The Echo In The Attic

ue that never truly ceased. The librarian, Madam Bisi's, vague hints and the newspaper clipping detailing the vanished Adebayo family had poured gasoline onto t

oop; it was a shattered memory, desperate

ister, or the corner of a faded, floral curtain. When the child's truncated cry erupted, she'd see a bright red ball, rolling silently across a section of sunlit floorboards, or the outline of a small, indistinct figure disappearing behind a heavy wooden door. These weren't full

rds beneath her feet, Adira didn't just hear it. She felt it. A profound sense of rage, cold and suffocating, washed over her, so potent it made her gasp for air. For a terrifying second, she felt a burning urge to smash the drafting tablet, to scream, to lash out. It pas

Ngozi had commented in the one call she'd actually answered. "Are you getting enough sleep? This project isn't worth burning out for." Adira had mumbled an excuse about a tight deadline and a demanding client, ending the call abruptly. She knew they worried, but how could she explain? How could

t a complex, three-dimensional puzzle, a blueprint of a past tragedy. The echoes became her clues, the emotional resonances her guides. She

solid. In the parlor, a section of the polished mahogany floorboards felt subtly different underfoot, colder, and when she tapped them with her heel, the sound was duller, heavier, unlike the resonant clap of the surrounding w

esigned structure. Her mind, trained to detect structural inconsistencies, now saw the subtle scars of the past, h

e man's guttural shout. Adira began to realize that the spatial origin of this particular sequence felt like it emanated from the area near the living room, specifically that strangely patched

lence of the house was punctuated only by her own ragged breathing, yet the whispers, the cries, the angry shout, played continuously in her head. She closed her eyes, willing the images to coalesce,

t, repeated line "Don't touch that!" echoed so powerfully in her mind that it felt like someone was screaming it right into her ear. It

ate, to witness the moment of its deepest trauma. And she knew, with a terrifying certainty, that she was no longer merely a tenant. She was an unwilling, unwitting medium, drawn irrevocably into the harrowing, unresolved past of the Briarwood Manor. The