The scream tore through the pre-dawn quiet, a jagged shard of sound that ripped Mia from the hazy edges of sleep. It wasn't a dream. It couldn't be. The high-pitched, panicked wail sliced through the silence of the hallway, unmistakably from the girls' wing. Her heart thundered in her chest, a wild animal trapped in bone and flesh.
For a moment she lay frozen, breath caught, eyes wide in the dim glow from the corridor light that spilled under her door. Then instinct took over. She flung back her blanket and swung her legs to the cold linoleum floor. Even before her bare feet found the ground, she heard the rapid, rhythmic stomp of Ms. Collins's no-nonsense shoes pounding down the hallway.
Mia pulled on yesterday's jeans and a crumpled gray t-shirt. Her hands shook as she wrenched open her door and stepped into the hall, blinking against the fluorescent glare.
"Girls, stay in your rooms!" Ms. Collins' voice rang out, firm and commanding, echoing off the walls. She moved fast, her bun slightly loosened, her eyes sharp with alarm. But Mia was already moving, driven by something deeper than curiosity. A gut-level dread gripped her, and it pulled her down the corridor.
The scream had come from Tiffany and Ava's room. The door hung slightly ajar, light bleeding out in a crooked slant across the floor. Inside, she could hear the choking sobs of someone trying to breathe through panic.
She hesitated on the threshold.
Tiffany.
The girl's sobs came in jagged bursts now, like hiccups dragged over gravel. Mia had never heard her sound like that, never heard anyone sound like that. Something primal in it, broken and terrified.
Ms. Collins reached the door and pushed it open wider. Her figure blocked Mia's view of the inside, but her posture shifted, shoulders tightening, back stiffening. A beat passed. Then she stepped inside, the door closing most of the way behind her.
Before Mia could step closer, another presence appeared.
Ms. Tilda.
The morning shift staff member, ever unflappable, was already moving down the hallway with calm precision, her sweater sleeves rolled up. She spoke gently but firmly, clapping her hands twice to get the girls' attention.
"Alright, girls. Let's head down for breakfast, nice and easy now. Grab your jackets if you need them. Come on, let's get moving."
A wave of sleepy, wide-eyed girls shuffled out of rooms, murmuring questions and rubbing their eyes. Ms. Tilda guided them with gentle touches on the shoulder, directing the current away from the storm.
Mia stood frozen, halfway to Tiffany's door. Her body itched to move forward, to see. But Ms. Tilda's eyes found hers. They were kind, but resolute. A silent command.
Move.
Mia swallowed the dry lump in her throat. She turned, falling in line with the others, but her thoughts clung stubbornly to that half-open door and the scream that had shattered the morning silence. What had happened? Tiffany had been making progress, slow, fragile steps forward, since the last incident, when someone had left a photograph of her mother in her room with a cruel note. The culprit had never been found. And now, a second violation. But this wasn't just the echo of nightmares. The way Tiffany had screamed, it wasn't fear of shadows or dreams. It was real. It was terror. It was the sound of something broken inside her being shattered again. Who could have done this? What exactly had they done? And more chilling still, why?
The breakfast hall buzzed with forced normalcy. Chairs scraped against the tiled floor. Cereal poured into chipped plastic bowls. Utensils clinked on trays. But beneath the surface hum, a thick current of tension pulsed, subtle, invisible, yet unmistakably present. Mia moved among the others like a ghost, her mind still tethered to the scream that had shattered the morning.
She scanned the tables.
Tiffany and Ava were nowhere to be seen.
Their absence hit harder than expected. Their seats sat untouched, trays missing, as if they had been erased rather than excused. Whispers floated around the room like smoke. No one spoke loudly, but everyone noticed. Chloe was already seated, bent over her tray, arranging her Cheerios into neat, fragile shapes.
Mia slid onto the bench beside her. "Did you hear it?" she whispered.
Chloe gave the smallest nod. "Yeah. The scream," she said, voice low. "Ms. Tilda said we had to hurry for breakfast. That we shouldn't talk about it."
Mia glanced around again.
"Trevor's not here either," Chloe said suddenly.
Mia blinked. She hadn't noticed.
Trevor's usual spot near the juice cart was empty. Three kids missing, all linked to what had happened.
Upstairs, Mr. Anderson knocked softly on a door in the boys' wing and stepped inside. "Trevor?"
