The storm passed, but the silence it left behind clung like damp smoke.
Every creak of the old house seemed too loud, every breath too sharp.
George paced the living room with the weight of a soldier guarding enemy lines. His shirt stuck to his back, hair disheveled, but his eyes were steel. The lock on the door glinted under the lamplight, and for the first time Gabriel noticed the way his father's hand kept twitching toward it, as if expecting it to rattle again.
Lucy sat curled at the edge of the sofa, her knees drawn to her chest. Her lips moved soundlessly, muttering prayers half-formed and broken. The thunder outside had rolled away, but she still flinched every time the rafters groaned.
Gemma had returned to her chair by the cold fireplace, the photograph of Ryan still balanced in her lap. She hadn't blinked since. Her gaze was fixed on the door, as if she could burn through the wood and drag whatever stood beyond it back into sight.
Gabriel's stomach still twisted with the whispers.
Not hers. Not mine. His.
The same words Gemma had written without explanation.
He slid his hand into his pocket, fingers brushing the folded scrap.
Coincidence didn't exist anymore.
"Listen to me." George's voice cut across the room like a blade. He stopped pacing and planted himself in the center, his shadow falling over all of them. "No one goes near that door again. No one opens it, no one answers it. You hear me?"
Lucy looked up with wide, glassy eyes. "But George—if it's him—"
George snapped his head toward her. "Enough. It doesn't matter who it is. We face it on my terms, not theirs."
Gabriel bit back a reply, but anger burned under his tongue. His father's terms? That knock hadn't been for George. It had been for Gemma. Everyone knew it, even if no one said it.
He glanced at his sister. Her face was unreadable, pale and still, but there was something in her eyes—a coldness, a distance—that made the air feel thinner. Almost as though she wasn't afraid of the whispers at all.
George finally turned to her. His jaw flexed. "You will stay away from that door," he growled. "You understand?"
Gemma blinked once. Slowly. That was her only reply.
George leaned closer, voice a rasp meant for her alone. "Whatever game you're playing, girl, it ends now."
Gabriel's fists curled. He wanted to shout, to throw the words back at his father, but Lucy suddenly began to sob—loud, raw, desperate. She pressed her face into her hands. "It's happening again," she whispered. "God help us, it's happening again."
George didn't comfort her. He didn't move at all. He only watched Gemma, as though she were the storm still raging, silent and unbroken.
Gabriel felt something shift inside him then. If his father wanted to keep them trapped behind locked doors, he would find another way. Whatever those whispers meant—whoever stood in the storm—they weren't gone.
And Gabriel needed answers before they came knocking again.