Maya's pov

‘You shouldn't have been there…’

2:00 AM.

Every single night, at this exact moment, my sleep shatters. It always begins with that same faint whisper echoing in my ears. This has been happening to me for the past six years. To be completely honest, I have grown used to it by now.

I even learned to turn this strange curse to my own advantage.

It takes about half an hour of staring blankly at the ceiling fan before I realize I can no longer stay lying in bed. And so, in those moments swallowed by quiet while the rest of the town sleeps deeply under the cold Oregon rain, the soft sound of my footsteps begins to echo across the floor. My daily chores take place in the middle of the night.

Perhaps night truly stopped existing for me on the day I last went to sleep without a care in the world. The very next morning, when I returned home, Mom was gone. Forever.

Perhaps that is why the voice reminds me, ‘You shouldn't have been there.’

“I shouldn't have been there. I should have stayed by Mom's side instead of going on that trip with my classmates that night.”

I drag myself out of bed, the cold wooden floor biting at my bare feet. Six years. Six long years of carrying the suffocating weight of an unanswered death.

When your mother vanishes from your life overnight, leaving behind only a closed coffin and a set of vague police reports, the world splits open. Was it natural? Was it staged?

Living with those unanswered questions is a slow, agonizing poison. That was why I swore I would become the person who uncovers the truth for others. I wanted to pull grieving families out of the very storm that drowned me.

So, I became a homicide detective.

Or at least, that was the grand plan.

The reality? I haven't solved a single case. Not one.

In a world where every officer in the department operates on cold logic, careful calculations, and double-checked protocols, my brain simply runs on raw, unyielding instinct. The moment an unbidden gut feeling manifests in my chest, I act. No hesitation, no filter. And that single trait has carved a long, wildly embarrassing trail of disaster behind me.

Take my brief stint as an assistant at a high-end bakery. The chef had been acting nervous around a batch of almond tarts, and the instinct hit me like a lightning bolt.

"You're using untraceable bitter almond extract to poison the groom's family, aren't you?" I had shouted, slamming both palms onto the stainless-steel counter.

The chef stared at me, mid-whisk, completely bewildered. "What? It is a sugar-free order for the bride's diabetic uncle. Get out of my kitchen!"

Then there was my single afternoon as a library attendant. I spotted a man in a dark trench coat hovering by the rare history aisle, nervously checking his watch every ten seconds. My instincts screamed ‘art thief.’

Before he could take another step, I pinned his arm behind his back and shoved him against the mahogany bookshelf. "Drop the stolen manuscript!"

"I am looking for the gardening section!" he yelled back, his voice echoing across the silent reading room. "And I am the Deputy Chief of Police! Leave me, I'll sue you!"

Every single job ended in complete, spectacular ruin. People called me unhinged, but I wasn't absurd. I was just hyper-aware, hyper-fixated, and entirely incapable of ignoring the small details others brushed off.

And now, at the Blackwood Police Department, history is merrily repeating itself. As a Junior Detective sitting in the Cold Case unit, nobody trusts my instincts.

Every high-profile homicide that lands near my desk gets stripped away and handed over to someone who follows the manual instead of their gut. Someone “more qualified.”

By 8:00 AM, the hum of fluorescent lights, ringing desk phones, the sharp smell of burnt coffee, and the occasional crackle of police radios fill the precinct. I hurry into the central conference room, notebook clutched tightly against my chest, only to collide headfirst with the heavy silence of the morning briefing.

Aren't they all bored of looking at me with that same look plastered on their faces every day? Gosh, persistent people. You would think after six months in this department, their faces would get tired of holding that collective sneer, but no. It is practically a synchronized team sport at this point.

At the head of the long wooden table sits Detective Sergeant Marcus Hale, leaning back with a paper cup of stale coffee in hand. He does not even bother looking up from his file as the door clicks shut behind me.

"Ah, look who finally decided to grace us with her presence," Sergeant Hale drawls, his voice dripping with dry sarcasm. "Quiet down, everyone. Detective Vance is here. Lock up your personal documents and hide the sugar bowls. Perhaps she has brought her top-tier instincts to help us sweep this murder under the rug."

A few muffled sniggers echo across the room.

He tossed a thick, black folder across the polished table, letting it slide until it hit the edge of my notebook. "Don't get too excited, Maya. It is an old cold case from the edge of town that no one else wants to touch. Read it, file it, and try not to arrest any visiting dignitaries on your way out."