"You need to come with me. Ms. Collins needs to speak with you," Mr. Anderson said gently.
Trevor stirred, groggy and disoriented. "What? What time is it?"
Trevor sat up quickly, his expression shifting from confusion to fear. "What happened? Did something happen to her?"
Mr. Anderson gave a measured nod. "Don't worry. Tiffany's okay. But it's important. We just want to ask you a few things."
Trevor stood, pulled a sweatshirt over his head, and followed him into the hallway.
Back in the cafeteria, the whispers swelled, passing in hushed waves.
"Did they run away?" "Was someone hurt?" "I heard something about ketchup."
Mia heard them all, and none of them. Her mind was stitching things together. Trevor, Tiffany, Ava. The last incident. The photo. The note. And now, whatever had happened this morning.
Chloe leaned closer. "Do you think it was the same person?"
Mia didn't answer immediately. The staff were pretending everything was fine. But three residents were missing, and the silence they left behind said more than words ever could.
"Yeah," Mia murmured finally. "I think it was."
Time passed quickly, and soon it was time for school.
Staff snapped into motion, ushering the kids toward the doors with warm but strained smiles. Mia stood, grabbing her backpack, still watching the hallway like it might open and explain everything.
It didn't.
She followed the others to the van, her steps reluctant, her mind racing.
As the vehicle pulled away from the group home, Mia turned in her seat, eyes fixed on the building growing smaller behind them.
Upstairs, the hallway was quiet. Too quiet. The usual morning clatter of doors, footsteps, and chatter was replaced by the faint click of gloves and the soft shuffle of restrained urgency.
2B's room had been sealed off. A printed "Staff Only" sign was taped hastily to the door, and inside, the air was thick with the acidic tang of cleaning agents trying to mask something else, something sharp, and metallic, and wrong.
Ms. Collins stood in the center of the room, arms crossed tightly over her chest, her expression carved from stone. Ms. Harper moved deliberately, snapping photos of every angle: the bed, the walls, the floor, the nightstand. Each flash was a flare in the dim morning light seeping through the window blinds.
On Tiffany's bed, Barnaby, the stuffed bear she had clung to lay sprawled grotesquely on the comforter. His head had been torn from the body, flung against the pillows, white stuffing like exposed nerve endings spilling from his neck. A sticky ring of red surrounded the tear, ketchup, not blood, but obscene all the same. It reeked of cruelty masked as childish mischief.
But the bear wasn't the worst of it.
There was a photo taped to the wall next to Tiffany's bed, a single, deeply personal image.
It was a mockery of something once precious. The original photo had come from Trevor, a picture of their mother smiling gently, her expression serene and kind. But this version had been warped beyond recognition. The eyes were grotesquely enlarged, ringed with deep shadows. The mouth had been digitally pulled into a wicked grin, unnatural and stretched to the edges of her cheeks. Even the background had been altered, the colors twisted into something molten and unreal, as if the entire image had melted in a furnace of bad dreams.
Below the photo, thick red letters were finger-painted onto the wall paneling:
Come to Mama, Tiffy-Bear
Mama's always watching
The letters glistened slightly in the dim light, uneven and wet. It wasn't paint, but the same sticky ketchup used on Barnaby. Whoever had done this hadn't acted in haste. They had lingered, planned. The message wasn't just designed to scare. It was intimate. Cruel. Personal. It was psychological warfare, it was calculated to torment.
Ms. Collins stepped back, her expression unreadable, though the tightness in her jaw and the rigid line of her shoulders betrayed the weight of what she was carrying. The acrid scent of ketchup mingled with the harsh tang of bleach, clinging to the air like smoke in a sealed room.
She clutched her clipboard until her knuckles blanched. After a beat, she turned slightly toward Ms. Harper, who was finishing a set of documentation photos. "Finish collecting everything. I'll be in my office," she said, her tone clipped, but steady. "Once Tiffany, Ava, and Trevor are finished with the guidance counselor, make sure they're taken care of. Whatever support they need, do it. While that happens, comb through every detail we've gathered so far. I want evidence, deductions, any connections, anything that gets us closer to who did this. Report back as soon as you have something concrete."
Ms. Harper and Mr. Anderson, and Ms. Tilda nodded without hesitation. The investigation had officially begun, but something in the air suggested it was already personal.
