Ethan didn’t remember leaving the room.

  One moment he was staring at the locked door, the words HELP ME burned into the concrete like a wound. The next, he was sitting at the bottom of the stairs, back against the wall, the knife lying on the floor beside him.

  The house was silent again.

  Too silent.

  His watch still read 3:17.

  He forced himself to stand. The unused room at the end of the hall was closed once more, as if it had never been opened. The iron key was gone from his pocket.

  “No,” Ethan whispered, checking again.

  Nothing.

  Someone had taken it.

  He grabbed his coat and fled the house, slamming the door behind him hard enough to make the windows rattle. The fog outside was thick, rolling in heavy waves that swallowed the path almost immediately.

  Ethan walked downhill without direction, breath ragged, senses stretched thin. The world felt unreal, edges blurred, sounds distant.

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  Then he saw her.

  A figure stood near the old streetlight by the curve of the road—a woman, barely visible through the fog. She wore a long coat, her hair dark and loose around her shoulders.

  “Hey!” Ethan called.

  She didn’t move.

  He approached cautiously. “Are you okay?”

  As he drew closer, the streetlight flickered, illuminating her face.

  His stomach dropped.

  He knew her.

  “Claire?” he said.

  Her eyes met his—hollow, exhausted, rimmed red as if she hadn’t slept in years.

  “I told them you wouldn’t forget,” she said softly.

  Claire Bennett.

  She had lived two houses down from him as a child. She had been there that night. He remembered her screaming Lucas’s name by the river.

  “You left,” Ethan said. “Everyone said you moved away.”

  She smiled faintly. “That was the second lie.”

  The fog thickened around them, muffling the world.

  “They locked him in,” Claire continued. “They said it was temporary. That it was for his own good.”

  Ethan’s chest tightened. “Who?”

  She looked past him—toward Blackwood Hill.

  “You know,” she said.

  A distant siren wailed, then cut off abruptly.

  “Why are you telling me this now?” Ethan asked.

  “Because you came back,” she replied. “And because you were never supposed to.”

  The streetlight burst, showering sparks before going dark.

  When Ethan blinked, Claire was gone.

  Only fog remained.

  His phone buzzed violently in his hand.

  A message appeared.

  She remembers.

  Ethan stared at the screen, pulse racing.

  From somewhere up the hill, the house groaned.

  The locked door had been opened before.

  And the woman in the fog had just confirmed it.