I swallow the sharp retort sitting on the tip of my tongue, grab the black folder, and march straight out of the conference room without giving them the satisfaction of a reaction.

Back at my desk, the chaos of the department turns into ambient noise.

I pull out my scrunchie from my jacket’s pocket, pulling my dark hair up into a tight, messy ponytail as I drop into my squeaky office chair. I flip open the heavy black folder.

On paper, it looks like a completely routine, tragic incident.

Victim: Victor Calloway, no relation, thankfully. A forty-two-year-old antiquities restorer.

Location: An old, stone-roofed property tucked away in the foggy, pine-dense outskirts of Blackwood, Oregon.

Official Cause of Death: Sudden cardiac arrest.

Time of Death: 2:00 AM.

According to the official report, Victor had been working late in his basement workshop when his heart simply gave out. In a quiet Pacific Northwest town wrapped in morning fog, where neighbors keep to themselves behind tall pine hedges, no one questioned it.

The family’s statement was straightforward. His younger sister, who lived in the main house, recorded that she heard a dull thud around midnight, but assumed he had knocked over a heavy wooden frame. When he didn't come up for breakfast the next morning, she found him lying face down on his worktable. No signs of forced entry. No signs of struggle. No external injuries.

The local coroner had ruled it a natural death, filed the report, and closed the case when the family refused an autopsy.

It is an open-and-shut case. Exactly as Sergeant Hale said.

Except... my eyes refuse to move past the crime scene photographs.

"It takes real courage for Hale to keep serving her cases," a mocking voice drawls from above my cubicle wall.

I look up to see Detective Ryan, one of the department's golden boys who hasn't used a single drop of raw instinct in his entire career, leaning against my desk with a condescending grin.

"Anyway, keep it up!" Ryan adds with a light chuckle, tapping his fingers against my open file before walking away. "It's not like you're actually going to solve it, Maya. But hey, there's no harm in keeping yourself entertained playing detective."

I don't even waste my breath replying to him anymore. I just stare at his receding back, tune out his laugh, and drag the file closer, zooming in on the high-resolution prints under my desk lamp.

Something is wrong here. Something isn't settling in my gut.

My gaze locks onto a flash photograph of Victor's worktable. The surface is covered in a thick, undisturbed layer of sawdust and wood varnish.

Yet, right next to his resting hand, there is a completely clean, circular patch on the wood.

As if… a heavy brass cup or jar had been sitting there moments before he died. But no such object is listed in the evidence inventory.

Then, I noticed his hands. Victor's fingers are tightly clutched around a tiny, shattered fragment of antique black glass. The coroner noted it as "accidental debris from his workshop," but the edges of the glass are stained with a dark, dried residue that doesn't match wood stain or polish.

And finally, the detail that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

In the sister's official transcript, she claimed she heard the thud around midnight and stayed in her room until morning. But in the background of the crime scene photo, the vintage pendulum clock on the basement wall is visible behind Victor's body. Its glass face is cracked right down the middle, and the metal hands are frozen dead.

They aren't stopped at midnight. They stopped at 2:00 AM. Exactly.

The report says natural heart failure, but every instinct in my body is screaming that Victor didn't just die of a heart attack. He was terrified by something. And whoever left that clear circle on his desk walked out of that locked property into the Oregon rain without leaving a single footprint on the driveway.

I snap the folder shut. Outside the window, gray clouds hang low over the pine trees as a fresh rain begins to fall.

I need to drive out to that estate and see that basement workshop with my own eyes.

I pull up to the Calloway estate, my wipers slapping uselessly against the heavy Oregon downpour. Going there unannounced will benefit me I believe.

The house stands isolated among towering, dark pines, its stone-roofed silhouette swallowed by cold grey mist. Yellow police tape sags over the front porch, dripping wet.

Stepping around a murky rainwater puddle on the gravel driveway, I head straight for the side door, the one mentioned in the house investigation report, the one that leads down to the basement workshop.

The air inside is freezing and smells of damp cedar, varnish, and old stone. For such a spacious property, it's awfully quiet here. The front door was left ajar when I arrived. No tape across the frame, no officer stationed outside. No one keeping an eye on who walks in and roams around this place?

The case report clearly stated that Victor lived with his sister in this house, but the main floor was completely deserted.

I was in the middle of scrutinizing the hallway, taking in the dusty floorboards and the oppressive stillness, but as I reached the bottom of the wooden stairs leading to the basement, I froze.

