Chapter 10: It Remembers Me

Chapter 10: It Remembers Me

The two years of fragile peace had been built on a foundation of routine. The 7 a.m. alarm, the specific grind of the coffee beans, the walk to the law firm, the precise way she organized her case files. And at night, the most important ritual of all: the three full turns of the deadbolt on the apartment door, followed by a hard, reassuring twist of the knob. Locked. Safe. Secure.

Tonight, the routine had failed to soothe her. Jonas’s presence in their apartment had been like a stone dropped into a still pond, the ripples of unease expanding long after he’d gone. That fleeting moment of absolute stillness by the window, the cool, dry touch of his hand, the way his smile seemed perfectly calibrated but never quite reached his eyes—it had reawakened the dormant sentinels of her paranoia.

Lying in bed, Clarice stared at the sliver of orange city light that bled through the edge of her blackout curtains. She could hear the distant wail of a siren and, from the next room, the soft, rhythmic breathing of Fátima, lost in a happy, dreamless sleep. She tried to focus on that sound, the sound of her anchor, her truth. He's just a man, she told herself for the hundredth time. You’re seeing ghosts where there are none. You’re projecting. Dr. Sharma said this would happen.

She closed her eyes, trying to force herself into the quiet dark of sleep, chasing an oblivion that felt increasingly out of reach. She was just beginning to drift, her thoughts blurring at the edges, when a sound pulled her back with a violent, electric jolt.

Click.

It was a soft, almost imperceptible noise from the living room. The sound of a floorboard settling under a slow, deliberate weight.

Her eyes snapped open. Her heart, a slumbering animal, was instantly awake and hammering against her ribs. She didn't move. She barely breathed. The building was old; it made noises. It was the wind. It was the pipes. It was nothing.

She glanced at the glowing green numbers on her alarm clock.

10:00 p.m.

A cold, familiar dread, sharp as a shard of ice, slid into her stomach. Coincidence. It had to be a coincidence. The monster was gone. The house was empty. The police had proven it. The world had proven it. Her own memory, branded unreliable by everyone she trusted, was the only thing that screamed otherwise.

She began the grounding exercises Dr. Sharma had taught her. Five things you can see: The clock. The curtain. The shadow of the dresser. The book on my nightstand. The ceiling. Her gaze darted around the dark room, cataloging the mundane objects of her safety. Four things you can feel: The sheet against my skin. The weight of the blanket. The pillow under my head. The frantic, painful thumping of my own pulse.

Shuffle… click.

Another sound, closer this time. In their hallway. The sound of a slippered foot on the hardwood floor, followed by the softest click of a door latch not quite catching. It was a sound of movement, of presence. Someone was in their apartment.

The breath she was holding escaped in a silent, panicked gasp. The door. She had locked the door. She knew she had. One, two, three turns. She had checked the knob. Fátima wouldn’t have unlocked it. She knew the rules.

Clarice slid silently from her bed, her feet landing on the cool floor without a sound. She crept towards her bedroom door, her body a taut wire of fear. The apartment was supposed to be her fortress, the one place in the universe the ghosts couldn't reach. But the ghost was inside.

She pressed her ear against the cool wood of the door, listening. For a moment, there was only the frantic thrumming of blood in her own ears. Then she heard it. The soft, almost inaudible squeak of metal turning under a slow, steady pressure. Her own doorknob.

It wasn't a frantic, violent attempt to break in. It was a test. A gentle, patient, methodical check, just like the one she had heard through the door of her old room, night after terrifying night. The exact same pressure. The exact same sound. Her mind screamed, a high, silent wail of denial. It can’t be. It can’t be. It can’t be.

The pressure on the knob eased. The hallway outside fell silent again. She was trapped in her room, a prisoner of a memory that was refusing to stay dead. Her mind raced, desperately searching for a rational explanation. A burglar? No, a burglar would be loud, frantic. Fátima? Had she gotten up for a glass of water and stumbled in the dark?

And then, a whisper.

It was so close to the door it felt like it was inside her own head. A voice, laced with a perfect imitation of sleepy concern.

“Clarice?”

It was Jonas.

The sound of his voice was a physical blow, knocking the air from her lungs. Fátima must have given him a key. He stayed over. She forgot to tell me. The desperate, logical part of her brain supplied the answers, even as her soul recoiled in absolute terror.

“Are you awake?” he whispered again, his voice a smooth, placid baritone. “I thought I heard a noise. Just wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

She remained frozen, her hand hovering over the lock, unable to speak, unable to breathe. He was being kind. He was being a good boyfriend, checking on his girlfriend’s roommate. It was normal. It was fine. She was the one who was crazy.

She waited for him to walk away, for his footsteps to retreat back to Fátima’s room. But they didn’t. He remained there, a silent, patient presence on the other side of her door, in the heart of her sanctuary. The silence stretched, thick and suffocating.

When he spoke again, the mask was gone. The pleasant, concerned warmth in his voice had vanished, stripped away to reveal the flat, cold, and horrifyingly familiar monotone that had haunted her dreams for two years. It was the voice of the machine. The voice of André.

“The study was incomplete,” it whispered, the words precise, clinical, and devoid of all human emotion.

Clarice felt the blood drain from her face. Her knees went weak.

The voice continued, a low, sterile murmur that cut through the wood of the door and pierced her to the bone. “You have a small scar, a pale white line, just below your left collarbone. From the angle on the couch, I could never get a clear look at the texture. Observation has its limits.”

It was a detail she had forgotten herself, from a childhood fall off a bicycle. A faint, silvery mark no one ever noticed. No one except something that had spent hours, night after night, watching her sleep with an unblinking, analytical gaze.

It wasn't a new monster. It wasn't a similar creature. It was him. It had found her. It had taken on a new face, a new name, and it had walked right through their front door, holding the hand of the only person she had left in the world.

The whisper came one last time, a final, chilling promise delivered in the absolute dark.

“We have to be perfect this time.”

Clarice didn't scream. The sound was trapped somewhere deep in her chest, a solid ball of ice. She backed away from the door, her legs trembling, until her back hit the cold wall of her bedroom. The wall she had built around her life had just crumbled to dust. The nightmare had not only begun again; it was sleeping in the room next to hers. And it remembered everything.