At the Millbrook Middle School auditorium, the air carried a different kind of weight, light, charged with anticipation rather than fear. The school was putting on a production of Anne of Green Gables, and for Audrey, this night felt like the most important of her life, light, charged with anticipation rather than fear.
The house lights dimmed, drawing a hush over the audience like a curtain of its own. Backstage, Audrey peeked out from behind a thick velvet drape, her heart pounding with a blend of excitement and dread. The stage, cast in a soft amber glow, felt like both a battleground and a sanctuary.
"Maya," she whispered, clutching the sleeve of her friend's costume. "What if I mess up? What if I forget everything?"
Maya, already transformed into Diana Barry with her ribboned hair perfectly in place, gave her a steadying smile. "You won't. You've got this. You are Anne."
Audrey gave a shaky nod and stepped forward.
At first, her voice trembled, quiet, cautious, but with every line, her confidence grew. She became Anne: full of wonder, wild with imagination, brimming with defiance and longing. Her red braids bounced with each movement across the stage, her expressions vivid and true. The audience responded with laughter and soft gasps, caught up in her performance. She wasn't acting anymore. She was living it.
In the second row, James and Violet Baker watched with rapt attention. Their fingers were laced together, expressions glowing. Violet blinked back tears when Audrey delivered a particularly tender line about home and belonging. James leaned forward, mesmerized. He remembered Audrey's nerves that morning at breakfast, her whispered doubts. But this? This was something else. The girl was extraordinary.
When the curtain finally fell, the auditorium erupted in applause. Audrey stood frozen for a beat, her chest heaving, eyes wide. Maya nudged her, beaming, and they stepped forward to bow.
Backstage, amid a flurry of cast members and fluttering programs, Audrey spotted the Bakers near the curtain's edge. Violet held a bouquet of wildflowers, violet, white, and deep orange. She pulled Audrey into a warm embrace.
"You were magnificent," she said, her voice trembling with emotion. "You were everything Anne is and more."
Audrey's throat tightened. For once, the praise didn't feel conditional. It didn't feel like something she had clawed her way toward. It felt offered. Freely. Fully.
The halls of the group home were wrapped in a heavy, clinical quiet. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting pale reflections on the linoleum floors. In the wake of the morning's chaos, the air remained tense, a hush draped not in peace, but in apprehension.
In the guidance counselor's room, Ava sat curled in a corner chair, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees. A cup of untouched cocoa rested on the table beside her, long gone cold. Her eyes were red-rimmed, darting now and then to the door as if expecting something, or someone, to barge in. Beside her, Tiffany sat stiffly, her fingers clenching and unclenching around the sleeves of her hoodie. Her face was pale, lips drawn tight, but her gaze was clear, haunted but alert.
Ms. Collins had insisted they be monitored closely. Ms. Tilda had brought in a soft lamp to replace the overhead fluorescents, dimming the room to something gentler. Soft music played in the background, instrumental piano, just enough to settle the nerves.
The guidance counselor, Ms. Reed, moved slowly, speaking in a low, even tone. Her words were never forced, always offered, like pebbles laid gently across a frozen pond. "You're safe here," she said at intervals. "No one will hurt you."
Tiffany didn't speak much. But she listened.
In another part of the home, Trevor sat stiffly at the edge of Ms. Collins's office couch, his knees bouncing with restless energy. Mr. Anderson sat across from him, a folder balanced on his lap, though unopened. Trevor's eyes flicked between them, wide and afraid.
Ms. Collins leaned forward at her desk. "We need your help, Trevor. Someone used a photo of your mother. The one you gave to Tiffany, correct?"
Trevor nodded, his jaw tightening.
"This is the second time something like this has happened to her," Ms. Collins continued, her voice firm but not accusatory. "Do you have any idea who could have done this?"
Trevor shook his head. "No," he said hoarsely.
"It was altered," Mr. Anderson said gently. "Turned into something cruel. We believe it was printed last night from one of the computers. We can trace it to a terminal, but if it was used under a shared login, it could take time."
Trevor looked up, fingers tugging at a loose thread on his sleeve. "So who was it?"
"We don't know yet," Ms. Collins said, voice even. "We're taking it seriously, Trevor. But we need to understand the motive too. Do you have any thoughts, anyone Tiffany was having issues with? Anyone acting strangely?"
Trevor hesitated, then shook his head again. "She… she's had a hard time. But I don't know who'd want to hurt her like that."
