Sana woke to silence, but not the peaceful kind. This silence had a shape. It pressed down on her chest like a thin hand.
She sat up slowly.
Catherine was still asleep, her breath steady. The room was dark except for the faint gray light seeping through the thin curtains. Outside, the world was thick with mist, not fog exactly—heavier, more still, like the house had decided to keep the air for itself.
The clock on the wall wasn't ticking.
Sana swung her legs out of bed and stepped carefully onto the cold wood floor. She pulled on her coat and boots, grabbed her scarf, and crept down the stairs. No one stirred. Not even the floorboards.
She didn't know where she was going until she found herself at the back of the house, facing a pair of old iron doors framed in ivy. One had a bent handle. The other had a rusted keyhole.
But the lock was already turned.
She didn't remember unlocking it.
Sana pushed gently.
The doors opened with a groan that sounded too much like a warning.
Outside lay the garden.
Or what used to be one.
---
The path was overgrown with weeds and the crumbling bones of what once might have been hedges. Statues stood along the edges—weathered, broken, their faces erased by time and rain. One had no head. Another held a bird in its hand, though the bird was gone, leaving only fingers curled around air.
The garden stretched in a rough half-moon behind the house, surrounded by stone walls covered in vines. At the center was a fountain, now dry. Its basin was cracked, and moss had taken root inside the angel's wings.
Sana stepped carefully between the flagstones, brushing aside dead ferns and curling vines. Her breath came out in clouds.
She knelt by the fountain. Something glinted in the dirt.
Brushing back the moss, she uncovered a silver locket, its chain tangled and half-buried in soil. She picked it up. It was cold—not from the air, but from something deeper.
The clasp snapped open in her fingers.
Inside was a tiny, faded portrait.
A girl. Maybe fifteen. Her face sharp, pale, with dark eyes. Her hair was long and braided. She wore a green ribbon.
The left side of the locket—the side meant to hold a second photo—was empty. But something had been scratched into the metal.
YOU KNEW.
Sana swallowed.
Behind her, a branch snapped.
She turned sharply—but no one was there.
---
She returned inside without realizing she'd been holding her breath.
Back in the front hallway, the clock had resumed ticking. A fire was lit in the hearth. Someone was making tea in the kitchen.
She looked at the locket in her hand again.
It was warm now.
She snapped it shut and tucked it into her pocket.
---
The kitchen smelled like cinnamon and boiled milk. Mary stood over the stove, humming softly. Jacob sat at the table, reading a folded piece of parchment.
He looked up as she entered.
"Morning."
"Morning," she echoed.
He nodded toward the hallway. "You've been out?"
She hesitated. "Just the garden."
Jacob froze for a breath—just long enough that Sana noticed.
"You found it?"
She frowned. "It's just outside. Behind the iron doors."
His mouth tightened.
"It shouldn't have been unlocked."
"It was."
Mary turned from the stove. "Sana, that part of the grounds hasn't been touched in years. It's not safe. The walls are unstable."
"There were statues," Sana said. "And a fountain. And this."
She placed the locket on the table.
Mary moved toward it slowly. Jacob reached for it—but drew back before his fingers touched it.
Mary picked it up, eyes scanning the tiny portrait. Then the etched words.
"She looks like you," she whispered.
"No, she doesn't," Jacob said.
"Yes," Sana said quietly. "She does."
---
By midday, the fog had lifted slightly. The twins explored the east wing, pretending to be castle guards. Christopher sat on the library carpet, reading a picture book with more pages missing than present.
Catherine found Sana in the hallway, pacing.
"Did something happen?"
Sana hesitated. "The garden."
Catherine raised an eyebrow. "The one with the statues?"
"You've seen it?"
"Through the upstairs window. I thought it was part of the woods. Didn't know it was walled in."
"It is."
Catherine studied her sister. "What happened?"
Sana handed her the locket.
Catherine flipped it open. "Charming. Who's the girl?"
"I don't know."
Catherine squinted. "She does look a bit like you."
"I know."
Catherine shut the locket and handed it back. "Well, try not to find any more dead girl jewelry before lunch."
Sana didn't smile.
That night, she couldn't sleep.
---
The window in their bedroom faced the front of the house. But just before midnight, Sana stood and pulled back the curtain.
The garden was there.
Directly below.
That was impossible.
The garden was at the back of the estate. There were three wings and a library between it and this side of the house.
She pressed her face to the glass.
There, in the middle of the fountain, stood a girl.
She wore a green ribbon.
She was looking straight up.
Sana stepped back.
The curtain slipped from her hand and fell closed.
---
The next morning, she ran to the back door.
The iron doors were locked.
Tightly. Solidly. The rusted handle wouldn't budge.
Sana backed away slowly.
Something had changed.
The air was wrong again.
Like the house was breathing behind the walls.
---
Christopher wouldn't come downstairs for breakfast.
Mary found him sitting cross-legged on his bed, drawing on the back of a shipping receipt.
"Who's that?" she asked.
He turned the paper to show her.
A girl. Pale face. Braided hair. Green ribbon. No eyes—just dark smudges.
"She's sad," Christopher said.
Mary smiled gently. "Why is she sad?"
"She can't find her name."
---
Sana sat on the windowsill most of that afternoon, locket in her hand, watching the gravel path that led around the back of the house.
No one walked it.
But she still felt watched.
At dusk, a knock sounded at the front door.
Not a fist. Not a hand.
A sharp tapping—metallic, rhythmic.
Jacob opened it.
On the step sat a folded piece of paper and a bundle of dried flowers tied with a black ribbon.
No one in sight.
The note read:
"The garden remembers what you buried. You should not have come back."
---
That night, the house creaked for hours.
Doors closed by themselves. The twins swore someone kept brushing past them in the hallway. Catherine's mirror cracked down the center. Mary dropped a glass in the kitchen when she saw a girl standing outside—who wasn't there when she blinked.
Jacob stayed silent.
Christopher refused to leave his room.
He taped the drawing to the wall.
He named her.
The Girl Who Waits.
And Sana, standing in the stairwell just past midnight, saw a shadow move from the west wing to the library and disappear.
The locket in her hand pulsed once—just faintly.
Like a heartbeat.