Chapter Seven: The Forgotten Night
The burned photo trembled in Ellie's hands. The library was silent, but her pulse thundered like distant drums. She stared at the image, trying to convince herself it was fake—altered, planted, manipulated.
But she remembered the jacket. The sparkly butterfly wings.
She remembered holding Lila's hand.
And something else.
A flicker.
A sound.
Screaming.
Not hers. Lila's.
She stumbled out of the archives and into the morning light like she'd been underwater for hours. Her thoughts were a storm, memory shards spinning too fast to grasp.
She didn't go home.
She went back to the well.
The grove was quiet again, the windless kind of quiet that pressed on the skin. The well stood just as before, surrounded by dead leaves and crooked trees.
Ellie stepped closer.
She ran her fingers along the moss-covered stones. Cold. Damp. Familiar.
Something had happened here. And her mind had locked it away.
She closed her eyes.
Breathe.
Let go.
And suddenly—she was there.
October 16, 1996.
Nightfall. The grove.
She was running with Lila, laughing, the school dance music still echoing behind them.
"Let's go to the wishing well," Lila had said.
Ellie followed.
But when they reached it, Lila stopped laughing. She dropped Ellie's hand.
"They said he lives down there," she whispered.
Ellie remembered that now—remembered how Lila's eyes changed. She looked… older. Like she knew something.
And then—a sound from the well. Low. Like a groan rising from the earth.
Lila stepped toward it.
"Don't," Ellie had said. But Lila didn't stop.
She placed both hands on the stones and whispered something.
Then came the fire.
It burst from the well—blue and cold and silent. It didn't burn. It consumed.
Lila screamed.
Ellie ran. She remembered that now—she ran.
Back to the school. Back to safety. She never told anyone. Her mind sealed the door and threw away the key.
Until now.
She collapsed beside the well, shaking.
Lila hadn't been taken by a person. She'd been taken by something.
And now that Ellie remembered—it wanted her, too.