Standing near the worktable is a woman in a dark trench coat, placing velvet-lined boxes into a wooden crate.

Clara Calloway.

She turns at the sound of my footsteps, her face relaxing into a soft, sorrowful expression. She clearly didn't expect anyone to come down here today. Just as I intended when I drove out here without calling first.

"Oh, hello," she says softly, placing a delicate porcelain tea set onto the counter. "I didn't realize anyone was coming by."

Her gaze drifts downward, landing straight on the Blackwood Police Detective ID card hanging from my neck. Yes, “Junior” Detective, to be precise.

I watch her eyes widen for a fraction of a second before her composure snaps right back into place. I continue walking down the last few stair steps anyway.

"Detective," Clara says, her tone instantly shifting to warm, gentle hospitality. She steps away from the boxes, offering me a polite, weary smile. "Please, what are you doing down in this cold, dusty basement? It's freezing out today. Why don't we go upstairs to the living room? I can make us something warm to sip on while you tell me what this is about."

"No, thank you," I say straight away, walking past her without missing a beat. "I don't drink hot beverages from open crime scenes. And you shouldn't be down here either. It's still an active scene until the file is officially processed."

Clara blinks, caught off guard by my blunt refusal. "I... I meant fresh tea from the kitchen, Detective. The police closed Victor's case last week. Natural causes. I only came down here to start clearing out his personal things."

"Right, natural causes," I mutter, leaning over the heavy worktable.

A normal detective would conduct a smooth, structured interview. Instead, my brain leaps into its usual unfiltered, erratic rhythm. I begin circling the table, running my finger along the dusty wood, letting every unbidden thought tumble right out of my mouth.

"You know, Ms. Calloway, cardiac arrest is such an accommodating diagnosis," I say casually, not looking at her. "It just means the heart stopped beating. Doesn't really specify ‘why’ it stopped, does it?"

Clara’s hands pause over a velvet box. "The coroner was very thorough–"

"Oh, I'm sure he was. Very busy man, the coroner," I interrupt smoothly, tilting my head at the ceiling. "So, in the official transcript, you stated that you heard a heavy thud at midnight, but assumed Victor dropped a frame and went back to sleep. Yet the patrol officer noted that you knew exactly what time he usually stopped working."

I stop circling and look straight at her. "If you were sound asleep on the second floor until morning, how did you know he didn't leave this basement at one in the morning?"

Clara’s warm smile falters, her shoulder posture stiffening. "I... I simply assumed he stayed down here, Detective. He always worked late. You're picking at the air."

"Maybe," I say, taking a few steps closer to the wall. "I'm notoriously bad at following normal conversational logic. But what really bugs me is the clothing. You told the first responding officer that Victor was wearing his favorite blue flannel shirt when he died. Yet the crime scene photos clearly show him in a black sweater. How do you misremember what your brother was wearing when you were supposedly the one who found his body?"

Clara’s breath catches, her knuckles turning white against the fabric of her trench coat. "I made a mistake! I was in shock! My brother died, and you're standing here picking apart my grief over minor details?"

"I just find the sequence fascinating," I continue, my voice dropping into a light, conversational hum that I know is maddeningly irritating. I lean back against the central support beam, crossing my arms.

"Hypothetically speaking, of course. Say someone came down here at 2:00 AM. Someone Victor trusted completely… so much so that he didn't even look up from his work. Say this person slipped something into his glass. Or maybe held an antique artifact in front of him that he knew contained something lethal. He gasps, clutches the glass, shatters it in terror, and drops dead. Then, our hypothetical guest wipes the counter, cleans up the mess, changes his shirt because maybe some residue spilled on it..."

I pause, letting the silence stretch between us until the only sound in the room is the steady drip of Oregon rain outside.

"...and then goes upstairs to sleep like a baby until morning."

Every drop of color drains from Clara’s face. Her polite facade doesn't just crack, it completely shatters. Her chest rises and falls in sharp, jagged breaths as her composure snaps under the rising weight of my rambling accusations.

"You walk into my home unannounced!" Clara screams, her voice echoing violently against the stone walls, shaking with sheer, unbridled rage. "You barge into my dead brother's workshop, ignoring the police report, ignoring common decency, and you stand there insinuating that I killed him? That I murdered my own family?"

The grief is entirely gone, replaced by a dark, terrifying fury. She takes a sudden, aggressive step toward me, her eyes wild, towering over the space between us.

