Chapter 3: Whispers in the Dark

Chapter 3: Whispers in the Dark

The highway was a black river, and Ethan’s sedan was a stone skipping desperately across its surface. Every set of headlights that appeared in his rearview mirror was a pair of accusing eyes. He imagined the shrill cry of sirens cutting through the night, the blue and red lights painting the rain-slicked road. Sarah’s scream was an echo in his skull, a sound that had severed the last frayed thread of his old life. She would call the police. Of course she would. What else could she do? A crazed ex-husband, a resurrected child, a secret torn open and left bleeding on her immaculate floor.

His hands were locked on the steering wheel, his knuckles like bleached bone. The conversation replayed in his mind, a torturous loop of her pained confession and his own blind rage. The truth hadn't set him free; it had just redefined the walls of his prison. He hadn't been grieving his son. He had been grieving a stranger's child, a boy born from violence and buried in a lie. And the child in the seat next to him… what was he? The copy of a copy. An echo of a ghost.

A sudden, sharp gasp from the passenger seat snapped him out of his spiraling thoughts.

Leo was awake, his small body rigid, his eyes wide with a terror that seemed too big for his face. He wasn't crying, not yet. He was hyperventilating, his tiny chest rising and falling in quick, shallow puffs, his breaths catching in his throat like sobs.

“Hey, buddy, it’s okay,” Ethan said, his voice a strained imitation of calm. He reached over, trying to put a comforting hand on the boy’s shoulder, but Leo flinched away violently.

“It’s just me. It’s Daddy,” Ethan tried again, forcing a gentle tone. “You had a bad dream, that’s all. We’re just going for a little ride.”

The lie tasted like ash in his mouth. Every word he’d spoken to this child for five years felt like a lie now.

But Leo didn't seem to hear him. His gaze was fixed on the rain-streaked windshield, but he wasn’t seeing the road. He was looking at something else, something only he could see in the rushing darkness.

“It’s cold,” the boy whispered, his voice thin and reedy. His teeth began to chatter, a sound that was horrifyingly loud in the confines of the car.

“We’ll turn the heat up, okay?” Ethan fumbled with the dashboard controls, blasting warm air into the cabin. It did nothing. Leo began to tremble, a deep, shuddering tremor that shook the entire passenger seat.

“Leo, talk to me. What’s wrong? What did you dream about?” Ethan pleaded, his own panic starting to rise. This was more than a nightmare. This was raw, primal fear.

“The water,” Leo choked out, clawing at his own throat. “It’s in my mouth. I can’t…” He gasped, his small hands patting at his chest as if trying to push something out. “Can’t breathe.”

Ethan’s blood ran cold. The words were nonsensical. They’d been in a dry motel room, and now a car. There was no water. “It was a dream, Leo. You’re awake now. You’re safe.”

“No,” the boy insisted, his voice rising in pitch, becoming a frantic, panicked wail. “It’s heavy. So heavy. Pushing down.”

The child’s terror was infectious. Ethan couldn’t drive like this, couldn’t think. He wrenched the wheel, pulling the car onto the gravel shoulder of the desolate highway. He killed the headlights, plunging them into near-total darkness, the only illumination the faint, eerie green glow of the dashboard. He slammed the car into park and turned, grabbing Leo by his small, trembling shoulders.

“Leo! Look at me!” he commanded, his voice harsher than he intended. “Listen to my voice. You are in the car with Daddy. You are safe. There is no water.”

The boy’s frantic eyes finally met his. But there was no recognition in them. It was like looking into the eyes of a stranger, a stranger who was seeing a vision of hell. Leo’s face, usually so placid and observant, was twisted in a mask of agony.

“It’s filling me up,” he gasped, his voice taking on a strange, gurgling quality. “All the way. Can’t scream. It’s all quiet now. So quiet… and dark.”

Ethan stared, horrified. These weren't the words of a five-year-old. The vocabulary, the concepts—the crushing weight, the silence of drowning—were utterly alien to a child who had spent his life in isolated motel rooms and secluded rental houses, his only experience of water the shallow end of a swimming pool or a warm bathtub. He had no context for this. He had no memory of this.

This was not a child’s nightmare. It felt like a memory.

A memory of what? Of how the original Leo had died? The official story was a tragic accident at a community pool, a moment's inattention, a silent, swift tragedy. Ethan had been at work. Sarah had been there. She’d been the one to pull their son’s lifeless body from the water. The details were a blur of grief and trauma he’d never been able to revisit.

But this clone, this perfect replica, he hadn’t been there. He had been nothing but frozen genetic data in a laboratory vial. He couldn't remember something he had never experienced.

“It hurts, Daddy,” Leo whimpered, the sound suddenly small and childlike again. The terrifying intensity in his eyes was fading, replaced by a familiar, tearful confusion. He blinked, looking around the dark car as if seeing it for the first time. The mask was slipping back into place.

Then, as suddenly as it began, the episode was over.

The trembling stopped. The panicked gasping smoothed out into even breaths. Leo looked at Ethan, his wide, dark eyes now perfectly clear and focused. The ancient terror was gone, replaced by the simple innocence of a five-year-old boy.

“I’m thirsty,” he said, his voice perfectly normal.

The mundane request was a thousand times more terrifying than the screaming. The switch was so clean, so absolute. It was like a channel had been changed, a program shut down. One moment, he was a conduit for a dead boy's final moments; the next, he was just Leo.

Ethan could only stare, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. The fear of Sarah, of the police, of being caught, had been a simple, understandable thing. This was something else entirely. This was a deep, fundamental wrongness that coiled in the space between them.

He reached into the back seat, his hand shaking, and retrieved a bottle of water. He unscrewed the cap and passed it to the boy. Leo took it, drank thirstily, and then leaned his head back against the seat, his eyes fluttering closed. Within a minute, he was asleep again, his face a perfect picture of angelic peace.

Ethan sat there for a long time, the engine idling, the rain whispering against the glass. The silence in the car was deafening. He was a fugitive, trapped on the side of a forgotten highway. But he was no longer fleeing from the ghost of his past. He was locked in a car with it.

He put the car in drive and pulled back onto the black, empty road. The initial burst of adrenaline was gone, replaced by a dread so profound it felt like a physical weight on his chest. He looked at the sleeping boy, this perfect façade of his resurrected son. The first terrifying crack had appeared, and looking into its depths, Ethan feared he wasn't driving toward a sanctuary, but deeper into a nightmare from which he might never wake up. He was no longer just a desperate father protecting a secret. He was the caretaker of something unknown, and for the first time, he was utterly, terrifyingly afraid of his own son.