CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
RAVEN
Idon’t tell him I’m leaving. I just say I need air.
He doesn’t stop me, but he watches, eyes sharp and mouth unreadable, one hand hovering near the keyboard like he’s pretending not to track me the second I’m out the door.
I keep my voice light and my hands from shaking, even force a small smile to make it believable.
He lets me go, but I don’t truly breathe until the door clicks shut behind me and the elevator swallows me whole.
The mirrored metal walls reflect me back — small, pale, eyes too wide. I hate the way I look right now. Like prey. The paper is still in my pocket, folded once, no name, no scent, but heavy enough to feel like it’s holding my ribs in place. I pull it out just to look at it again.
Do you remember what he took from you that night in the chapel?
I don’t. That’s the worst part. I don’t remember. I remember the pew — cold wood pressing against my knees, the dull ache of bone against age-worn grain, and someone humming behind me. Too soft to understand, too loud to forget. But not what happened. Not what he took.
The chapel was part of the old school, a building that was supposed to be off-limits after dark.
I used to go there anyway, drawn to the silence, to the stillness, to a space that wasn’t a performance.
I wasn’t alone, though. There was someone else.
I never saw his face, but I remember his shoes — black, polished, laces tied like knots — always just outside the door, always lingering at the edge of the candlelight.
And now this note. This memory that won’t come clean no matter how hard I try to scrub it from my head.
I get off the train three stops too early.
I don’t even remember deciding to. My feet move before I can think, like muscle memory pulling me somewhere I’ve been before, and when I lift my head, I see it — the school.
The gates are chained, rusted through, ivy crawling up the stone.
They moved the academy years ago, left this place behind like a husk. But the chapel still stands.
I circle the building, the windows dark, dust choking the sills.
I find the back door half-hinged, the kind with an iron latch and a twisted handle, and when I push, it groans but opens.
Inside, it’s all rot and silence. The pews are still there, the altar still waiting, the crucifix above the chancel blackened with mildew and time.
I walk to the pew I used to sit in — back row, third from the left. My knees remember the angle. I lower myself slowly, palms on the worn wood, and I listen. But the silence isn’t empty. It’s weighted. It’s watching.
Somewhere behind me, a floorboard creaks. I freeze. It’s not a full step. Not a breath. Just the subtle shift of weight — deliberate, intentional — and then nothing.
I swallow hard. My fingers curl tighter around the edge of the pew.
I realise I’m shaking. This was supposed to be memory, but this…
this is now. The air in here is colder than it should be — not night-cold, not the kind of cold that comes from an abandoned building, but something sharper, closer. Watched cold.
I stare down at my white-knuckled hands and tell myself it’s just my head, just trauma, just ghosts. But then I see it — something pale and thin slipped between the hymnals in the holder in front of me. A note. Cream-coloured. Familiar.
My lungs lock. I reach for it slowly, my fingers trembling. I haven’t opened it yet. I glance around the chapel, still silent, still empty, yet somehow alive. I can feel it — eyes on me. Not Damien’s. Someone else’s. Someone older.
I unfold the paper. One sentence. Handwritten in the same careful, slanted ink.
You always sat in the third pew. You used to hum when you thought no one could hear.
The note flutters in my hands as I read it. I can’t breathe. I can’t move. Because it’s true. I did hum — little melodies under my breath when I needed silence but couldn’t stand loneliness. I never told anyone. Damien couldn’t have known that. No one could have.
I shove the note into my coat pocket and stand too fast, my heart climbing into my throat.
The floor creaks again — behind me this time — and I spin, eyes scanning the aisle, but there’s no one there.
Only the warped shadows stretching toward the doors.
The air smells wrong now, like dust and old wax and cedar — faint and misplaced, the kind of scent that belongs to someone else’s home.
My stomach twists. I start walking fast, pushing through the doors and out into the overgrown courtyard, gravel crunching under my boots as my shaking hands fumble for my phone. I call Damien.
It rings once. Twice.
“Raven?” His voice is alert, clipped.
“Don’t say anything,” I whisper. “Just listen.”
There’s silence on the line.
“I’m at the old academy chapel.”
A beat. Then his reply. “I know.”
I freeze. “What?”
“Your location pinged. I was about to call you.”
My mouth goes dry. “I found another note.”
“What does it say?”
I hesitate, my pulse too loud in my ears. “It’s… personal.”
His voice tightens. “You’re coming home. Now.”
“I don’t think—”
“Now, Raven.”
I flinch. Because there’s something in his voice that isn’t anger, isn’t control — it’s fear. Real, heavy, unguarded fear.
I nod, even though he can’t see me, and I start to run.
The courtyard blurs behind me. The gate rattles as I push through it, breath ragged, heart pounding.
The note burns in my pocket, a pulse of its own.
I don’t look back at the chapel, but I swear I can feel it — that hum rising again beneath my ribs, that sound I thought I’d imagined as a girl.
It follows me all the way home.