The letter came in a plain white envelope.
No return address. No stamp.
Just five words, scratched in black ink on the front:
"We need to talk. Ezra."
Mara stared at it like it might burn.
She hadn't heard from Ezra Kwame in nearly five years.
Not since that night.
She tossed it aside the first time she saw it.
Second time, she read it.
Third time, she almost lit it on fire.
And the fourth time — well, here she was now, standing outside a fading brick house on the edge of town, arms crossed, heartbeat in her ears.
She almost turned back.
Then the door creaked open.
Ezra stood there in a black t-shirt and greyscale joggers.
Same sharp jaw, same eyes that always saw too much.
But he looked... tired. Hollow. Like he hadn't really slept since 2019.
Mara forced a smirk. "Took you long enough to crack, golden boy."
Ezra didn't smile. He just stepped aside and held the door open.
"Come in. The others are here."
The others.
God.
She stepped inside.
The air smelled like old wood and peppermint oil — like someone had tried to mask something uglier underneath.
The living room was dim, and the couch sagged like it remembered too much.
Niko was sitting cross-legged on the floor by the window, flipping through a sketchpad. He didn't look up when she entered. His hair had grown out. Still wore rings on every finger. Still soft.
Lena was leaned against the wall, arms folded, eyes cold. She gave Mara a silent nod. Just enough to acknowledge her. Just enough to say "I'm watching you."
And Jace…
Jace sat in the far corner. Hoodie pulled over his head, headphones on.
He hadn't changed at all.
And that was the problem.
Ezra cleared his throat. "Thank you all for coming."
"Spare us the reunion speech," Mara said, dropping onto the couch. "Why are we really here, Ezra? You finally ready to confess, or just feeling nostalgic?"
Ezra didn't flinch. "Because I've been seeing him."
Silence. Real silence — the kind that hangs.
Even Jace looked up for a second.
Ezra continued. "At first, I thought it was stress. But it's him. I know it is. He's older, but… it's him. I saw him at the old train station. Then outside my building. Watching me."
"Who?" Lena asked, voice sharp.
But they all knew.
They didn't say his name anymore.
Ezra stepped forward. "I think it's time we go back."
That hit like a gut punch.
"No," Niko said quietly, his voice the first sound he'd made in the room. "We said we wouldn't."
"We promised," Jace added, suddenly standing, jaw tight. "You swore, Ezra."
Ezra didn't move. "Something's wrong. I feel like we missed something. That night... I think we forgot more than just the trauma."
"You're insane," Mara said. "You think we can just walk back into that room? Pretend it was a bad sleepover and not—"
"I didn't say go in," Ezra cut in. "I said we go back. To remember."
Lena finally spoke. "Why now?"
Ezra looked at each of them. His voice dropped.
"Because someone left this on my windshield last week."
He pulled something from his back pocket.
A photo. Torn. Water-damaged.
It showed the five of them — years younger, drunk, smiling outside the house.
But there was a sixth shadow in the frame.
Standing behind them.
No face. Just the shape of a person. Watching.
Nobody spoke.
Jace tilted his head, staring at the photo like it was a trick.
"That's… not real. It's edited. Filtered or—"
"No," Ezra said quietly. "It's not."
"I don't remember that photo," Mara said. "I don't remember taking it."
"That's the thing," Ezra replied, walking to the center of the room. "There are gaps. In all of us. Places our minds don't touch. I've tried to remember that night a hundred times. The moments before he ran in. The seconds after the screaming stopped. But it's like…"
He looked up.
"It's like something's missing. Like we left something behind and no one wants to admit it."
"No," Niko said quietly, eyes on the floor. "We left someone behind. Not something. And we all know who."
Ezra turned to him. "But what if it wasn't just him?"
"Stop." Niko's voice cracked. "Don't say his name."
Ezra didn't.
Because deep down, he didn't want to hear it either.
Lena pushed off the wall. "Alright. I'm gonna ask the obvious: what are we actually doing here?"
Ezra ran a hand through his hair. "I brought you here to remember. Together. If there's something we buried, it's time we unearth it. Before whatever's been following me starts following you."
"Oh, that's reassuring," Mara muttered. "Should we make tea too?"
"I'm serious."
"So am I," she snapped. "You dragged us here to face some blurry ghost memory based on a shadow in a photo? I'm sorry you're spiraling, Ezra, but maybe deal with that in therapy like the rest of us."