"We believe you," Ms. Collins said. "Just try to remember. Anything could help."
Down the hall, Ms. Harper sat at her workstation, studying a screen glowing with system logs. Timestamps, user access records, and printer queues flickered by. She scrolled slowly, her eyes narrowing.
She clicked into the terminal ID that matched the timestamp from the night before, when the altered photo had been printed.
There it was.
Her heart skipped.
She leaned forward, squinting to make sure she was seeing clearly.
The name.
With trembling fingers, she picked up the phone.
"Ms. Collins," she said, her voice low, urgent. "You need to come see this."
Back in the counselor's room, Ms. Reed had knelt beside Tiffany. Her voice was quiet, firm. "None of this is your fault."
Tiffany's fingers twitched in her lap. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, she nodded.
Ms. Collins and Mr. Anderson stood side by side in Ms. Harper's office, their eyes locked on the glowing screen. The terminal logs displayed a trail of usage tied to a single login ID, clear, unmistakable, and damning. The records showed activity from 5:10 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., followed by a logout. Then again, a login from 7:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.
Each time bracket aligned too closely with the hours when the incident could have been premeditated. A chill ran through the room. It felt as though the very air had constricted, tightening around them like an invisible vice.
Ms. Collins's breath caught in her throat. She placed one hand on the back of Ms. Harper's chair to steady herself. The other reached for her necklace, a nervous habit, and paused mid-air.
Mr. Anderson leaned in slightly, squinting as if hoping the text on the screen might rearrange itself. It didn't.
"This can't be right," Ms. Collins said quietly, her voice a brittle whisper.
"It's accurate," Ms. Harper replied, her tone calm but clipped. " The queue shows the image file being sent to the printer at 9.58 pm. The file name matches the corrupted image found in Tiffany's room."
There was a long silence.
"Was it a shared login?" Mr. Anderson asked, still hoping for a loophole.
"No. This one required manual entry."
That was when the intercom crackled. Ms. Tilda's voice came through, tinged with urgency.
"I found something. You're going to want to see this security footage from last night."
Without another word, they moved swiftly to the monitoring room. Ms. Tilda was already seated at the console, a series of timestamped video thumbnails arranged across her screen.
"Start here," she said, pointing.
The first clip played. Timestamp: 9:30 p.m.
The hallway footage showed a slim figure passing through, blue jeans, gray t-shirt. The posture was casual, the person seemed to be tiptoeing. The figure's face wasn't visible, but they moved like they belonged.
Ms. Tilda clicked ahead.
"Now this one."
3:42 a.m.
The same hallway, same angle. This time, the figure approached more slowly. Same build, same outfit, but now, the movements were more calculated, cautious. They paused just outside Tiffany and Ava's room, glancing up and down the corridor.
Then, the image flickered.
The figure slipped into the blind spot.
When the camera feed resumed seconds later, the figure was visible again, emerging from the room, tiptoeing. They closed the door behind them with deliberate care and disappeared down the hallway.
No one in the monitoring room spoke.
The implications pressed down on them like weight.
Ms. Collins tried to form a sentence, but nothing came. Her throat was dry. She stared at the paused screen, the moment frozen in time. The pieces were falling into place too quickly now. Too clearly.
Then, the world reentered.
A beep echoed through the hall.
The yellow Haven Ridge van rolled into the driveway outside. The gate buzzed, and seconds later, the front door opened to a flurry of voices, elementary kids returning from school. Backpacks clattered. Shoes squeaked. Someone was already laughing about something that happened on the bus.
The contrast was jarring.
The three adults straightened instinctively.
Ms. Tilda was the first to find her voice. It changed instantly, bright, comforting, familiar.
"Welcome back, little stars! Who's hungry? I've got apple slices and cheese cubes, and I want to hear everything about your day!"
She moved toward the children with practiced ease, already helping one with their tangled backpack strap. Her body language was warm and open, her voice a soothing melody.
Ms. Collins forced herself to breathe. She turned from the monitor, her expression unreadable now. "We'll handle this later," she said under her breath to Mr. Anderson and Ms. Harper. "For now, we smile. We show calm."
She stepped into the hallway, greeting a child by name, asking about a test they'd been nervous about.
Behind her, the monitor still displayed the paused image, 3:42 a.m., a figure slipping away from the scene of something too cruel to ignore.
But the day wasn't over.
And the ghost among them was still hiding in plain sight.