Losing my footing in a sudden wave of panic, I scramble backward to put distance between myself and a woman who suddenly looks capable of snapping my neck. My heel catches on an uneven floorboard, sending me flailing out of control. As I fall, my hand wildly reaches out to grab anything to stop my descent.

My fingers catch a decorative iron sconce mounted on the wooden pillar.

CLICK.

A sharp, heavy metallic mechanism echoes through the quiet basement. As I hit the floor on my hip, a hidden panel in the oak wall paneling pops open with a thud, dropping a heavy, velvet-wrapped object straight onto the stone.

The velvet unrolls as it strikes the ground.

An ornate brass urn rolls out, coming to a stop right at my boots. Sticking out of its open neck are several crisp, official-looking documents: Victor's to be signed sole-ownership deed to the entire Calloway estate, along with his updated life insurance policy naming a local charity as his sole beneficiary, completely cutting Clara out.

The silence in the basement becomes suffocating.

I look down at the brass urn. The bottom rim is smeared with the exact dark, dried residue found on the black glass fragment in Victor's dead hand.

I stare at the hidden vault. Then at the urn. Then at Clara.

I caught her lies because my brain refuses to filter strange details, and I found the murder weapon because I panicked, lost my balance, and grabbed a hidden wall latch while trying to escape her rage.

Clara stares at the exposed deed, all the color draining from her face as she realizes her carefully staged "natural death" has just collapsed in front of the department's biggest disaster.

Slowly, I push myself up from the floor and reach for the handcuffs at my belt, my voice sounding far more composed than I actually feel.

"Clara Calloway," I say, pulling the cuffs free, "you're under arrest for the murder of Victor Calloway.”

Clara’s confession in the interrogation room was cold, bitter, and entirely unrepentant.

She sat under the harsh halogen lights, her hands cuffed, and admitted to every detail. It wasn't just about the money, though the millions tied to the Calloway estate were a massive part of it.

It was the sheer, suffocating resentment.

Her ex-husband had remarried years ago, walking away without ever looking back, leaving her utterly abandoned. Victor had been the only family she had left, the brother who took her in, only to ignore her existence while burying himself in his basement antiques.

And then came the final blow: Victor was planning to donate the entire estate to a charitable trust, signing over every acre, every relic, and every dollar, cutting her out completely. In her mind, she had already been abandoned by everyone else; she wasn't about to let her own brother strip away the last bit of security she had left.

So, she used the toxic mineral residue on the antique brass urn, poisoned his evening drink, and staged the scene for natural heart failure.

Back in the precinct, the usual chaotic hum of typing and phone calls had ground to a sudden, tense standstill.

I sat at my cluttered desk, opening the front camera on my phone to tilt my head and inspect the damage. Right on the center of my forehead sat a tender, angry red knot, complete with a tiny jagged scratch. That heavy brass urn hadn't just unrolled its documents when it fell from the wall, it had bounced off my skull first.

As I adjusted my bangs to try and hide the swelling, I felt the heavy weight of dozens of eyes on me.

I looked up. Across the room, the senior detectives, the exact same ones who openly mocked me on a daily basis, who treated my very presence in this department as a running joke… were staring at me in utter, speechless disbelief.

Their faces were completely drained of color. The girl they considered completely useless, the "walking disaster" who couldn't even organize a filing cabinet properly, had walked into a dead-end case once and emerged two hours later with a signed murder confession.

Their minds were clearly short-circuiting trying to understand it.

Instead of acting modest, like any other junior would have, I held their pale, frozen stares, raised my eyebrows playfully, and flashed them a bright, blindingly sweet smile. I even gave them a little two-finger salute.

Before anyone could recover their speech, the glass door to the corner office swung open.

"Vance. My office. Now," Sergeant Marcus called out, his voice a mix of deep disbelief and sheer exhaustion.

I pocketed my phone and pushed myself up, smoothing down my jacket with an extra bounce in my step as I walked into the Sergeant's office. Marcus was leaning back in his leather chair, rubbing the bridge of his nose. On his desk lay Clara Calloway’s signed confession alongside my chaotic, single-page field report.

He stared at the papers, then looked up at me as if trying to solve an impossible mathematical equation.

"Sit down, Vance," Marcus muttered.

I sat, keeping my spine straight. Marcus leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk. "I just got off the phone with the DA. Clara Calloway signed a full confession. The Calloway case, a case the coroner closed, a case this entire department wrote off as natural causes… is solved."

