Part 49
(Adrian's POV)
The second flowers shouldn't have been there.
He'd locked the doors, checked the windows, moved the furniture against the back entrance.
Yet somehow, it had appeared again — soft and glistening with rain.
He didn't touch it this time.
Just stared, heart pounding in the space between every creak of the walls.
The air inside the house felt wrong — like someone else was breathing with him.
Leah was still asleep in the other room.
Or pretending to be.
He couldn't tell anymore.
"Leah," he called, voice shaking.
No answer.
Just the whisper of the wind through the cracked window — the same one he'd closed hours ago.
He stepped closer, gripping the edge of the counter.
"Leah, wake up," he said again, louder this time.
The bedroom door opened slowly.
She stood there, disheveled, her eyes rimmed with sleeplessness.
"What is it?" she asked.
"How long have you been awake?"
"I just heard you calling. Adrian, you're scaring me."
He pointed to the flower.
"Then tell me what that is."
Her gaze fell on the sunflowers. Her breath caught.
"I—I don't know. I didn't put it there."
"You said that before."
"Because it's true!"
He took a step toward her, then stopped — because something shifted in the air again.
A faint hiss.
Like static.
It came from above.
From the ceiling.
Adrian looked up.
The light fixture flickered once, twice — then steadied.
A low hum rolled through the room, rising and falling like a whisper trying to form words.
Leah backed away, terrified.
"What is that?"
But he already knew.
He could feel it — the same invisible presence that had followed him since the hospital, the same rhythm in every breath.
"She's here," he whispered.
Leah froze.
"Who?"
He didn't answer.
The hum stopped.
And in the silence that followed, a faint knock echoed from the back door.
Once.
Twice.
Then nothing.
Adrian's entire body went cold.
He turned toward the sound, every nerve pulling tight.
He didn't know if it was real — or if his mind was finally cracking open.