The lights went out.
For three seconds, nobody moved.
Then I heard a chair scrape against the floor.
"Stay where you are!" my father shouted.
My heart pounded violently.
"Mom!"
I reached for Adrian's hand.
He found mine immediately.
"I'm here."
The voice in the darkness came again.
"You should have listened."
I froze.
It was a man's voice.
Deep.
Calm.
Familiar.
But I couldn't place it.
Then something crashed in the hallway.
My father shouted at the guards.
"Search the house!"
Flashlights suddenly appeared.
Doors opened.
Footsteps thundered across the corridors.
I held tightly onto Adrian.
"Where is my mother?" I demanded.
My father didn't answer.
"Where is she?"
"I don't know."
"You said she was missing!"
"I know."
"Then find her!"
He looked at me sharply.
"Don't tell me what to do."
Adrian stepped between us.
"She's frightened."
My father glared at him.
"You have no place here."
"I'm not leaving her."
My father reached into his pocket.
For one terrifying moment, I thought he was going to pull out a weapon.
Instead, he took out his phone.
"Nobody leaves this house."
He began giving orders to the guards.
I looked at the envelope still in my hand.
The signature at the bottom haunted me.
Samuel.
I turned toward my uncle.
"Where is Samuel?"
He looked at me.
"I don't know."
"You're lying."
"I haven't seen him in ten years."
"Then how did he send this?"
My uncle's expression changed.
"I don't know."
Adrian suddenly took the envelope from me.
He examined it carefully.
"There is something strange about this."
"What?"
He pointed to the paper.
"This isn't old."
"What does that mean?"
"Whoever wrote this had access to the house."
My blood ran cold.
"So someone inside helped him."
Adrian nodded.
Before we could say anything else, a scream came from upstairs.
My mother's voice.
I ran.
Adrian followed.
My father shouted behind us.
"Don't!"
I didn't listen.
We reached my mother's room.
The door was open.
The curtains were moving in the wind.
The window was wide open.
But my mother was nowhere.
Then I noticed something on the bed.
A necklace.
My mother's necklace.
And beneath it was another note.
I picked it up.
This time, there were only five words.
Ask your father about the child.
I stared at the message.
"What child?"
Nobody answered.
I looked at my father.
His face had gone completely pale.
"Father?"
He didn't speak.
My uncle slowly stepped forward.
"What child?"
My father looked at him.
And for the first time that night, I saw genuine fear in my father's eyes.
Then Adrian whispered:
"There's something you're not telling us."
My father finally spoke.
"Ten years ago…"
He stopped.
His voice shook.
"…a child disappeared in the fire."
My heart sank.
"What child?"
My father looked directly at me.
And the silence that followed was more terrifying than any answer.
Because I suddenly had a terrible feeling that the missing child wasn't a stranger.
It was someone connected to me.
Someone whose existence had been erased.
And someone had just returned to force my family to remember.