He paused, searching my face. "No one in this department thought you had the potential to pull this off. You’ve never solved a single case, Maya. You’ve been here for months causing paperwork headaches. And now you walk into the victim’s house ‘once’ and walk out with a murderer in cuffs?"

He squinted at me. "Tell me what actually happened when you got to that house."

"Well, Sergeant," I began, gesturing animatedly, "I conducted a preliminary sweep of the lower level, engaged the prime suspect in a psychological cross-examination, and located the hidden evidence."

Marcus’s eyes narrowed. "Maya. The truth. How did you find a hidden wall vault that our forensic team missed on the first sweep?"

I winced slightly, touching the tender bump on my forehead.

"Well... off the record?" I offered a sheepish grin. "I was asking Ms. Calloway a few hypothetical questions about the crime scene. She got a little... defensive. Very loud, very terrifying. She took a step toward me, and honestly, Sir, she looked like she wanted to snap my neck."

Marcus stared at me, unblinking. "Go on."

"Naturally, I panicked," I explained, waving my hands. "I tried to back away, caught my heel on a loose floorboard, lost my balance completely, and flailed wildly to save myself. My hand caught an iron sconce on the pillar, which turned out to be a mechanical release latch."

I pointed dramatically to the swollen knot between my eyebrows.

"The wall popped open, and the brass murder urn fell out, straight onto my head. I know, Sir... I had only heard until now that this profession demands so much to be sacrificed by us. But today, I’ve experienced it myself. Now I'll have to sacrifice this only bump-free space on my forehead with a fresh scar I received in the line of duty."

Marcus sat in dead silence for five whole seconds. He closed his eyes, took a deep, shuddering breath, and pinched the bridge of his nose again.

"So..." Marcus said, his voice dangerously quiet as he opened his eyes. "You are telling me you solved a high-profile homicide... entirely by accident?"

"We could say that, Sir," I replied, tilting my chin up defensively. "But what matters now is that the victim will be served justice."

"So you're telling me," Marcus continued, rising from his chair, his hands slamming onto the desk, "that you walked in there having no idea or clear plan of what you were going to look for? Which means if it wasn't for your stupid questions ragebaiting that woman into a furious reaction... you, me, or anyone... No one! would have ever found out what actually happened in this case?!"

"I prefer to call it an intuitive, high-stress interrogation technique–"

"You fell over your own feet and got hit in the face with the murder weapon!" Marcus shouted, throwing his hands up.

He slumped back into his chair, looking utterly defeated. He stared at Clara's signed confession, then at me, shaking his head.

"Unbelievable," he muttered under his breath. "Sheer, dumb luck."

He picked up a red stamp, slammed it onto my file, officially marking the case ‘CLOSED’ and shoved it into his desk drawer.

"Get out of my office, Vance. Go put some ice on your head."

"Thank you, Sergeant! Always a pleasure," I said brightly, standing up.

I opened the glass door and stepped back out into the hallway, half-expecting that maybe, just maybe, the stunned silence would hold.

Instead, the spell broke instantly, and the bitter spite rushed right back in like a flood.

"Look at her, walking out like she's Sherlock Holmes," Detective Ryan snorted from across the room, leaning back in his chair with a mocking smirk. "Hey Vance, did the suspect confess out of guilt, or did she just feel sorry for you after watching you knock yourself out with a piece of furniture?"

A wave of cruel laughter rippled across the desks.

"I heard the murder weapon had to literally jump off the wall and hit her in the face just so she’d notice it," another officer chimed in, tossing a crumpled paper ball onto my desk. "Must be nice! Some of us actually have to use our brains to solve cases, but Vance just stumbles around until the evidence attacks her."

"Don't worry, Miller," a third detective snickered. "Next week Marcus will assign her to find a missing dog, and she'll probably trip over a buried treasure chest."

The brief shock was gone. To them, I hadn't proven anything. I was still the department's walking disaster who had simply stumbled into a freak accident of good fortune.

I ignored their smirks, pulled a small packet of chocolate from the breakroom mini-fridge, and sat down at my desk, pressing the ice against my bruised forehead.

I pulled the heavy cold-case file boxes toward me with a quiet sigh. They could talk all the trash they wanted. A closed case was a closed case, and the truth belonged to me.

Anyway... evening has fallen. Now I just want to go home and spend a peaceful evening.

I opened the door. Everything in front of my eyes was just as I had left it. I don’t know why, but sometimes this silence, this emptiness feels like it's mocking me. Still, I just comfort myself by thinking that after I leave, these ceilings, these walls, and these windows all hold their breath, waiting for me to return so they can start beating along with me again.

