting up straighter.

Look, you never had a sister drop this nonsense.

Do you understand me?

You're being manipulated.

I could hear the panic under the anger.

Now you can tell her that yourself, I said, flat, she's on a way to you.

The silence that followed didn't stretch.

It snapped, jeez, he whispered.

It didn't stop.

I didn't say anything.

He started breathing heavier, not scared for himself, but scared of something bigger.

Listen, I didn't kill her, he said, not really.

I tried to stop what she was becoming, what she was bringing through.

He spoke like the dam had broken, like he'd been waiting to say this for years.

She was born wrong, he said, not deformed or something genetic, just off, like her eyes saw something the rest of us didn't.

And when she talked in her sleep, the walls would sweat.

Do you understand water condensation, like something was breathing on the other side.

At first, I thought she was just disturbed, maybe even gifted.

But the older she got, the worse it got.

Birds stopped nesting near the house, Mirrors walked around her.

She stopped aging.

For almost a year.

I felt the blood drained from my face.

She told me things she had no way of knowing.

She started to whisper names at night, names that weren't real, not in this world.

They weren't even pronounceable.

And one night I checked the baby monitor and his voice broke.

Something else was whispering back.

I sat down on the curb outside the gas station.

The world felt suddenly too big, like it was pressing in from all sides.

My grandfather left.

Journals, old country stuff.

He always believed some people could act like like doors, not possessed, just born open, not even on purpose.

Sometimes something just slips through.

She was one of them, a breach.

I tried everything, prayers, locks, psych wards, but she kept getting worse.

And then one day she just stopped.

He poured.

I could hear him swallow.

She came to me, calm, smiling, She said, it's ready.

I couldn't risk it, not the world, not you.

So I dealt with it and it worked.

I felt hollow until I told her where you were, I whispered.

He led out a sharp, shaking breath.

You don't understand, she said, that thing needed closure, a story that ends.

You gave it what it wanted.

It doesn't end with me.

I'm just the final ritual, the finishing nail before she begins.

If I die, it's loose.

There was a single crack of static on the line, and then he said something I'll never forget.

It wore your sister like a mask, but it's not her anymore, and it's not done with you.

Click.

The line went dead.

The trip home felt like a punishment.

I walked for miles before I found a bus stop, then another hour before anything came.

Transfers, delays, cold benches, paper coffee cups with films skimming the top, no phone, no way to check if it had happened yet, if he was still alive, if he had won.

Each hour that passed pulled me in two directions.

Part of me prayed it was over.

Part of me prayed it hadn't started yet.

When I finally reached the house, it was nearly three in the morning.

The place looked the same, unassuming quiet, like none of it had ever happened.

I opened the door with shaking hands, stepped inside, and quickly closed it behind me, like I was afraid of what might follow.

The silence hit me first, waited, silence, like the kind in old churches and deep caves.

I found my charger plugged in my phone.

The screen took longer than usual to wake.

The battery ike ipulsed red like a dying heart.

I waited.

When it powered on.

I opened the call log.

No new calls, no texts, no mist voice mails, just blank space and times stretching too long.

I sat down on the couch, phone balancing in my palm, like I might summon an answer.

I stared at the screen, waiting for it to light up, waiting for a message that said I'm okay.

I stopped it, everything will be okay.

But all I got was static pings, old notifications, junk from apps.

I never used a weather warning from a county I wasn't in anymore, And in the stillness I noticed something else.

The air was damp.

I touched the wall beside me, wet, not the usual humidity, dripping, the same slow weep I remembered from the nursery, from the crate, from her, And in the awful, heartsick moment, I realized I wasn't watching my phone for news anymore.

I was watching it for the reflection, because the glass on the screen was it's the only place I could see the window behind me without looking directly.

And something had started to whisper again, soft, high, sweet, almost a lullaby in reverse, like something humming a song that hadn't been written yet.

I turned the phone just slightly, angling the reflection toward the far wall, and there she was, just outside the window, smiling.

Her face didn't move like a human's, her skin looked brittle like porcelain, stretched too thin.

Her mouth was smiling, but her eyes warmed.

They were watching me, not in a malicious way, not fully, just patient, like she'd been waiting her whole life for this moment.

My brain clung to hope because I made a deal, gave her what she wanted, thought I'd be free.

But I also remembered what Dad said, when I die, it's loose.

It's not her anymore, and it's not done with you, And now it's my turn.