Ezra looked at her hard. "Are you saying you don't see it?"
"See what?"
"The cracks."
That shut her up.
Because she had.
Not just in her mirror.
But in the faces of strangers on the bus.
In the flicker of lights at 3 a.m.
In the way her phone sometimes buzzed — with no message, no call, just… static.
She told herself it was stress.
They all did.
But something had been crawling under the surface for years now, and they were all just pretending not to feel it.
Ezra dropped the photo on the table.
"I'm not asking you to believe me. I'm asking you to remember. Go home. Look through your stuff. Diaries, phones, photos — anything. Just... see if anything's changed. Or disappeared."
"And if we find something?" Lena asked, voice flat.
"Then we figure out what we forgot."
The clock on the wall ticked louder than it should've.
Ezra handed out little envelopes before they left.
Each one had their name on it.
Each one held something different inside.
Mara's held a screenshot of an old group chat.
The last message was sent the night of the incident.
It simply said: "He's not answering. Should we go in?"
But Mara didn't remember sending it.
Niko's had a torn piece of canvas. From a painting he didn't recall making.
It was red. Not paint. Too much red.
Lena's was empty.
At first.
Until she tilted it and saw a tiny scrap of paper stuck to the inside:
"YOU SAW HIM TOO."
All caps. No sender.
Jace's envelope held a USB stick.
He didn't say a word. Just stared at it like it burned.
When they left the house, no one said goodbye.
Mara stood outside by her car a moment too long.
Ezra stepped out beside her. "You're still mad at me."
"No," she said. "I'm mad at myself for coming."
A long pause.
"I missed you, you know," he said.
Mara didn't look at him. "Don't."
He nodded slowly, jaw tight. "Right."
And then she asked, "When did you start seeing him?"
Ezra didn't answer at first.
Then quietly:
"The same day I started dreaming of the room again.
Except… it's not how I remember it."
She looked at him now. Really looked.
"What's different?"
Ezra's voice was just a whisper.
"There's another door. And this time… it's open."
Ezra didn't sleep that night.
The others had all gone.
And the house felt wrong again.
Not haunted.
Just... watching.
He sat in the dark living room with nothing but the tick of the wall clock and the low hum of the fridge in the next room. Outside, the streetlights flickered like they were nervous.
He clutched the photo. The one with the sixth shadow.
The one that had started this all over again.
Because here's the truth:
Ezra had seen the shadow before.
Not just in the photo.
He'd seen it months ago.
In the reflection of a bus window while driving past that house.
It hadn't moved. It hadn't blinked. It had just… been.
He told himself he was hallucinating.
He'd gone to therapy, tried meds, tried ignoring it.
But it never stopped.
The shadow was always there.
Just a few feet away.
Always at the edge of something: mirrors, dreams, photos.
And worst of all — it wasn't faceless anymore.
It was starting to look familiar.
He picked up the USB stick Jace had left behind.
His had been empty, but Ezra had copied the contents before handing it over.
He plugged it into his laptop and opened the only file:
"DO_YOU_REMEMBER.mov"
A grainy video began to play.
It was from a handheld camcorder.
Shaky, poorly lit, the kind of thing that looked like it belonged on a conspiracy channel.
Ezra clicked forward until...
Voices.
Their voices.
Younger.
Laughing, shouting, clinking bottles.
The camera panned to the five of them outside the house.
Niko said something about someone being a coward.
Mara dared Ezra to be the first to open the door.
Ezra flipped her off.
They laughed.
And then…
someone said something that made his blood run cold.
A voice off camera. A sixth voice. Male. Calm.
"I'll go in first."
Ezra froze.
He knew that voice.
It wasn't any of theirs.
He rewound.
Played it again.
"I'll go in first."
It wasn't the boy they lost.
It wasn't someone they remembered at all.
And yet…
somewhere in his mind, something cracked.
A headache flared behind his eyes.
And for the briefest second ... he wasn't in his living room anymore.
He was back in the hallway.
The hallway of the room.
And there were six shadows on the wall.
Ezra yanked the laptop shut and gasped for air.
He was sweating.
His hands were shaking.
There was a knock at the door.
One, then two, then three slow knocks.
He stood.
Walked to the front door.
Opened it.
No one.
But lying on the mat outside was another envelope.
This one was black.
No name. No address.
Just one word written on the front.
"REMEMBER."
