Elara didn't open the door until dawn.
Even with the chair wedged under the handle, she'd barely slept, every muscle wound tight, her ears trained on the hallway. Whoever had stood outside her door had walked away, but not before whispering.
"You shouldn't have come back."
The voice wasn't Isla's. It wasn't her mother's. It wasn't one she recognized.
But somehow… it had felt familiar.
Sunlight slanted across the hallway now, chasing shadows away but not the chill clinging to her skin. She stepped out slowly, her heart hammering. The hallway was empty. No footprints, no signs of intrusion. Just the quiet groan of the house settling.
She made her way downstairs, checking locks and windows. Everything was shut. Nothing broken. Nothing stolen. It was like the night had imagined itself.
In the kitchen, her mother sat at the table, dressed and sipping tea.
"You look like hell," she said flatly, not looking up.
"Did you… hear anything last night?" Elara asked cautiously.
Margaret finally met her eyes.
"No."
"You didn't hear anyone walking?"
"I sleep with earplugs," she said. "You know that."
Of course, she did. Her mother always slept as if the world wasn't worth hearing.
Elara spent most of the day pacing, reading Isla's sketches again, and replaying the voice memos on the hidden phone. There were sixteen total. The last one ended mid-sentence as if Isla had been interrupted:
"Entry sixteen. I think I've figured it out. It wasn't Mara… not really. I think—"
Click.
That was it. Nothing more. No conclusion.
Elara tried calling the number the phone had last received a call from, but it had been disconnected. No SIM. No clues in the photo gallery. The phone was a ghost box, a coffin of unanswered questions.
She needed more. Something real. Something Isla had touched last.
Her sketchbooks had offered symbols. The camera offered fear.
Maybe her laptop, if she had one, could offer facts.
She returned to Isla's room after lunch.
The door creaked as she entered. The space felt heavier today. Denser. As if the very walls remembered Elara's absence and resented it.
She opened the drawers again, more thoroughly this time. Art supplies, papers, receipts, and ticket stubs. In the top drawer, she found a small black USB stick taped to the underside. She pocketed it. But what caught her attention now was the bottom drawer of the desk.
It was locked.
She hadn't noticed before. The handle had a tiny keyhole.
Of course.
She scoured the room under the bed, behind books, beneath cushions.
Finally, she found it: a small brass key hidden behind a picture frame.
Hands trembling slightly, she knelt and slid the key into the drawer.
Click.
Inside was a single red notebook.
No title.
She opened it.
It wasn't drawings.
It was a journal.
Isla's handwriting.
Page one was dated six months before her death.
"I've decided to stop seeing Dr. Carter. I don't think she believes me anymore. I can tell by how she tilts her head like I'm some fragile glass she's afraid to bump. But something is happening. I keep waking up in different places. Sometimes I hear my name when I'm alone. And twice now, I've seen her again. Mara."
Elara's fingers tightened around the notebook.
"I know Mara wasn't real. But she looks like me now. Like older me. Only colder."
Another page:
"Mom still doesn't talk about Dad. She shuts down when I bring him up. I'm starting to think something happened that night that neither of us remembers right."
Elara's stomach turned.
She read faster.
"Last night I woke up standing at the window. I don't remember getting out of bed. I think someone is watching me again. But when I turn the light on, no one's there."
"Maybe I'm sleepwalking again. Maybe it's my meds. Or maybe Mara isn't just in my head."
The entries became more erratic. Sloppier. Panicked.
"I tried to tell Elara. I wrote her a letter last month. No response. I'm alone in this. And it's getting worse. I see things that aren't there, or maybe they are. I can't tell anymore."
Elara felt a wave of nausea.
She'd received the letter.
And hadn't written back.
The last page of the journal was dated the day before Isla died.
"If I go into that lake, it won't be because I wanted to. I think… I think someone knows what we did. What happened to Dad? I think they're trying to make me remember. Or make me pay."
"Mom knows more than she says. And Elara… I hope you remember soon. I don't think I'll be here when you do."
Beneath the writing was a single word:
"Basement."
Elara stared at the word for a long time.
Basement.
The door to the basement had always been kept locked growing up. After their father died or disappeared, Margaret forbade them from going down there. "Dangerous," she'd said. "Rotting wood and rats."
But now Elara wasn't a child anymore. And she had questions.
She grabbed a flashlight and her phone and made her way downstairs.
The basement door was stiff, its frame warped with time.
It took effort, but eventually, it opened.
The steps creaked as she descended. Dust hung thick in the air. The basement was dark with no windows, just concrete and mildew.
She swept the flashlight across the room.
Boxes. Tools. Old furniture.
And something else.
A trunk.
Large. Wooden. Iron handles.
She approached it slowly.
It looked familiar. Vaguely. Like something from a memory she couldn't quite grab.
She knelt. The lock was rusted, but the trunk wasn't sealed.
She opened it.
Inside were old clothes.
A man's jacket. A belt. Boots.
And beneath them
A photograph.
Elara picked it up.
It was her father.
He, her mother… and a woman Elara didn't recognize.
They stood in front of the house.
Elara turned it over.
Written in faded ink:
"David, Margaret, and Anna — 1993."
Anna?
Who was Anna?
And why did her mother never mention another woman?
Beneath the photo, taped inside the trunk, was a slip of paper.
"Ask her about the cabin."
Elara's blood ran cold.
She climbed the stairs two at a time, heart pounding, photo in hand.
Margaret was in the kitchen again, slicing apples with surgical precision.
Elara slammed the photo on the table.
"Who's Anna?" she demanded.
Margaret froze.
The knife slipped from her hand and clattered to the floor.
"I found it in the basement," Elara added. "Where you said we couldn't go. Why?"
Margaret picked up the knife slowly, her hands shaking.
"That's not your concern."
"It is now. Isla knew something. She wrote about it. She said you knew. About Dad. About everything."
Margaret sat down heavily.
"She shouldn't have gone looking."
"What happened at the cabin?" Elara asked, voice sharp.
Her mother's eyes glazed over.
"That place… should've burned with him."
"With whom?"
Margaret looked up.
"Mara."
The room went still.
"You keep saying that name," Elara whispered. "Mara was made up. An imaginary friend."
Margaret laughed bitterly. "You think that."
"What do you mean?"
Margaret reached across the table and grabbed Elara's hand.
"You don't remember, do you?"
Elara flinched at the touch.
"You… were there. The night your father died. You saw everything. But you locked it away. You let Mara take the memory."
Elara's voice cracked. "That doesn't make sense."
"No," Margaret said. "But it's true."
That night, Elara returned to Isla's room.
The word "cabin" echoed in her mind.
She sat on Isla's bed, the red notebook in her lap, the sketchbook beside her.
She looked at the drawing again, two girls in the woods.
One with a face. The other without.
A whisper stirred behind her:
"You're almost there."
She turned.
No one.
Just the shadows on the wall, dancing like they remembered everything.