CHAPTER NINETEEN
RAVEN
The silence is worse than the violence.
At least when Damien’s here, I know what kind of danger I’m in. I know how he’ll touch me, how he’ll fuck the air out of my lungs and then kiss me like I’m the only thing that ever mattered.
But now?
Now I’m alone.
And the air feels… wrong.
I sit on the edge of the bed wrapped in his sweatshirt, knees pulled to my chest. The clock on the wall ticks too loudly. Every creak in the building makes me flinch.
The door’s locked. The windows are latched. I haven’t moved in hours.
And still…
Still, I feel it.
That crawl at the base of my spine.
That sensation I haven’t felt since I was sixteen.
Being watched.
Not like Damien.
Damien watches me like I’m a storm he wants to drown in.
This is different.
This is cold, distant—like someone staring through a two-way mirror with a scalpel in his hand.
I get up. Slowly. Quietly.
Damien’s knife is still on the dresser.
I wrap my fingers around the hilt.
The blade feels right in my palm. That should scare me, but it doesn’t.
I move to the window and lift the curtain just enough to peek through.
Dark street.
Empty sidewalk.
Still—
I know someone’s out there.
I turn to step back, and that’s when I see it.
A single moth.
Perched on the inside of the windowpane.
Not fluttering.
Not moving.
Just… watching.
I step closer. And that’s when I see the others.
Six of them.
Lined up along the glass as if someone placed them there.
Like they were trained.
I choke back a sound and yank the curtain closed.
My skin prickles.
My chest tightens.
The air in the room has changed.
Then I see the envelope.
White. Unmarked. Sitting on the floor just inside the door.
It wasn’t there before.
And I didn’t hear it arrive.
I stare at it for a full minute before I move.
My fingers tremble as I pick it up and slide my nail under the flap.
There’s no letter.
Just a drawing.
A girl curled up in bed.
Lines of feathers surround her body.
Not wings.
Moths.
They’re crawling across her skin.
Over her lips. Her eyes. Her spine.
At the bottom, in faint red ink, just six words:
You were never the only one.
You just forgot.
My hand is still clutching the paper, but I can’t feel my fingers.
The drawing stares back at me—those moths—each one inked like it knows me, like it’s been here before.
Like they never left.
The words blur, but I can’t stop reading them.
You were never the only one.
You just forgot.
I stumble back from the door. The room spins. My ribs tighten. There’s not enough air. There’s not enough space.
My knees hit the edge of the mattress, and I drop, sinking into the bed like it can swallow me whole. Damien’s scent is still on the sheets. The bruises he left on my body throb. I should feel safe.
I should.
But something is wrong.
Something is wrong with me.
The moment I read those words, something in my brain cracked open.
Like a basement door I thought was locked.
And behind it—His voice.
Low. Gentle.
Too gentle.
“They always land on you, little moth. You must be made of light.”
I jerk upright.
No. No, no, no—
I clench my fists, but the memory claws deeper.
“Don’t tell your mother. She wouldn’t understand.”
“I only watch because I care.”
“You’ll thank me someday when the others try to hurt you and I stop them.”
He said that.
The boy.
The boy with the broken front tooth and the camera with the duct-taped lens.
I used to think he was a figment—an anxiety hallucination from when I was fifteen and hiding in closets from shadows that never showed up on cameras.
But he was real.
He left gifts.
He drew pictures.
And now—
Now he’s back.
A scream builds in my throat, but nothing comes out. I grab the envelope and hurl it across the room.
It hits the wall. A small moth flutters off the lampshade, startled.
There are more.
On the dresser. The headboard. Perched on the windowpane like little silent soldiers, waiting.
Watching.
They never stopped.
Like he’s been here the entire time, slipping through cracks I didn’t see—because Damien’s obsession is loud and burning.
But his?
His obsession rots through floorboards.
The kind that sits patiently in the dark with a knife and a lullaby.
And now I remember the worst part—
His rhyme.
Not sung like Damien’s twisted “incy wincy spider.”
No.
He whistled.
Soft. Slow. Always when I was asleep.
Always the same pattern.
Five notes. One long, four short.
I hear it now.
From the hallway.
A single, soft whistle.
Like someone smiling.
And waiting.
The whistle cuts through the silence again.
Long.
Short. Short. Short. Short.
Just like before.
My lungs seize. My fingers go numb. My vision closes in at the edges, like the room is shrinking.
He’s not just here.
He’s close.
Closer than Damien ever was.
I shoot to my feet, ignoring the sting between my thighs, ignoring the blood in my mouth from biting the inside of my cheek too hard.
The knife—Damien’s—is still on the dresser. My fingers close around the hilt like it’s the only real thing left in the world.
“Don’t panic,” I whisper, but it sounds fake. Thin. “He just wants you scared.”
It doesn’t matter.
I already am.
I inch toward the door and press my ear to it.
Silence now.
But that’s what he wants. That’s always what he wanted.
Let me think he’s gone, just long enough to drop the knife. Long enough to make me doubt the scream caught in my throat.
I twist the lock slowly.
One click.
The hallway yawns before me—dark, empty, too still. The air is colder here, like something not human touched it.
My bare feet barely make a sound as I step out.
No movement. No sound.
Until—
Tap. Tap. Tap.
My head snaps toward the end of the hall.
A paper. Folded.
