Chapter 3: The Echo of Lace

Chapter 3: The Echo of Lace

The scrap of black lace lay on the floorboards like a dark punctuation mark at the end of a sentence he couldn't read. Elio stared at it, the hangover’s hammer-beat in his skull fading to a dull throb, replaced by a cold, slithering dread. The memory of the previous night was a void, a black hole Liora had punched into his mind. This piece of lace was the only evidence left on its edge, a clue to a crime he couldn't remember but felt in the marrow of his bones.

He felt violated. Not just invaded, but fundamentally used, his body and home treated as a stage for some sick theater. He forced himself to his feet, the room tilting slightly, and bent down. His fingers trembled as he picked up the garter belt. The fabric was cheap silk, the lace coarse against his skin. It felt both alien and horribly, sickeningly familiar.

The touch was a key. It didn't unlock the memory of the night before, but of one from six years ago. The door to that memory chamber, long since nailed shut and painted over with denial, splintered and burst open.

He was in a different room, a cheap motel room that smelled of bleach and regret. Fluorescent light hummed overhead, casting a pallid, ugly glow on a woman who was not Chloe, his girlfriend at the time. He remembered the lie he’d told Chloe, something about working late. He remembered the electric thrill of transgression followed by the immediate, crushing wave of self-loathing. And he remembered the gift he’d brought the other woman, a pathetic, desperate offering. A black lace garter belt, identical to the one now in his hand.

It was the sin that had set his life on its current trajectory, the initial, self-inflicted wound from which all other failures had bled. He had confessed to Chloe, not out of honesty, but out of a selfish need to be punished, to have his guilt validated by her pain. And she had obliged, her heartbreak a mirror to his own self-hatred.

As the memory played out, another figure emerged from its shadows. Liora. She hadn't been there that night, but she had been there the week before, a surprise visit for coffee. He could almost hear her voice now, smooth and suggestive, as she stirred her tea. “You have a fire in you, Elio. A hunger. Chloe is a lovely girl, so… placid. It must be difficult for a man like you to feel satisfied by such simple comforts.”

He had dismissed it then as odd, intrusive. Now, he saw it for what it was. She hadn't been commenting; she had been planting a seed. She had seen the hairline fracture in his character and tapped it with her silver spoon, whispering permission to the worst parts of himself. He thought back, further. Before his mother’s illness took its final, ugly turn, Liora had visited, speaking of the mercy of letting go, of how some suffering was too great to prolong. Her words had echoed in his head for weeks as he found himself pulling away from his mother’s bedside, unable to bear it.

My God. She had always been there. A gardener of his misery, tending to his weaknesses, nurturing his guilt. She wasn’t just an omen who appeared before disasters; she was the architect of the storm.

His gaze snapped back to the garter belt in his hand. This wasn't a relic from a drunken mistake. It was a message. A prop. Liora had chosen it deliberately, a surgical strike against the weakest part of his psyche, designed to throw him off the scent and send him spiraling into the familiar comfort of self-flagellation.

But what was she distracting him from?

He closed his eyes, pushing past the shame of the old memory, forcing his mind back into the void of the previous night. He needed to see. He had to remember. The headache returned with a vengeance, a sharp, piercing pain behind his eyes as if his brain was fighting the intrusion.

The forest clearing. The cold. Liora’s voice, talking about him being a beacon. Her two fingers on his forehead. And then… falling.

He pushed harder, fighting the mental block. He tried to conjure the image of a woman, the phantom lover this lace belonged to. He strained to remember a face, a voice, the warmth of a body next to his.

Something answered his call.

The memory didn’t trickle back; it shattered through the void like a pane of glass. He was on his back, the damp, cold earth soaking through his clothes. He was pinned, not by a physical weight, but by an immense psychic pressure that paralyzed him, holding him open like a book. There was an intimacy to it, a feeling of being utterly seen and known, but it was the intimacy of a predator with its prey.

And then he saw her.

Only it wasn't a her.

Leaning over him were not one, but two figures. They were identical, impossibly tall and slender, their forms made of roiling, distorted shadow that seemed to drink the moonlight. Their edges were indistinct, blurring into the darkness of the trees. They had no faces, no features at all, save for two pairs of glowing, milky-white eyes. The same hollow, vacant eyes from the vision that had haunted him for a decade.

His breath hitched in his chest. A silent scream was trapped in his throat.

The shadow beings weren’t touching him, not physically. Their long, rippling fingers were extended, but they seemed to phase through his chest and head, plunged into his very essence. He could feel them drawing something out of him—not blood or breath, but something more fundamental. His fear. His guilt over Chloe. His despair about Sarah. His grief for his parents. They were siphoning away the very emotions Liora had cultivated in him for years. They were feeding.

The Echoes.

The name surfaced in his mind, unbidden, a piece of knowledge planted there by Liora. These were the things that listened. The hungry things.

The lace garter belt fell from his numb fingers. It was all a lie. A piece of stagecraft. Liora had taken him to that clearing and served him to these monstrous parasites. The blackout wasn't just amnesia; it was the aftermath of a psychic feast. He wasn’t her student. He was bait. He was their meal.

As the full, horrifying truth cemented itself in his mind, the atmosphere in his bedroom shifted. The morning light seemed to dim, and the shadows in the corners of the room deepened, stretching like grasping claws. The air grew cold, the temperature plummeting with unnatural speed.

A whisper slithered directly into his consciousness, bypassing his ears entirely. It was not one voice, but two, speaking in perfect, chilling unison. A harmony of hunger.

The flavor… exquisite.

The voice was a caress of ice and static.

The misery… so sweet.

Elio scrambled backwards, his back hitting the wall, his eyes darting around the empty room. He was alone, but he had never felt more watched.

We are not finished with you, Beacon.

He squeezed his eyes shut, but the voice was inside his head, inescapable. Then came the final, devastating whisper, the words that turned his terror into a white-hot spear of rage.

The girl… she tastes just as good.