I shut the door and locked it with my keys. Looking at the clouds, it feels like it's going to rain again. And the last thing I need is some stray animal finding an open door and inviting itself in for tea.

Honestly, I don't know why I bought these new shoes just based on how they looked. They are completely uncomfortable for my toes. I need to take them off first thing.

The moment I slipped off my shoes, a wave of relief washed over my feet. A strange tingling sensation was racing through my toes, but if I stood barefoot for a little while, it would start fading on its own.

I put my shoes back in their place. I walked into the washroom, washed my hands and face, and slowly made my way back into the living room.

When I lifted my head and looked, she was right there in front of my eyes. Mom. A natural smile appeared on my lips. I know my smile carries more exhaustion today. You deserve a better one for your greetings though…

I opened a drawer on the shelf. The cleaning cloth was right there. I had intentionally placed a small chair right beneath the photograph. It makes things easier for me.

Standing on it, I started gently wiping Mom’s photograph. Mom loved this particular picture of hers. It was the only one she actually liked. She used to stealthily delete most of the photos she clicked of herself, but she let this one stay…

I let the cleaning cloth slip through my fingers and drop onto the chair below. I let my fingertips linger on Mom’s face, and I kissed her cheek.

“You’ll be happy, won’t you, Mom? Today, I solved my first case,”

“I know you don't doubt my abilities. I... don't care that much if the people at the office still consider me useless. Well, I mean, it hurts a little bit, but their narrow mindset is their own burden to carry.”

There was an odd sense of peace today; looking at Mom’s photo made me feel somewhat comforted.

“You used to say that even after death, you would always stay by my side... I... I know you are here. Please stay.”

After that, I cooked dinner.

Today, I ate it right in front of Mom’s photo. And after washing the dishes, the moment I lay down in bed, sleep was right there, ready to pull me into its embrace.

Finally, I thought, pulling the blankets up to my chin. A quiet night.

Then, the clock on my bedside table clicked over.

My eyes snapped wide open.

An intense, sudden wave of absolute cold swept through the room. The cozy warmth of my apartment evaporated instantly, replaced by the suffocating smell of damp earth, old iron, and ancient, stagnant dust.

Closing my eyes again, I kept waiting for sleep to come back. But the coldness was too much, the duvet provided no warmth at all.

Did I leave the AC on by any chance? I must have. I don't remember turning it off either.

I pulled myself up, shifted my weight onto my right palm resting against the mattress, and craned my neck upwards, one eye adamantly squeezed shut.

But to my absolute surprise, the AC was off. Clutching the blanket to my chest, I scanned the dark corners of my bedroom. The window is shut. So is the door. Then where is all this cold coming from?

I groaned in defeat. I just want to sleep. I fell back, letting my head hit the pillow, trying to tuck the ends of the duvet tightly under my body so no air could pass and make me shiver.

And then, cutting through the silence of the room, my phone rang.

Shit. Why can't I get some peaceful sleep? Who the heck wants to chit-chat with me in the middle of the night now?

I picked up the phone and put it to my ear.

“Who is it?”

“Found you.”

A voice echoed. Not in my ears, but straight inside my mind. Deep, raspy, and thrumming with a terrible, awakening hunger.

My breath caught in my throat. My heart slammed against my ribs. I bolted upright.

The phone wasn't next to my ear anymore. The room was drowned in absolute darkness. My breathing turned ragged. My skin prickled with a primal, suffocating terror.

My phone was still sitting right there on the nightstand where I had left it before sleeping.

A dream?

My phone was still sitting right there on the nightstand where I had left it before sleeping.

I let out a shaky, relieved breath, sinking back down against my pillow, trying to calm the frantic hammering of my heart. It was just a nightmare, born from the exhaustion of the case and the bump on my head. Nothing more.

I closed my eyes, waiting for my pulse to slow down, ready to catch up with my breath.

Then, the red digits on my bedside clock clicked over. Once again.

2:00 AM.

Before I could even process the time, a sharp, icy breath bit against the sensitive outline of my ear.

"You shouldn't have been there."

I felt my throat tightening. I usually heard this whisper in my dreams only... but today... it felt as if it came from someone sitting right next to me. On the very edge of this bed.

Slowly, terrifyingly, the mattress beside me dipped under an invisible weight.

I froze, staring straight ahead into the pitch-black room.

No one was present in the room except for me.