57

57
I shuddered and dragged the blanket around my shoulders. My body was shaking not just from cold but from fear. Fear has it own temperature and it burning through me now.

The silence pressed heavier until the house itself felt like it was listening. My mind kept replaying the image of the figure beneath the street lamp and the words in the dark.

I didn’t know if I’d slept at all before dawn began to pale the sky but when the first light bled through the window, the shoes were still there, damp and reeking of the sea.

And that was worse than any dream.

When I stood up and walk to the kitchen, I saw Damien and told him everything.

The studio, the music box, the lullaby and the whisper in the dark that still clung to my bones like damp air. I told him about waking in my bed with my shoes wet with sea salt, how I’d seen Nolan watching from the streetlamp’s glow, silent and patient as if the night itself had shaped him.

Damien listened in silence leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms folded tight across his chest. His jaw worked the way it did when he is trying not to say something cruel.

When I finally ran out of words, the kitchen clock ticked, loud and obscene.

He shook his head. “Camille.”

“You think I made this up?” I demanded.

“I think you’ve been through hell.” His eyes flickered to mine, then away. “And when you’re exhausted, when you’re scared, the mind will fill in the blanks. It always has.”

My laugh was hollow. “So sea salt just walked into my bedroom on its own?”

He didn’t answer. The quiet between us becomes thick.

I searched his face desperate for the man who had pulled me out of worse than this, bled with me, fought with me and survived with me but the man in front of me looked… muted. Like some part of him had gone dim without either of us noticing.

Then it hit me, the way he’d forgotten a lot of things. The way he has asked me the same question twice while his brow furrowed like he’d lost a thread.

I stepped forward with low voice. “They’ve done it to you too, haven’t they?”

His brow creased. “What?”

“You don’t even see it,” I whispered. “You forget things, you lose time. Maybe they drugged you when they abducted me. Maybe you don’t even know.”

“Camille....” He tried to speak but I cut in.

“Don’t you feel it? That something isn’t right inside you?” I asked desperately.

He pressed his palm over his face dragging it down slowly. “You’re scaring me.”

“Good,” I snapped. “Because I’m terrified.”

The words hung sharp between us. He shook his head again, slower this time as if talking to someone fragile.

“I think you need rest,” he said quietly. “And I think I need to stop feeding into this.”

“This?” My voice cracked.

“This cycle,” he said. “The more you believe he’s everywhere, the more real it feels. Nolan is alive, yes, I even testify to it but what you’re describing...” He pause then continue. “you’re slipping Camille.”

The sting landed harder than I expected. I wanted to scream at him, tell him he's blind, that Nolan’s shadow wasn’t some figment of my unraveling mind but no sound came out. Just silence.

I left before he could say another word.

~

After what happened, I decided to visit the cemetery.

The cemetery lay on the edge of Seabridge Bay tucked behind the old church where ivy crawled like veins up the bell tower. I haven’t been there for some months now, I always meant to go but the thought of seeing Ivy’s name etched into cold stone hollowed me out before I even tried.

But now… after the whisper in the dark, after the taste of salt and the echo of drowning in my ears… I needed her even if it's only stone and dirt of her grave.

The wind was raw when I pushed through the iron gate. The grass was brittle underfoot crunching as I moved past the rows of tilting headstones. The trees overhead rattled, skeletal fingers against the gray sky.

I found her spot by muscle memory, each turn of the path etched into me from those early months after her death when I couldn’t stay away.

But when I reached it, I froze.

The flowers I’d left long ago had rotted down to nothing. The headstone, pale and weathered, bore her name still...

Ivy Hayes.
Beloved Sister.
Always Dancing.

But the ground… the ground wasn't right.

It was torn and gouged, the grass was ripped away in jagged patches. The soil lay uneven piled like a wound poorly stitched.

My knees gave out. I stumbled forward pressing palms against the disturbed dirt. My breath came ragged and shallow.

“No,” I whispered.

The grave had been dug up.

My hand shook as I clawed at the earth, as if I could prove myself wrong, as if I’d find the coffin resting where it should be but the ground gave way under my fingers.

Gone.

The coffin is gone.

The whisper surged back, you should’ve drowned too.

I reeled back with dirt under my nails and bile in my throat.

Someone had unearthed and taken her.

The image flashed across my mind before I could stop it as Nolan pulling the coffin open and lifting Ivy’s body out like a prize. The mask, the music box and the lullaby.

Was it her he’d been circling all along? Was I just the shadow he needed to reach her?

The world tilted. I grabbed the headstone for balance while my grip whitening on the cold stone. The silence of the cemetery was unbearable now.

My gaze swept the tree line, the church and the crooked path. I expected to see him standing there waiting but there was nothing. Just the open wound of Ivy’s grave and the gash in the earth.

I pressed my forehead against the stone, dirt smearing across my skin. My chest heaved.

“Why Nolan?” My voice cracked in the wind. “Why can’t you let her rest?”

There was no answer. Only the rustle of branches, the slow groan of the iron gate as it swayed against its hinge.