Mara didn't sleep either.
She lay on her bed staring at the ceiling, the old group chat screenshot still in her hand.
"He's not answering. Should we go in?"
She didn't remember typing that.
Didn't even remember opening her phone that night.
The worst part? The timestamp.
It was 11:39 PM.
She could've sworn they entered the house long before midnight.
So why was she texting about going in when they should've already been inside?
She hated that her fingers trembled when she zoomed in on the screenshot again.
The contact photo beside the message… it wasn't her current profile picture.
It was one she'd deleted years ago.
How was that possible?
She opened her messages. Searched the group.
Gone.
Everything from that year — gone.
Except for one single message at the bottom of her screen.
From an unknown contact.
No name. Just a blank grey icon.
"You're next."
She dropped the phone.
Lena had already emptied every drawer in her apartment.
She didn't know what she was looking for.
Maybe something she missed.
Maybe something her brother left behind.
She still had the shirt he wore the night he died.
Still in the same plastic evidence bag they gave her.
She hadn't opened it.
Until now.
She peeled the seal open and let the scent hit her — mildew, dust, time.
And something else.
There was paper folded inside the collar.
She pulled it out, hands shaking.
It was a drawing. Scribbled in pencil, barely visible. Six stick figures.
Five were circled.
One was crossed out.
Underneath, in her brother's handwriting:
"He isn't gone. You forgot him."
Jace was wide awake too.
He hadn't touched the USB since Ezra gave it to him.
He didn't need to. He knew what was on it.
He remembered recording that video.
He remembered pointing the camera at his friends and laughing.
He remembered Niko's dare, Mara's insults, Ezra acting like a saint.
He remembered how dark it was inside the house.
And he remembered handing the camera to someone else.
But he didn't remember who.
The voice that said "I'll go in first."
That wasn't a hallucination.
That wasn't his voice.
That wasn't anyone in their group.
It was… someone else.
Jace closed his eyes.
And whispered:
"Who the hell were you?"
By morning, none of them had answers.
Just questions.
And a shared sense of unraveling.
Like a thread had been pulled.
And if they didn't stop it…
everything was going to come undone.
The next evening, they all returned.
No one said it out loud.
But something had changed in the air.
Like they all knew now — something was wrong, and it was getting closer.
Ezra stood outside the house again, waiting.
Mara arrived first, hoodie over her head, jaw clenched. She didn't speak.
Lena came next, all black, no makeup, no expression.
Niko showed up late, cigarette behind his ear, sketchpad tucked under one arm.
And Jace… Jace didn't speak when he walked up.
Just nodded once, then looked away.
They stood there, five of them, staring at a house that looked the same as it did five years ago — and yet completely different.
The windows still had dust.
The door still had scratches at the bottom.
But the feeling…
The feeling was worse.
"I shouldn't have come," Niko muttered.
Ezra turned to him. "You were already part of it. You think leaving now makes a difference?"
No answer.
Ezra pulled something from his pocket.
A key.
Old, rusted, curved weirdly at the end like it had been bent — or melted.
"I found this taped under my car."
"You're kidding," Lena whispered.
Ezra didn't laugh.
They walked to the door together.
No one dared step forward.
Ezra placed the key in the lock.
It didn't turn.
But the door opened anyway.
Mara stepped back. "I don't like this."
"You think I do?" Jace muttered.
Inside, the house was darker than it should've been.
The hallway stretched longer than they remembered.
And colder.
The walls were lined with the same faded wallpaper — pale green with gold vines.
Only now, the vines seemed to curl in new directions.
Toward them.
Ezra stepped in first.
The others followed.
They passed the living room.
The kitchen.
The hallway.
Nothing jumped out.
No creaks, no sudden chills.
But something was… off.
Niko stopped walking.
"What?" Mara asked.
He pointed to the floor.
To a door they didn't remember.
A trapdoor. Wood. Dead center of the hallway.
"That wasn't here," Jace said.
"I'm telling you," Ezra whispered, "there's another door now."
The trapdoor had no handle.
But there was a note taped to it.
Ripped from a notebook.
Words scribbled in red marker:
"He's still down there.
And he remembers YOU."
Mara's breath caught.
"I'm done," Lena said, backing away. "I didn't sign up for this."
Ezra knelt by the door.
His fingers brushed the wood.
Cold. Like stone.
And then, from underneath,
something knocked.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.