Taped to the wall at shoulder height.
My breath catches.
The same red ink.
I force my feet to move.
Each step feels like a scream.
I reach the note and unfold it.
This time, it’s not a message.
It’s a photocopy.
Of me.
Not a photo.
A psychiatric report.
From the year I stopped speaking for three months.
A red circle highlights one paragraph:
The patient compulsively drew insects, often repeating phrases such as “I see him when I close my eyes” and “he crawls through the light.” Possible hallucinations or suppressed trauma. Suggest observation. No known stalker confirmed.
I shake.
I remember now.
The bugs weren’t spiders.
They weren’t moths.
They were wasps.
They used to crawl under the bed. In my drawings. Down my throat.
And he would tell me—
“Don’t scream. They don’t like loud girls.”
Suddenly, I hear the sound again.
Not the whistle this time.
Something worse.
A low, rasping breath.
From inside the apartment.
I spin.
Back toward the room.
I didn’t hear the door close.
But it’s shut now.
And someone’s standing behind it.
The shadow moves.
Slow.
I step back.
One. Two. Three—
The whistle starts again.
But this time…
It’s coming from inside the walls.
The walls are breathing.
Not literally. I know that.
But it feels like they are.
The slow whistle circles me, sliding through cracks in the drywall, curling under the door, above the floorboards. I clutch Damien’s knife tighter, knuckles white, sweat running cold down my spine.
“Come out,” I whisper.
My voice doesn’t sound like mine.
It sounds like hers.
The version of me who stopped talking at fifteen.
The one who drew wasps with ink-stained fingers and whispered to the girl in the mirror that she wasn’t alone, even when no one believed her.
Because she wasn’t.
She never was.
A soft click echoes from the bedroom.
Not a door.
Not a light.
The mirror.
The old one above the dresser.
The one Damien covered with a sheet when we moved in.
Why did he cover it?
I move slowly, each step thundering in my ears. My throat is tight. My pulse is louder than the whistle now.
The door creaks open, and I see it.
The mirror.
The sheet is gone.
Across the surface—
a message scrawled in red.
It’s written backwards, like he wanted me to read it the second I walked in.
I always knew you’d forget me.
So I carved myself into the walls.
Now you remember.
Now we can play again.
I spin, knife raised.
Empty room. No movement.
I move to the mirror, breath fogging the glass, heart clawing at my chest.
And then—I see something behind my reflection.
A vent.
Small.
Rusty.
Loose.
I drop to my knees and dig my fingers under the edge. The screw is already halfway out.
Like he wanted me to find it.
I rip it off and freeze.
Inside?
A cavity.
A space I should’ve known was there. A void running behind the drywall. Big enough to crawl through.
And inside it—Photos.
Hundreds.
Rolled like scrolls. Clipped to string. Lining the inside like wallpaper.
Me.
In bed.
In the shower.
At the therapist’s office when I was sixteen.
Even there.
Especially there.
Notes. Sessions. Journals I never gave to anyone. Things I forgot I wrote.
Things I don’t remember saying.
But someone was there.
Listening.
Recording.
Writing it down.
I choke back a sob and crawl farther in.
At the very back—a box.
Small. Black. Locked.
On top, a single wasp.
Not real.
Pinned. Preserved.
Like something from a museum.
Underneath, carved into the wood:
You called him the monster.
But you let me in first.
The crawlspace shouldn’t go this deep.
I don’t know how I know—maybe from living here, maybe from instinct—but something is wrong with the geometry. The walls bend too sharply. The floor dips, then disappears.
The air smells of damp wood and formaldehyde.
I move slowly, the knife still clutched in my hand, its edge scraping the tunnel wall. The farther I crawl, the more I realise: I’ve been here before.
Not physically. Not in this body. But somewhere inside me, I know the shape of this dark.
The tunnel opens onto a room.
No windows. No lights.
Just a soft, unnatural glow from a small, flickering lantern in the corner.
Waxed paper covers the walls.
Hundreds of pages.
Drawings.
Of me.
Not just now.
From childhood.
From years no one should remember.
Me riding a bike with scraped knees.
Me crying in a uniform I haven’t seen in a decade.
Me undressing, eyes wide with confusion.
Me sleeping, limbs tangled in Damien’s sheets—this week.
He’s been following me my entire life.
But it wasn’t Damien.
I move toward the centre of the room, legs shaking, and that’s when I see it.
The doll.
Sitting on a chair of old wood and steel. Bent arms. Paper skin.
A doll in my image.
Dressed in my clothes.
Braided hair like mine.
Someone has stitched its throat shut.
In its lap—a human tooth.
I stagger back.
My hand hits a lever—accidentally—and something shifts.
The floor cracks. Opens.
A panel drops, revealing a pit beneath the room.
Inside?
A body.
Or what’s left of one.
Rotted.
Cradling a photograph to her chest.
I lean closer and light the pit with my phone.
The photo is grainy, burned at the edges, but I can still make out the face.
Me.
Standing in my childhood bedroom.
Beside me?
Not Damien.
Someone else.
Smiling.
Missing a front tooth.
The same boy I forgot.
The one who whistled lullabies.
He’s older now.
And he’s been waiting.
A sound echoes behind me.
Not the whistle.
Breathing.
Just above my ear.
A whisper.
Too close.
Too familiar.
“Found you.”