Chapter 10 The second dream
It started with her sister’s laughter.
Soft, familiar, echoing down a hallway that looked like the photography wing at Halden University. It looked darker, narrower, and its walls painted with shifting light. Serena’s laughter had always been bright, now it sounded hollow, like it was coming from underwater.
“Serena?”
Lila’s voice broke. She followed the sound.
Her sister stood at the far end of the corridor, her red hair catching the dim light in shimmers. The same gray cardigan. The same scar on her wrist from that one summer when they were kids and Serena had tried to carve their initials into the oak tree.
Only now, her eyes looked wrong.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” Serena whispered.
The air smelled of roses, it was sweet and sharp.
Lila’s throat closed. “You said he was sorry. You said he loved you. You said…”
Serena shook her head. “He teaches what you love.”
“What does that mean?”
But her sister only smiled, slowly and she looked sad. “You’ll see.”
The light flickered once.
When it came back, Serena was gone.
Lila woke up gasping, tangled in her sheets, drenched in cold sweat. Her room was washed in moonlight spilling through the curtains.
For a moment, she couldn’t move. She half-expected to still hear her sister breathing beside her.
The camera Mercer had given her sat on the desk across the room, lens still pointed toward the bed. She got up and turned it around, heart thudding.
“He teaches what you love,” she muttered.
It could only mean Beckett. He taught philosophy, what she loved most. And he’d been Serena’s professor once too.
That look he gave her in class. The way he said Serena’s name. He was hiding something.
The room creaked softly. The old dormitory wood groaned with every breath of the night wind.
Then came another sound.
A light tap on her door handle.
Lila froze, pulse thrumming in her ears.
“Hello?” she whispered.
No answer.
The handle moved again. This time slowly.
She grabbed the small desk lamp, clutching it like a weapon. “Who’s there?”
No response.
Then the door creaked open,an inch, it two and a figure filled the gap. A tall shape, motionless, its face lost in the shadows of the hall.
Her breath caught. “Asher?”
Still no reply.
The silhouette lingered. She could hear breathing. A man’s breathing.
Then, quietly, the door began to close again. The shadow moved away.
Her whole body shook. She rushed to the door, pulled it open and found no one. Just the empty hall stretching both ways.
A paper fluttered at her feet.
A note, taped to the outside of her door. Panic flared in her eyes as she picked up the paper, her eyes darted around the hall again, but there was no single soul outside.
Typed words, centered neatly on white paper:
“Stop asking questions and think about yourself.”
She stumbled back, losing her footing for a brief moment. Lila looked inside the room, then outside. She was scared to go inside and too scared to stay outside the room.
She held the paper and walked towards her bed. Her hands shaking visibly, she sat down on the bed and refused to lie down.
The next morning, the sky was sharp and bright, but the tension on campus hung thick.
Clusters of students whispered near the art building. Someone cried near the fountain.
Asher found Lila on the steps outside the philosophy wing, clutching a coffee she hadn’t touched.
“You heard?” he said quietly.
She didn’t answer.
He sank down beside her. “They found a girl behind the art studio. Elise Grant. She was in photography.”
“I know who she was,” Lila cut in. “She used to sit next to me in Mercer’s lab.”
“She dyed her hair last week. Brown. But they said..” He stopped, lowering his voice. “They said she still had a rose in her hand.”
Lila stared ahead, unblinking.
He tried to lighten his tone. “Campus police talked to everyone in the department. They even questioned Beckett.”
Her eyes flicked toward him. “What?”
“Yeah. Two officers came in this morning. And they took him for questioning.”
Lila stood abruptly, nearly spilling her coffee. “Where?”
“Relax, Lila. They just want to ask about Serena, I think. Or his classes. He’ll probably.”
She was already walking toward the quad.
Beckett was there, flanked by officers, his expression unreadable. His gray suit jacket was rumpled, tie loosened. His eyes flat, and cold met hers across the courtyard for one unbearable second.
Then he looked away.
Students around them murmured.
“Do you think he?”
“Serena’s sister’s in his class now.”
“That’s creepy.”
By evening, Beckett was released. No charges. No comment. He returned to his lecture as though nothing had happened.
But Lila couldn’t shake the image of his face when he saw her, he looked tired, yes, but something else beneath it. Almost like guilt.
When she returned to her dorm that night after a long day, the room smelled faintly of chocolate.
On her desk sat a white box tied with a red ribbon.
There was no note.
Her first thought was Asher, but he never did things like that. Roy, maybe. He’d told her that morning, “Serena used to talk about you all the time. You remind me of her same fire in your eyes.”
Maybe this was his way of saying stay strong.
She smiled faintly, grateful for something normal. She sat on the bed, tugging the ribbon loose.
Inside the box, a dozen chocolates shimmered under the soft yellow desk lamp.
They looked perfect.
She picked one up, turning it between her fingers. “Roy,” she murmured to herself, half-laughing. “You didn’t have to.”
She bit into it.
It was sweet and soothing. And then, her teeth hit something hard.
She spat the chocolate into her palm. And found something small, hard, and glinting beneath the melted center.
A hairpin.
A thin red enamel hairpin, scratched at the edges, its paint chipped exactly where Serena’s had been.
Her pulse crashed in her ears.
That hairpin had been buried with her sister.
She dropped the chocolate box. It hit the floor, scattering pieces across the rug like spilled marbles. The smell of cocoa turned cloying, and nauseating.
Her phone buzzed.
A text from another unknown number.
“Do you like the gift? You’re next, Red.”
Her stomach clenched.
She turned toward the door. It was closed but now she wasn’t sure if she’d locked it.
Then, there was a soft knock on her door.
She froze.
“Lila?”
It was Roy’s voice.
She didn’t move.
“Lila, it’s me,” he said gently. “You alright? You sounded upset on the phone.”
Her eyes widened. She hadn’t called anyone. Her phone was still in her hand. The screen dark. No outgoing calls.
She stayed silent.
“Lila?”
His tone changed, it was lower, and cautious. “Open the door.”
She didn’t move an inch close to the door.
The silence stretched.
Then, she heard footsteps again, as if someone was leaving and then it faded. The creak of the stairwell door closing.
Her breath came out in sharp bursts. She locked the door, then backed away until her knees hit the bed.
She stared at her phone screen for what felt like forever, until it lit up again.
A new message.
This time,it was a picture of her dorm door.
Taken seconds ago.
The timestamp read: 11:41 p.m.
The photo was grainy but clear enough to make out the outline of the door, the dim hallway light and her own shadow on the inside of the frame.
Only there was another shadow behind hers.
Lila’s breathing grew shallow. Her fingers trembled as she zoomed in on the image, the pixels bleeding together.
The shadow stood just behind hers so close it could have touched her hair.
The caption beneath the photo read. “Sweet dreams, Red.”
She dropped the phone.
The chocolate box lay scattered across the floor, dark stains spreading where the melted centers bled into the carpet. The smell of roses filled the room again, stronger this time
, like someone had crushed petals into the air.
She looked at her window and noticed a crack. She swore she’d closed it earlier.
The curtain fluttered once, twice.
Then something small drifted down onto the bedspread.